Fluorescent Mantle Carbon Coated Core–Shell SPIONs for Neuroengineering Applications

Mucoadhesive Carrier-Mediated Oral Co-delivery of Bcl2 Inhibitors Improves Gastric Cancer Treatment

Gastric cancer treatment is challenging due to the lack of early-stage diagnostic technology and targeted delivery systems. Currently, the available treatments for gastric cancer are surgery, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and radiation. These strategies are either invasive or require systemic delivery, exerting toxicities within healthy tissues. By creation of a targeted delivery system to the stomach, gastric cancer can be treated in the early stages. Such an approach reduces the negative effects on the rest of the body by minimizing systemic absorbance and random localization. With this in mind, we developed a mucoadhesive vehicle composed of β-Glucan And Docosahexaenoic Acid (GADA) for controlled drug/gene delivery. In the current study, we investigated the therapeutic effect of codelivery Bcl2 inhibitors navitoclax (NAVI) and siRNA (Bcl2) via oral using GADA. The therapeutic efficacy of the GADA-mediated oral NAVI/siRNA was investigated in a gastric cancer mouse model. Higher Bcl2 inhibition efficacy was observed in Western blotting and TUNEL assay in mice treated with GADA/NAVI/siRNA compared to free NAVI, siRNA, and NAVI/siRNA. Histology (H&E) and immunohistochemistry (Ki67, TUNEL, and BCl2) analyses confirmed a significant reduction of the tumor region. Interaction between GADA and mucus resulted in retention for over 6 h and thereby sustained local payload release. The developed oral carrier GADA is an emerging vehicle that has promising potential in oral delivery of both small and large molecules, and their mucoadhesive property results in improved therapeutic efficacy with minimal side effects compared to conventional treatment. This study opens a new window for the effective delivery of oral medicine for the treatment of gastric cancer and other gastrointestinal diseases.

Carbon Coated Iron-Cobalt Nanoparticles for Magnetic Particle Imaging

Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is an emerging imaging modality that provides direct and quantitative mapping of iron oxide tracers. To achieve high sensitivity and good spatial resolution images, a magnetic nanoparticle with a higher contrast intensity needs to be developed. Currently, a majority of MPIs being developed for potential clinical application are composed of iron oxide nanoparticles with a spherical shape. In this project, we intend to report development of high-performance carbon (C) coated iron-cobalt (FeCo) nanoparticles (FeCo/C) and investigate their feasibility as a MPI agent. We have synthesized FeCo/C through a facile and simple method at mild temperature that is safe, easy, and up-scalable. We studied the structural and functional relationships and biocompatibility of this MPI agent in vitro. However, to enhance the aqueous solubility and biocompatibility, the surface of FeCo/C was modified with polyethylene glycol (PEG). We found that variation in the ratio of Fe and Co plays a vital role in their physical properties and functionality. In vitro imaging confirms that the Fe3Co1/C nanoparticle has highly competitive MPI intensity compared to VivoTrax, a commercially available MPI agent. Confocal laser scanning microscopy imaging with Rhodamine B labeled FeCo/C displays cellular internalization by the A375 cancer cells. The in vitro toxicity analysis concludes that there is no significant toxicity of FeCo/C nanoparticles. Therefore, the newly developed MPI agent holds strong promise for biomedical imaging and could be further validated in vivo in small animals.

Cellular and Molecular Processes Are Differently Influenced in Primary Neural Cells by Slight Changes in the Physicochemical Properties of Multicore Magnetic Nanoparticles

Herein, we use two exemplary superparamagnetic iron oxide multicore nanoparticles (SPIONs) to illustrate the significant influence of slightly different physicochemical properties on the cellular and molecular processes that define SPION interplay with primary neural cells. Particularly, we have designed two different SPION structures, NFA (i.e., a denser multicore structure accompanied by a slightly less negative surface charge and a higher magnetic response) and NFD (i.e., a larger surface area and more negatively charged), and identified specific biological responses dependent on SPION type, concentration, exposure time, and magnetic actuation. Interestingly, NFA SPIONs display a higher cell uptake, likely driven by their less negative surface and smaller protein corona, more significantly impacting cell viability and complexity. The tight contact of both SPIONs with neural cell membranes results in the significant augmentation of phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylserine, and sphingomyelin and the reduction of free fatty acids and triacylglycerides for both SPIONs. Nonetheless, NFD induces greater effects on lipids, especially under magnetic actuation, likely indicating a preferential membranal location and/or a tighter interaction with membrane lipids than NFA, in agreement with their lower cell uptake. From a functional perspective, these lipid changes correlate with an increase in plasma membrane fluidity, again larger for more negatively charged nanoparticles (NFD). Finally, the mRNA expression of iron-related genes such as Ireb-2 and Fth-1 remains unaltered, while TfR-1 is only detected in SPION-treated cells. Taken together, these results demonstrate the substantial impact that minor physicochemical differences of nanomaterials may exert in the specific targeting of cellular and molecular processes. A denser multicore structure generated by autoclave-based production is accompanied by a slight difference in surface charge and magnetic properties that become decisive for the biological impact of these SPIONs. Their capacity to markedly modify the lipidic cell content makes them attractive as lipid-targetable nanomedicines.

Nanotechnology-Assisted Metered-Dose Inhalers (MDIs) for High-Performance Pulmonary Drug Delivery Applications

PURPOSE

Respiratory disorders pose a major threat to the morbidity and mortality to public health. Here we reviewed the nanotechnology based pulmonary drug delivery using metered dose inhalers.

METHODS

Major respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), asthma, acute lower respiratory tract infections, tuberculosis (TB) and lung cancer. At present, common treatments for respiratory disorders include surgery, radiation, immunotherapy, and chemotherapy or a combination. The major challenge is development of systemic delivery of the chemotherapeutic agents to the respiratory system. Conventional delivery of chemotherapy has various limitation and adverse side effected. Hence, targeted, and systemic delivery need to be developed. Towards this direction nanotechnology, based controlled, targeted, and systemic drug delivery systems are potential candidate to enhance therapeutic efficacy with minimum side effect. Among different route of administration, pulmonary delivery has unique benefits such as circumvents first pass hepatic metabolism and reduces dose and side effects.

RESULTS

Respiratory disorders pose a major threat to the morbidity and mortality to public health globally. Pulmonary delivery can be achieved through various drug delivery devices such as nebulizers, dry powder inhalers, and metered dose inhalers. Among them, metered dose inhalers are the most interesting and first choice of clinician over others. This review focused on nanotechnology based pulmonary drug delivery using metered dose inhalers. This report focused on delivery of various types of therapeutics using nanocarriers such as polymeric nanoparticles and micelles, dendrimers, lipid nanocarriers such as liposomes, solid lipid nanostructures and nanostructured lipid carriers, and other using metered dose inhalers discussed comprehensively. This report provides insight about the effect of parameters of MDI such as co-solvent, propellants, actuators shape, nozzle diameters, and jet lengths, and respiratory flow rate, and particle size of co-suspension of drug on aerodynamics and lung deposition of formulation. This review also provided the insight about various metered dose inhalers market scenario and digital metered dose inhalers.

CONCLUSION

This report concluded the clinical potential of metered dose inhalers, summary of current progress and future perspectives towards the smart digital metered dose inhalers development.

Neurodegenerative disorders management: state-of-art and prospects of nano-biotechnology

Neurodegenerative disorders (NDs) are highly prevalent among the aging population. It affects primarily the central nervous system (CNS) but the effects are also observed in the peripheral nervous system. Neural degeneration is a progressive loss of structure and function of neurons, which may ultimately involve cell death. Such patients suffer from debilitating memory loss and altered motor coordination which bring up non-affordable and unavoidable socio-economic burdens. Due to the unavailability of specific therapeutics and diagnostics, the necessity to control or manage NDs raised the demand to investigate and develop efficient alternative approaches. Keeping trends and advancements in view, this report describes both state-of-the-art and challenges in nano-biotechnology-based approaches to manage NDs, toward personalized healthcare management. Sincere efforts are being made to customize nano-theragnostics to control: therapeutic cargo packaging, delivery to the brain, nanomedicine of higher efficacy, deep brain stimulation, implanted stimulation, and managing brain cell functioning. These advancements are useful to design future therapy based on the severity of the patient's neurodegenerative disease. However, we observe a lack of knowledge shared among scientists of a variety of expertise to explore this multi-disciplinary research field for NDs management. Consequently, this review will provide a guideline platform that will be useful in developing novel smart nano-therapies by considering the aspects and advantages of nano-biotechnology to manage NDs in a personalized manner. Nano-biotechnology-based approaches have been proposed as effective and affordable alternatives at the clinical level due to recent advancements in nanotechnology-assisted theragnostics, targeted delivery, higher efficacy, and minimal side effects.

Lignin: Drug/Gene Delivery and Tissue Engineering Applications

Lignin is an abundant renewable natural biopolymer. Moreover, a significant development in lignin pretreatment and processing technologies has opened a new window to explore lignin and lignin-based bionanomaterials. In the last decade, lignin has been widely explored in different applications such as drug and gene delivery, tissue engineering, food science, water purification, biofuels, environmental, pharmaceuticals, nutraceutical, catalysis, and other interesting low-value-added energy applications. The complex nature and antioxidant, antimicrobial, and biocompatibility of lignin attracted its use in various biomedical applications because of ease of functionalization, availability of diverse functional sites, tunable physicochemical and mechanical properties. In addition to it, its diverse properties such as reactivity towards oxygen radical, metal chelation, renewable nature, biodegradability, favorable interaction with cells, nature to mimic the extracellular environment, and ease of nanoparticles preparation make it a very interesting material for biomedical use. Tremendous progress has been made in drug delivery and tissue engineering in recent years. However, still, it remains challenging to identify an ideal and compatible nanomaterial for biomedical applications. In this review, recent progress of lignin towards biomedical applications especially in drug delivery and in tissue engineering along with challenges, future possibilities have been comprehensively reviewed.

Magnetofluorescent Nanoprobe for Multimodal and Multicolor Bioimaging

Although, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) have extensively been used as a contrasting agent for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the lack of intrinsic fluorescence restricted their application as a multimodal probe, especially in combination with light microscopy. In Addition, the bigger size of the particle renders them incompetent for bioimaging of small organelles. Herein, we report, not only the synthesis of ultrasmall carbon containing magneto-fluorescent SPIONs with size ∼5 nm, but also demonstrate its capability as a multicolor imaging probe. Using MCF-7 and HeLa cell lines, we show that the SPIONs can provide high contrast mulicolor images of the cytoplasm from blue to red region. Further, single particle level photon count data revealed that the SPIONs could efficaciously be utilized in localization based super resolution microscopy in future.

Core-shell nanostructures: perspectives towards drug delivery applications

Nanosystems have shown encouraging outcomes and substantial progress in the areas of drug delivery and biomedical applications. However, the controlled and targeted delivery of drugs or genes can be limited due to their physicochemical and functional properties. In this regard, core-shell type nanoparticles are promising nanocarrier systems for controlled and targeted drug delivery applications. These functional nanoparticles are emerging as a particular class of nanosystems because of their unique advantages, including high surface area, and easy surface modification and functionalization. Such unique advantages can facilitate the use of core-shell nanoparticles for the selective mingling of two or more different functional properties in a single nanosystem to achieve the desired physicochemical properties that are essential for effective targeted drug delivery. Several types of core-shell nanoparticles, such as metallic, magnetic, silica-based, upconversion, and carbon-based core-shell nanoparticles, have been designed and developed for drug delivery applications. Keeping the scope, demand, and challenges in view, the present review explores state-of-the-art developments and advances in core-shell nanoparticle systems, the desired structure-property relationships, newly generated properties, the effects of parameter control, surface modification, and functionalization, and, last but not least, their promising applications in the fields of drug delivery, biomedical applications, and tissue engineering. This review also supports significant future research for developing multi-core and shell-based functional nanosystems to investigate nano-therapies that are needed for advanced, precise, and personalized healthcare systems.