Nanocarrier systems for delivery of siRNA to ovarian cancer tissues

Chitosan scaffolds: Expanding horizons in biomedical applications

Chitosan, a natural polysaccharide from chitin, shows promise as a biomaterial for various biomedical applications due to its biocompatibility, biodegradability, antibacterial activity, and ease of modification. This review overviews "chitosan scaffolds" use in diverse biomedical applications. It emphasizes chitosan's structural and biological properties and explores fabrication methods like gelation, electrospinning, and 3D printing, which influence scaffold architecture and mechanical properties. The review focuses on chitosan scaffolds in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, highlighting their role in bone, cartilage, skin, nerve, and vascular tissue regeneration, supporting cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. Investigations into incorporating bioactive compounds, growth factors, and nanoparticles for improved therapeutic effects are discussed. The review also examines chitosan scaffolds in drug delivery systems, leveraging their prolonged release capabilities and ability to encapsulate medicines for targeted and controlled drug delivery. Moreover, it explores chitosan's antibacterial activity and potential for wound healing and infection management in biomedical contexts. Lastly, the review discusses challenges and future objectives, emphasizing the need for improved scaffold design, mechanical qualities, and understanding of interactions with host tissues. In summary, chitosan scaffolds hold significant potential in various biological applications, and this review underscores their promising role in advancing biomedical science.

Engineered nanoparticles induce cell apoptosis: potential for cancer therapy

Engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) have been widely applied in industry, commodities, biology and medicine recently. The potential for many related threats to human health has been highlighted. ENPs with their sizes no larger than 100 nm are able to enter the human body and accumulate in organs such as brain, liver, lung, testes, etc, and cause toxic effects. Many references have studied ENP effects on the cells of different organs with related cell apoptosis noted. Understanding such pathways towards ENP induced apoptosis may aid in the design of effective cancer targeting ENP drugs. Such ENPs can either have a direct effect towards cancer cell apoptosis or can be used as drug delivery agents. Characteristics of ENPs, such as sizes, shape, forms, charges and surface modifications are all seen to play a role in determining their toxicity in target cells. Specific modifications of such characteristics can be applied to reduce ENP bioactivity and thus alleviate unwanted cytotoxicity, without affecting the intended function. This provides an opportunity to design ENPs with minimum toxicity to non-targeted cells.

Nanoinformatics knowledge infrastructures: bringing efficient information management to nanomedical research

Nanotechnology represents an area of particular promise and significant opportunity across multiple scientific disciplines. Ongoing nanotechnology research ranges from the characterization of nanoparticles and nanomaterials to the analysis and processing of experimental data seeking correlations between nanoparticles and their functionalities and side effects. Due to their special properties, nanoparticles are suitable for cellular-level diagnostics and therapy, offering numerous applications in medicine, e.g. development of biomedical devices, tissue repair, drug delivery systems and biosensors. In nanomedicine, recent studies are producing large amounts of structural and property data, highlighting the role for computational approaches in information management. While in vitro and in vivo assays are expensive, the cost of computing is falling. Furthermore, improvements in the accuracy of computational methods (e.g. data mining, knowledge discovery, modeling and simulation) have enabled effective tools to automate the extraction, management and storage of these vast data volumes. Since this information is widely distributed, one major issue is how to locate and access data where it resides (which also poses data-sharing limitations). The novel discipline of nanoinformatics addresses the information challenges related to nanotechnology research. In this paper, we summarize the needs and challenges in the field and present an overview of extant initiatives and efforts.

Metal-organic frameworks as potential drug delivery systems

INTRODUCTION

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a unique class of hybrid porous solids based on metals and organic linkers. Compared to traditional porous materials, they possess predominance of large surface areas, tunable pore size and shape, adjustable composition and functionalized pore surface, which enable them unique advantages and promises for applications in adsorption and release of therapeutic agents.

AREAS COVERED

This review addresses MOFs as a new avenue for drug delivery and exhibits their ability to efficiently deliver various kinds of therapeutic agents. It also details the requirements that MOFs need to satisfy for biomedical application, such as toxicological compatibility, stability, particle size, and surface modification. In addition, several approaches used to enhance encapsulation efficiency are summarized and parameters influencing delivery efficiency are also discussed.

EXPERT OPINION

Benefiting from the unique advantages of MOFs materials, efficient delivery of various kinds of drugs has been achieved in some MOF materials. However, it is only the outset of MOFs in drug delivery system, and numerous work need to be done before clinical applications, for example, studying their in vivo toxicity, exploring degradation mechanisms so as to establish real stability of MOFs in body's liquid, providing appropriated surface modification avenue for MOFs, and researching in vivo efficiency and pharmacokinetics of drug-loaded MOFs.