Nanoscience & Nanotechnology-Asia - Volume 12, Issue 5, 2022

Cancer is a life-threatening disease that is associated with persistent tissue injury and uncontrolled cell growth. The treatments available to treat cancer include chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy. These treatments are utilized in combination, while the most preferred treatment is chemotherapy. Because of the non-specificity of anticancer drugs, they kill healthy cells along with cancer cells, which lead to severe side effects. To minimize such limitations associated with conventional chemotherapy, nanostructured lipids carriers (NLCs) can be developed. These nanocarriers consist of a mixture of solid and liquid lipids and surfactants. Lipids utilized in the formulation of NLCs are biocompatible and biodegradable. NLCs ensure high drug payload, less drug expulsion, and more stability on storage. NLCs enhance the aqueous solubility of lipophilic anticancer drugs. Their surface modification can help to overcome drug resistance in cancer therapy. Controlled and targeted drug delivery of anticancer drugs can be possible by formulating them as NLCs. NLCs can play an important role in targeting anticancer drugs by different mechanisms. This review highlights types, formulation methods, characterization of nanostructured lipid carriers, and strategies to achieve targeted release of anticancer drugs loaded in NLCs.

Background: Self-cleaning is a potential technique in architecture environmental decontamination. Objective: The fabrication and self-cleaning property enhancement of the TiO2 hybridizing reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and codoping Si and Mo are reported. Methods: The films were deposited by a sol-gel dip-coating process. The self-cleaning properties were characterized by photocatalytic activity, photoinduced super hydrophilicity, and conductivity. Results: Incorporating RGO provided an efficient interface-induced effect, and doping Si and Mo enhanced this effect. Conclusion: Thus, the hybrid films showed remarkably enhanced self-cleaning performances. The films also show high transparency when RGO was added in the doping Si and an appropriate amount of Mo.

Background: Heavy metal contamination of water resources has been identified as one of the most serious environmental issues. Chemical modification of hydrophobic polymer matrices is another approach for changing their surface properties for water treatment. The addition of nanoparticles to polymers alters surface characteristics such as adsorption capacity, adhesion, catalytic ability, and wettability to heavy metals in wastewater. Objective: Evaluation of the nanomodified polyvinyl chloride (PVC) polymer as a heavy metal adsorbent from wastewater. Methods: In the field of emission discharges from industries and domestic wastes that contain unknown inorganic pollutants by PVC using grafting chitosan/TiO2 nanocomposites. The characterization of different thin films was performed using TEM, XRD, and FTIR. The metal concentrations were measured by using inductively coupled plasma (ICP-OES). Results: Nanomodification of PVC was evaluated by infrared spectroscopy. The presence of chlorine in the PVC structure before and after the nanomodification is confirmed by the presence of a peak at 690 cm^-1 attributed to the axial deformation of the C-Cl bond. The nanomodified PVC showed an ion exchange capacity of 1.27 mmol^-1, and efficiently removed the heavy metals from aqueous solutions. The heavy metal removal effectiveness (R) was improved by increasing the concentration of TiO2 nanoparticles. The amount adsorbed per gram of adsorbent (Qe) was computed and revealed that the amount of adsorption increased for nanomodified PVC thin film as compared to 100% PVC thin film. The nanomodified PVC thin film showed high stability for 4 cycles of use. This improvement has been attributed to the nanomodified PVC polymer's large surface area (ranging from 0.3 to 282 m²/g). Conclusion: The modification of PVC with nanoparticles increases the cost of PVC thin film by 15%. However, it offers efficiency 3 times than the original PVC.

Background: In recent years, electronic noses have emerged as a component of nanotechnology- based technologies to meet various demands in the health sciences. Objective: To have a detailed idea regarding the various uses of electronic noses in the early detection of diseases, food spoilage, etc., we need to explore multiple studies. Methods: Electronic noses are the foundation for the development of biosensors, which are primarily used to identify the many volatile organic chemicals that cause various diseases that are released from the lungs. The electronic nose can distinguish between the breath patterns of healthy people and people with diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurological problems, etc. Results: In the field of food industry, bacterial contamination and other kinds of food spoilage can be detected at an early stage by identifying the pattern of gases evolved from these food items using the electronic nose. Conclusion: Thus, there are versatile applications of electronic noses in the early diagnosis of lifethreatening diseases, chemical industry, food industries, etc., which will be discussed in this review.

Background: The research of nanocomposites based on ferroelectrics has been recently stimulated by the discovery of a number of their unique properties. These properties are of particular interest from both fundamental and applied points of view. Objective: This paper presents the results of comparative studies of the linear and nonlinear dielectric properties of potassium nitrate embedded from the solution and from the melt into aluminum oxide films with a pore diameter of 100 nm. Methods: An E7-25 impedance meter with a frequency range of 25 Hz – 1 MHz was used to investigate the linear dielectric properties. The setup for researching nonlinear dielectric properties has a sinusoidal oscillator with an operating frequency of 2 kHz. Results: The temperature dependences of the permittivity ε' and the third harmonic coefficient γ3ω were measured in the heating and cooling mode. It was found that for a nanocomposite obtained from the solution, the ferroelectric phase of KNO3 was formed only upon cooling in the temperature range 397 – 360 K. At the same time, when KNO3 was embedded into the Al2O3 film from the melt, the polar phase occurred both upon heating and cooling in the temperature range of 300 – 432 K and 300 – 421 K, respectively. Conclusion: Thus, the conducted studies of the dielectric properties showed a significant difference in the phase transition temperatures for the KNO3/Al2O3 nanocomposites obtained from the solution and from the melt compared to the bulk sample. The phase transition shifts during heating had a different sign for the nanocomposites obtained from the solution and from the melt. The temperature range of the existence of the ferroelectric phase significantly depends on the method of embedding KNO3 into aluminum oxide films. For the nanocomposite obtained from a solution, the polar phase is formed only upon cooling, whereas when potassium nitrate is embedded from the melt, the polar phase is formed both upon heating and cooling.

Introduction: The present work aims to increase the saturation solubility and the bioavailability of Olmesartan medoxomil (OM) via an acid-base neutralization-based nanosuspension technique. Methods: The initial screening studies revealed that changes in the concentration of HPMC E15 (100-200 mg), mechanical stirring speed (SS) (900-1200 rpm) and stirring time (ST) (60-120 min) affected the responses. Effects produced by the factors (HPMC E15, SS, and ST) on responses (particle size, PDI, and cumulative % drug release (%CDR)) were investigated using a 2III^3-1 fractional factorial design with replicates and four midpoints. For the development of Olmesartan medoxomil nanosuspension, an acid-base neutralization technique was employed. Results: Pareto chart, perturbation plots and ANOVA were used to identify significant factors. The pvalue <0.05 indicated the factors to be considered significant. The Particle size and PDI of all formulations ranged from 286.7 nm - 718.1 nm and 0.146 – 0.415, respectively. Drug release from all formulations ranged from74.0-103.7%. Pure drug solubility and optimized formula solubility were reported to be 108.6 g/ml and 1650.72 g/ml, respectively. Contour and 3D surface plots led to the identification of design space in which HPMC E15, SS and ST can be oriented at 148.8-151 mg, 959-1000 rpm and 106-120 min, respectively, to get particle size <500 nm, PDI <0.5 and % CDR >95%.SEM results indicated that the particles were nearly spherical. Conclusion: In vivo pharmacokinetic studies conducted in Wistar rats exhibited ∼4.7 folds enhancement in optimized OM nanosuspension oral bioavailability compared to pure drug. It can be concluded that the selected method and application of the design of the experimentation technique enhanced the saturation solubility and bioavailability of OM.