Pressure ulcer or bedsore is a form of skin infection that commonly occurs with patients admitted to the hospital for an extended period of time, which might lead to severe complications in the ...absence of medical attention, resulting in infection either by drug-sensitive or drug-resistant bacteria. Halicin, a newly discovered drug effective against several bacterial strains, including multidrug-resistant bacteria, was investigated to reduce bacterial infection burden. This study aims to formulate halicin into electrospun fibers to be applied in bedsores as antibacterial dressing to assess its efficacy against gram-positive (
) and gram-negative bacteria (
and
) by studying the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and bacterial zone of inhibition assays. The diameters of inhibition growth zones were measured, and the results have shown that the drug-loaded fibers were able to inhibit the growth of bacteria compared to the halicin discs. The release profile of the drug-loaded fibers exhibited a complete release of the drug after 2 h. The results demonstrated that the drug-loaded fibers could successfully release the drug while retaining their biological activity and they may be used as a potential antimicrobial dressing for patients with pressure ulcers caused by multidrug resistant bacteria.
Sustainable and precise fortification practices are necessary to ensure food security for the increasing human population. Precision agriculture aims to minimize the use of fertilizers and pesticides ...by developing smart materials for real-life agricultural practices. Here, we show that biomimetic mineralization can be efficiently employed to encapsulate and controllably release plant biostimulants (MiZax-3) to improve the quality and yield of capsicum (Capsicum annum) crops in field experiments. ZIF-8 encapsulation of MiZax-3 (MiZIFs) could significantly enhance its stability up to around 679 times (6p value = 0.0072) at field conditions. Our results demonstrate that the coordinating Zn ions and the MiZax-3 play a vital role in improving Zn content in the produced fruits by 2-fold, which is the first report of this nature on Zn content in fruits. We envision this platform as a starting point to investigate other biocompatible coordination-based platforms for micronutrient delivery in precision agriculture.
Biocompatible and pH-sensitive biodegradable hydroxyapatite with mesoporous nanoplates (HAp PNPs) have been developed for nanoscaled drug delivery applications. Herein, we report a novel ...carboxymethylcellulose calcium salt-templated hydrothermal technique for the synthesis of HAp PNPs. The field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) analysis reveals that the as-prepared HAp PNPs consist of spindle-like structure with a length of 20 nm and an average diameter of 10 nm, giving rise to plate like nanostructures due to their uniform assembly. The obtained HAp PNPs shows higher specific surface area of 180 m2 g−1 with a pore size distribution in the range from 20 to 60 nm. Moreover, HAp PNPs is characterized and investigated as a drug nanocarrier using Methotrexate and Andrographolide as a model drug. The HAp PNPs show a relatively high Methotrexate loading capacity and sustained release at a pH of 4.4. In addition, HAp PNPs used for the pH-triggered release of electrostatically bound Andrographolide anticancer drug into A431 cell lines toward cancer therapy applications. The significance of this study confirms that HAp with porous structure enhances the drug loading capacity and is capable of pH-sensitive Andrographolide release with an acidic pH of 4.4 is higher comparing at the pH of 7.0 and 9.0. On the top of everything, the cytotoxicity studies confirms that the prepared samples posses superior biocompatibility. These results promise the distinctive properties of HAp PNPs can be used as tumor-targetingpH-sensitive drug nanocarrier for biomedical applications.
PDF
