Drug-templated mesoporous silica nanocontainers with extra high payload and controlled release rate

Advancing Cancer Treatment: Enhanced Combination Therapy through Functionalized Porous Nanoparticles

Cancer remains a major global health challenge, necessitating the development of innovative treatment strategies. This review focuses on the functionalization of porous nanoparticles for combination therapy, a promising approach to enhance cancer treatment efficacy while mitigating the limitations associated with conventional methods. Combination therapy, integrating multiple treatment modalities such as chemotherapy, phototherapy, immunotherapy, and others, has emerged as an effective strategy to address the shortcomings of individual treatments. The unique properties of mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) and other porous materials, like nanoparticles coated with mesoporous silica (NP@MS), metal-organic frameworks (MOF), mesoporous platinum nanoparticles (mesoPt), and carbon dots (CDs), are being explored for drug solubility, bioavailability, targeted delivery, and controlled drug release. Recent advancements in the functionalization of mesoporous nanoparticles with ligands, biomaterials, and polymers are reviewed here, highlighting their role in enhancing the efficacy of combination therapy. Various research has demonstrated the effectiveness of these nanoparticles in co-delivering drugs and photosensitizers, achieving targeted delivery, and responding to multiple stimuli for controlled drug release. This review introduces the synthesis and functionalization methods of these porous nanoparticles, along with their applications in combination therapy.

Novel drug delivery strategies for antidepressant active ingredients from natural medicinal plants: the state of the art

Depression is a severe mental disorder among public health issues. Researchers in the field of mental health and clinical psychiatrists have long been faced with difficulties in slow treatment cycles, high recurrence rates, and lagging efficacy. These obstacles have forced us to seek more advanced and effective treatments. Research has shown that novel drug delivery strategies for natural medicinal plants can effectively improve the utilization efficiency of the active molecules in these plants and therefore improve their efficacy. Currently, with the development of treatment technologies and the constant updating of novel drug delivery strategies, the addition of natural medicinal antidepressant therapy has given new significance to the study of depression treatment against the background of novel drug delivery systems. Based on this, this review comprehensively evaluates and analyses the research progress in novel drug delivery systems, including nanodrug delivery technology, in intervention research strategies for neurological diseases from the perspective of natural medicines for depression treatment. This provided a new theoretical foundation for the development and application of novel drug delivery strategies and drug delivery technologies in basic and clinical drug research fields.

One-Pot Preparation of Cetylpyridinium Chloride-Containing Nanoparticles for Biofilm Eradication

Quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) have been widely used due to their excellent antimicrobial activity. However, using the technology where nanomaterials are employed as drug carriers to deliver QAC drugs has not been fully explored. In this study, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) with short rod morphology were synthesized in a one-pot reaction using an antiseptic drug cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC). CPC-MSN were characterized via various methods and tested against three bacterial species (Streptococcus mutans, Actinomyces naeslundii, and Enterococcus faecalis), which are associated with oral infections, caries, and endodontic pathology. The nanoparticle delivery system used in this study prolonged the release of CPC. The manufactured CPC-MSN effectively killed the tested bacteria within the biofilm, and their size allowed them to penetrate into dentinal tubules. This CPC-MSN nanoparticle delivery system demonstrates potential for applications in dental materials.

Design of a Controlled-Release Delivery Composite of Antibacterial Agent Gatifloxacin by Spherical Silica Nanocarrier

In this study, a spherical silica nanoparticle was explored as a gatifloxacin carrier synthesized by the chemical precipitation method. It was found that there was no new chemical bond formation during the loading process between gatifloxacin and silica, which implies that the binding was driven by physical interaction. In addition, the drug loading and encapsulation efficiency could be improved by appropriately increasing nano-silica content in the loading process. Meanwhile, the release rate of gatifloxacin after loading nano-silica was also improved, suggesting the successful design of a controlled-release delivery composite. The silica nanocarrier could significantly improve the antibacterial performance of Escherichia coli by 2.1 times, which was higher than the pure gatifloxacin. The 24 h bacteriostatic rate was higher than that of a simple mixture of silica nanoparticles and gatifloxacin. Strong reactive oxygen species (ROS) in GAT-SiO₂ NPs suggests that ROS might be associated with bactericidal activity. The synergy between the physicochemical effect and ROS production of this material is proposed as the mechanism of its antibacterial activity, which can also be confirmed by the cell membrane damage observed under electron microscopy and DNA damage experiments. Collectively, our finding indicates that nano-silica microspheres could serve as a promising carrier for the sustained release of gatifloxacin, thereby providing a new carrier design scheme for the improvement of the antibacterial effect.

Gold Nanobeads with Enhanced Absorbance for Improved Sensitivity in Competitive Lateral Flow Immunoassays

BACKGROUND

Colloidal gold based lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) commonly suffers from relatively low detection sensitivity due to the insufficient brightness of conventional gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with the size of 20-40 nm.

METHODS

Herein, three kinds of gold nanobeads (GNBs) with the size of 94 nm, 129 nm, and 237 nm, were synthesized by encapsulating numerous hydrophobic AuNPs (10 nm) into polymer matrix. The synthesized GNBs exhibited the enhanced colorimetric signal intensity compared with 20-40 nm AuNPs. The effects of the size of GNBs on the sensitivity of LFIA with competitive format were assessed.

RESULTS

The results showed that the LFIA using 129 nm GNBs as amplified signal probes exhibits the best sensitivity for fumonisin B1 (FB1) detection with a cut-off limit (for visual qualitative detection) at 125 ng/mL, a half maximal inhibitory concentration at 11.27 ng/mL, and a detection limit at 1.76 ng/mL for detection of real corn samples, which are 8-, 3.82-, and 2.89-fold better than those of conventional AuNP40-based LFIA, respectively. The developed GNB-LFIA exhibited negligible cross-reactions with other common mycotoxins. In addition, the accuracy, precision, reliability, and practicability were demonstrated by determining real corn samples.

CONCLUSIONS

All in all, the proposed study provides a promising strategy to enhance the sensitivity of competitive LFIA via using the GNBs as amplified signal probes.

Facile synthesis of PEI-based crystalline templated mesoporous silica with molecular chirality for improved oral delivery of the poorly water-soluble drug

The aim of this study was to build up a novel chiral mesoporous silica called PEIs@TA-CMS through a facile biomimetic strategy and to explore its potential to serve as a drug carrier for improving the delivery efficiency of poorly water-soluble drug. PEIs@TA-CMS was synthesized by using a chiral crystalline complex associated of tartaric acid and polyethyleneimine (PEIs) as templates, scaffolds and catalysts. The structural features including morphology, size, pore structure and texture properties were systematacially studied. The results showed that PEIs@TA-CMS was monodispersed spherical nanoparticles in a uniformed diameter of 120–130 nm with well-developed pore structure (S_BET: 1009.94 m²/g, pore size <2.21 nm). Then PEIs@TA-CMS was employed as nimodipine (NMP) carrier and compared with the drug carry ability of MCM41. After drug loading, NMP was effectively transformed from the crystalline state to an amorphous state due to the space confinement in mesopores. As expected, PEIs@TA-CMS had superiority in both drug loading and drug release compared to MCM41. It could incorporate NMP with high efficiency, and the dissolution-promoting effect of PEIs@TA-CMS was more obvious because of the unique interconnected curved pore channels. Meanwhile, PEIs@TA-CMS could significantly improve the oral adsorption of NMP to a satisfactory level, which showed approximately 3.26-fold higher in bioavailability, and could effectively prolong the survival time of mice on cerebral anoxia from 10.98 to 17.33 min.