Current Drug Delivery - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2013

Oral dosage forms have always been considered the preferred route of delivery, due to lower unit dose cost and improved patient compliance. The great increase in the duration and quality of human life was made possible by the availability of effective and well tolerated drugs, able to deal adequately with serious and widespread diseases. Now, the pharmaceutical challenge is shifted to drugs and preparations more specific Read More

Dose limitations in therapy induced by adverse effects due to unselective drug availability are a common problem. One prominent example for this dilemma are inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. The challenge for drug delivery systems in the therapy of these diseases is the delivery of the active ingredient to the site of inflammation. Colloidal carriers allow to improve delivery of drugs to the site of action and Read More

There are still so-called unmet needs in the treatment of epithelial and cutaneous lesions. Mucositis, ocular lesions, chronic skin wounds represent typical examples. These pathologies do not yet afford a satisfactory treatment. In particular chronic wounds represent a major health care burden, likely to increase as the population ages. Healing of epithelial and cutaneous lesions progresses through a complex cascade of events st Read More

Recently ZnO quantum dots are reported to be very promising for drug delivery. It has also been reported that adsorptive material can deliver drug molecules by simple adsorption and they release the drug at site of action by subsequent desorption. This has been shown for carbon nanotubes and some other hydrophobic molecules for transdermal applications in the literature. Therefore it was aimed to find the effect of ZnO q Read More

Identification of the most relevant epitopes is the initial challenge of peptide-based vaccine design. Chimeric conserved epitopes of the Group A Streptococcus (GAS) M-protein were used in the development of an anti-GAS vaccine candidate. Previously, these epitopes have incorporated a GCN4 peptide from yeast to maintain their native helical structure. Here, we designed a new peptide epitope based on the minimal B-cel Read More

In psychiatry, around 130 drugs are available which have been detected and developed during the last 60 years. These drugs are effective and essential for the treatment of many psychiatric disorders and symptoms. Therapeutic outcomes, however, are still far from satisfactory for many patients. One major reason underlying insufficient response or problems of tolerability or toxicity is considerable interindividual variabilit Read More

Midkine (MK) is a member of midkine family which is composed of MK and pleotrophin (PTN). MK behaves like a cytokine and growth factor, promotes the proliferation, differentiation, survival, adhesion, migration of cells. MK expression usually increases during ischemia, inflammation, tissue repair, neoplastic transformation and in different toxic conditions. Immune cells and most of organs have MK secretion function in Read More

Histidine (His)-phosphorylation is labile at low pH and has therefore not been in the focus of proteomic analysis in the past although a few single-case studies have been performed. The systematic investigation of model substances generates confidence in experimental procedures and allows determining their limits. In order to extend earlier peptide studies to His-phosphoproteins and elucidate their behavior and recovery in p Read More

Beta3-adrenoreceptors (B3AR) are traditionally known as metabolic receptors in adipose tissue, but came into focus in the cardiovascular field after our demonstration of their expression in human cardiac myocytes and endothelial cells, where they mediate endothelium-dependent relaxation of coronary resistance vessels through production of both nitric oxide and endothelium-dependent hyperpolarization factor(s) Read More

Pharmacy profession also involves identifying, solving and preventing drug-related problems, as well as encouraging proper use of medications, thus improving clinical outcome of the treatment. Pharmacotherapy is usually thaught as lectures in pharmacy schools and many students have a difficulty in implementing the theoretical knowledge into practice. Therefore courses on “rational drug use or rational pharmacotherapy Read More

Recent studies suggest that overproduction of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS/RNS), lowered antioxidant defense of the body. Oxidative stress is damaging to DNA, lipids, proteins and many more vital macromolecules. Consequences of oxidative stress thought to contribute to the development of a wide range of diseases including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, neurodegen Read More

A number of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been shown to be toxicants, and induce carcinogenic and immunotoxic effects. Since PAHs are often present in low concentrations and it may be difficult to determine them in complex matrices, it is therefore essential to use powerful analytical tools to separate and identify the analyses in the samples. In this paper, initially, a short description of the principles, instrume Read More

Plants have become a unique source for the mankind either as food or medicine. No doubt this relationship initiated instinctively to satisfy the inner man, while later they noticed the healing potential of plants. This had been the beginning point of traditional medicines worldwide. Among the ca. 300.000 plant species have been identified on the earth so far, only a fraction (ca.120.000) has been reported to be used as food or re Read More

Fast-dissolving drug-delivery systems were first developed in the late 1970s as an alternative to tablets, capsules, and syrups for pediatric and geriatric patients who experience difficulties swallowing traditional oral solid dosage forms. In response to this need, a variety of orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) formats were commercialized, which disintegrate within 1 min when placed in the mouth without drinking wa Read More

As the main intent of delivering maximum concentration of drug available from the dosage form, an oral compression coated tablet (CCT) was intended to develop with a predetermined lag time of 6 hrs before immediate release of drug to target circadian rhythms of rheumatoid arthritis. Solid dispersions are promising approach to enhance drug release, which later will be developed as core tablet formulation and compre Read More

The successful delivery of nucleic acids into cells and their availability at the intracellular sites of action remain a major challenge in gene therapy, because cells are resistant to the uptake of genetic materials and contain a variety of mechanisms that degrade nucleic acids. To develop a nonviral carrier, we have recently designed a series of metal complexes with polybenzimidazole (pbzim) that serve as DNA-condensing a Read More

Earlier described dextran-based contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) comprising the gadolinium chelate diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (GdDTPA, 1) have shown significantly shorter in vivo contrast duration in rat than what would be expected from the initial average molecular weight (Mw) of the dextran fraction (71.4 kD). To investigate this further, four dextran fractions with given initial average mole Read More

In this study we developed and evaluated a prototype of an effective occlusive mucoadhesive system for prophylaxis and/or treatment of oral mucositis based on chitosan and gelatine models together with nystatin as a prophylactic agent incorporated into the formulation and investigated drug release in-vitro. Results of in vitro studies showed that chitosan and gelatine based gels posses properties that makes them excelle Read More