Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology - Volume 13, Issue 7, 2012

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The recent developement of platelet concentrate for surgical use is an evolution of the fibrin glue technologies used since many years. The initial concept of these autologous preparations was to concentrate platelets and their growth factors in a plasma solution, and to activate it into a fibrin gel on a surgical site, in order to improve local healing. These platelet suspensions were often called Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) like the Read More

In the field of platelet concentrates for surgical use, most products are termed Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP). Unfortunately, this term is very general and incomplete, leading to many confusions in the scientific database. In this article, a panel of experts discusses this issue and proposes an accurate and simple terminology system for platelet concentrates for surgical use. Four main categories of products can be easily defin Read More

More or less after a decade of experimental and pioneering manual procedures to prepare platelet-rich plasma (PRP) for topical use, several portable and bedside devices were made available to prepare the PRP at the point-of-care. This technical opportunity increased the number of patients who got access to the treatment with autologous PRP and PRP-gel. Since topical treatment of tissue with PRP and PRP-gel was r Read More

Platelet concentrates for surgical use are tools of regenerative medicine designed for the local release of platelet growth factors into a surgical or wounded site, in order to stimulate tissue healing or regeneration. Leukocyte content and fibrin architecture are 2 key characteristics of all platelet concentrates and allow to classify these technologies in 4 families, but very little is known about the impact of these 2 parameters on th Read More

Platelet concentrates for topical use are innovative tools of regenerative medicine and their effects in various therapeutical situations are hotly debated. Unfortunately, this field of research mainly focused on the platelet growth factors, and the fibrin architecture and the leukocyte content of these products are too often neglected. In the four families of platelet concentrates, 2 families contain significant concentrations of leuk Read More

Tissue repair at wound sites begins with clot formation, and subsequently platelet degranulation with the release of platelet growth factors, which are necessary and well-regulated processes to achieve wound healing. Plateletderived growth factors are biologically active substances that enhance tissue repair mechanisms, such as chemotaxis, cell proliferation, angiogenesis, extracellular matrix deposition, and remodeling Read More

Leukocyte- and platelet-rich plasma (L-PRP) contains high concentrations of platelet, leukocytes and other bioactivities, which play an prominent role in both bone and soft tissue healing processes. Large numbers of studies provide evidence for application of L-PRP in experiments and clinical practice. It has been identified to improve cellular chemotaxis, proliferation and differentiation, angiogenesis, and production of extracel Read More

Platelet rich plasma (PRP) is a powerful new biologic tool in sports medicine. PRP is a fraction of autologous whole blood containing and increased number of platelets and a wide variety of cytokines such as platelet derived growth factor (PDGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and transforming growth factor beta-1 (TGF-B1), fibroblast growth factor (FGF), Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) among many others. Worl Read More

Surgical repair of the rotator cuff repair is one of the most common procedures in orthopedic surgery. Despite it being the focus of much research, the physiological tendon-bone insertion is not recreated following repair and there is an anatomic non-healing rate of up to 94%. During the healing phase, several growth factors are upregulated that induce cellular proliferation and matrix deposition. Subsequently, this provisional ma Read More

Platelet concentrates for surgical use are innovative tools of regenerative medicine, and were widely tested in oral and maxillofacial surgery. Unfortunately, the literature on the topic is contradictory and the published data are difficult to sort and interpret. In periodontology and dentoalveolar surgery, the literature is particularly dense about the use of the various forms of Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) - Pure Platelet Read More

Platelet concentrates for surgical use are innovative tools of regenerative medicine, and were widely tested in oral and maxillofacial surgery. Unfortunately, the literature on the topic is contradictory and the published data are difficult to sort and interpret. In bone graft, implant and reconstructive surgery, the literature is particularly dense about the use of the various forms of Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) - Pure Platele Read More

Blood derived products have demonstrated their capacity to enhance healing and stimulate the regeneration of different tissues and this enhancing effect is attributed to the growth factors and bioactive proteins that are synthesized and present in blood. Eye platelet rich plasma (E-PRP) provides higher concentration of essential growth factors and cell adhesion molecules by concentrating platelets in a small volume of plasma as Read More

The use of platelet concentrates for topical use is of particular interest for the promotion of skin wound healing. Fibrin-based surgical adjuvants are indeed widely used in plastic surgery since many years in order to improve scar healing and wound closure. However, the addition of platelets and their associated growth factors opened a new range of possibilities, particularly for the treatment of chronic skin ulcers and other applic Read More

For non-invasive or systemic delivery of therapeutic agents or drug carriers, it is very important that these cargos can successfully cross the microvessel wall, arrive the target cells through interstitial transport, and/or penetrate the cell membrane, diffuse in the cytoplasm, and cross the nuclear envelope. Meanwhile they should be non-toxic to the healthy tissues and can survive the plasma clearance, degradation and co Read More

RNA interference (RNAi) is a fundamental mechanism of gene regulation and has been harnessed to produce a new class of drugs for treatment of various diseases. A key issue in these applications is how to effectively deliver RNAi therapeutics into target cells. This review is focused on advances in RNA delivery in vivo. To achieve it, novel strategies have been developed to enhance stability of RNA in cells and tissues, ov Read More

The birth of microneedles, an array of needles sufficiently long to penetrate epidermis but small enough to do not cause skin injury and pain feeling, has offered a highly promising solution for non-invasive delivery of protein and peptide drugs, a long-cherished desire over eighty years. However, the attempts to develop clinically feasible microneedle transdermal delivery methods encountered series of difficulties, for whi Read More

Hyaluronan (HA) is a highly biocompatible biopolymer that is widely used for a variety of therapeutic purposes including surgical preparations, adhesion prevention, viscosupplementation and drug and cytokine delivery. Delivery can be accomplished effectively when HA-based carriers are synthesized in the form of hydrogels, though doing so normally requires chemical modification of the native HA structure. Solute deliver Read More

Solid tumors constitute the majority of diagnosed cancers. For effective killing, therapeutic agents should ideally be delivered uniformly and at lethal doses to all cancer cells comprising the tumors, while keeping normal organ toxicities to a minimum. This requirement sets two of the major challenges in drug delivery to solid cancers: uniformity in delivery, and delivery of at least a minimum amount of therapeutics per cance Read More

Due to the molecular complexity of cancer, combination therapy is becoming increasingly important for better long-term prognosis with fewer side effects. To further increase the therapeutic effects, advanced drug delivery systems (DDSs), capable of simultaneously delivering multiple drugs to the site of action with specific time-programmed release profiles, are important requirements. Nanocarriers for the simultaneous co-del Read More