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•An overview of Tween, a non-ionic most commonly used surfactant.•Role of their microemulsion towards enhancing solubilisation of poorly soluble drugs.•Underlying the preclinical ...factors effecting efficacy of Tween microemulsions.•Implication of vectors in terms of absorption, biological fate, toxicity.•Cellular response of these formulations against pathogens like bacteria, fungi etc.
The present review deals with the progress of Polysorbates (Tween) based microemulsions in drug delivery. PEGylated Sorbitan Fatty Acid Esters (Tweens/Polysorbates) are one of the most used non-ionic surfactants. Particularly, Polysorbates based microemulsion has been widely used for enhancing solubilization of poorly soluble drugs. This article deals with underlying the preclinical factors which affect the solubilization efficacy of Tween formulations, implication of pharmaceutically accepted vectors in terms of absorption, bioavailability, biological fate and potential toxicity. Antimicrobial activity of Tween microemulsion formulations has also been addressed emphasising the role of Tween. The review contains comprehensive knowledge/literature related to physicochemical parameters and biological fate of different Polysorbates and takes into account all the parameters and observations that make Tween a very convenient and safe choice for the use as pharmaceutical excipient for microemulsion formulations.
Adoptive cell therapy has emerged as a powerful treatment for advanced cancers resistant to conventional agents. Most notable are the remarkable responses seen in patients receiving autologous ...CD19-redirected chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells for the treatment of B lymphoid malignancies; however, the generation of autologous products for each patient is logistically cumbersome and has restricted widespread clinical use. A banked allogeneic product has the potential to overcome these limitations, yet allogeneic T-cells (even if human leukocyte antigen-matched) carry a major risk of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Natural killer (NK) cells are bone marrow-derived innate lymphocytes that can eliminate tumors directly, with their activity governed by the integration of signals from activating and inhibitory receptors and from cytokines including IL-15, IL-12, and IL-18. NK cells do not cause GVHD or other alloimmune or autoimmune toxicities and thus, can provide a potential source of allogeneic "off-the-shelf" cellular therapy, mediating major anti-tumor effects without inducing potentially lethal alloreactivity such as GVHD. Given the multiple unique advantages of NK cells, researchers are now exploring the use of CAR-engineered NK cells for the treatment of various hematological and non-hematological malignancies. Herein, we review preclinical data on the development of CAR-NK cells, advantages, disadvantages, and current obstacles to their clinical use.
Advances in science and nanotechnology have facilitated the development of new methods for the preparation of pure selenium as selenium nanomaterials. They offer remarkable potential for ...technological applications in the fields of medicine, diagnostics, therapeutics, toxicology, electronics, catalysis and so on. Moreover, selenium nanomaterials also find applications in photographic exposure metres, rectifiers, signal emitting devices and transmitting devices, because of their unique structural, optical and electronic properties. This study describes a detailed advanced report on the synthesis, assembly, characterization and various applications of selenium nanomaterials. In addition, relevant synthesis methods, properties, challenges and opportunities associated with selenium nanomaterials are also presented.
Despite multiple associations between the microbiota and immune diseases, their role in autoimmunity is poorly understood. We found that translocation of a gut pathobiont,
, to the liver and other ...systemic tissues triggers autoimmune responses in a genetic background predisposing to autoimmunity. Antibiotic treatment prevented mortality in this model, suppressed growth of
in tissues, and eliminated pathogenic autoantibodies and T cells. Hepatocyte-
cocultures induced autoimmune-promoting factors. Pathobiont translocation in monocolonized and autoimmune-prone mice induced autoantibodies and caused mortality, which could be prevented by an intramuscular vaccine targeting the pathobiont.
-specific DNA was recovered from liver biopsies of autoimmune patients, and cocultures with human hepatocytes replicated the murine findings; hence, similar processes apparently occur in susceptible humans. These discoveries show that a gut pathobiont can translocate and promote autoimmunity in genetically predisposed hosts.
Summary An estimated 95 million people worldwide are affected by cataract. Cataract still remains the leading cause of blindness in middle-income and low-income countries. With the advancement of ...surgical technology and techniques, cataract surgery has evolved to small-incisional surgery with rapid visual recovery, good visual outcomes, and minimal complications in most patients. With the development of advanced technology in intraocular lenses, the combined treatment of cataract and astigmatism or presbyopia, or both, is possible. Paediatric cataracts have a different pathogenesis, surgical concerns, and postoperative clinical course from those of age-related cataracts, and the visual outcome is multifactorial and dependent on postoperative visual rehabilitation. New developments in cataract surgery will continue to improve the visual, anatomical, and patient-reported outcomes. Future work should focus on promoting the accessibility and quality of cataract surgery in developing countries.
•Facile growth, characterization and photocatalytic application of TiO2 nanoparticles.•82% degradation of Eriochrome Black T (EBT) dye in 90 min using TiO2 nanoparticle.•Superior degradation compared ...to commercially available catalysts(PC-50,PC-500, ZnO).
Well-crystalline anatase TiO2 nanoparticles were prepared by facile solution process and characterized in terms of their morphological, structural, optical and photocatalytic properties. The detailed studies confirmed that the as-synthesized nanoparticles are well-crystalline, grown in high density and exhibiting good optical properties. For photocatalytic degradation, Eriochrome Black T (EBT) dye was used as a model compound and about 82% of photo-degradation of EBT dye was achieved in 90min under UV light irradiation. The kinetic studies revealed that EBT photo-degradation follows pseudo-first order reaction kinetics and rate constant was found to be 0.017min−1. In addition to this, by comparing the photocatalytic performance with other commercially available catalysts (PC-50, PC-500, commercial ZnO), it was observed that the as-synthesized TiO2 nanoparticles exhibited superior photocatalytic performance.
Sepsis is a condition caused by infection followed by unregulated inflammatory response which may lead to the organ dysfunction. During such condition, over‐production of oxidants is one of the ...factors which contribute cellular toxicity and ultimately organ failure and mortality. Antioxidants having free radicals scavenging activity exert protective role in various diseases. This study has been designed to evaluate the levels of oxidative and antioxidative activity in sepsis patients and their correlation with the severity of the sepsis. A total of 100 sepsis patients and 50 healthy controls subjects were enrolled in this study from the period October 2016 to June 2017. The investigation included measurements of oxidative enzyme, myeloperoxidase (MPO), antioxidant enzymes including superoxide dismutase activity (SOD) and catalase activity (CAT) and cytokines (TNF‐α, IL‐8 and IFN‐γ). Furthermore, the level of these activities was correlated with severity of sepsis. Augmented levels of oxidants were found in sepsis as demonstrated by DMPO nitrone adduct formation and plasma MPO level activity (1.37 ± 0.51 in sepsis vs 0.405 ± 0.16 in control subjects). Cytokines were also found to be increased in sepsis patients. However, plasma SOD and CAT activities were significantly attenuated (P < .001) in the sepsis patients compared with controls subjects. Moreover, inverse relation between antioxidant enzymes (SOD and CAT) and organ failure assessment (SOFA), physiological score (APACHE II), organ toxicity specific markers have been observed as demonstrated by Pearson's correlation coefficient. This study suggests that imbalance between oxidant and antioxidant plays key role in the severity of sepsis.
•Computationally efficient perspective transformation based depth estimator is presented.•An in-depth visual servo control formulation for robotic citrus harvesting is presented.•Lyapunov-based ...stability analysis guarantees global exponential regulation of the robot end-effector.•Exponential stability enables desired transient performance, i.e., harvest cycle time can be determined.•The developed controller can easily be extended to non-citrus fruits with general ellipsoid geometry.
The main contribution of this paper is in the development of vision-based estimation and control system for robotic fruit harvesting and rigorous stability analysis to guarantee performance of the closed-loop system. The presented cooperative visual servo controller benefits from the large field-of-view of a fixed camera and the accuracy of a camera-in-hand (CiH). Computationally inexpensive perspective transformation-based range estimation method obtains 3D fruit position using a monocular camera to enable real-time manipulator control. A rotation controller is developed to orient the robot such that the target fruit selected by the fixed camera can be viewed by the CiH attached to the end-effector. Subsequently, the end-effector can be servoed to the target fruit location using the presented pursuit guidance based hybrid translation controller. Lyapunov-based stability analysis guarantees global exponential regulation of the end-effector. Numerical simulations verify the feasibility of the developed controller while the performance is evaluated on a seven degrees-of-freedom kinematically redundant manipulator using an artificial citrus tree. The position of the fruit was randomly selected, and the closed-loop visual servo control experiment was performed 21 times to analyze the repeatability and accuracy of the developed controller. With 95% confidence level the expected position of the robot end-effector is observed to lie within the confidence ellipsoid. The accuracy of the controller was observed to be about 15mm, thus making the system suitable for harvesting medium and large varieties of citrus fruit but may limit operation for small varieties such as page and blood oranges.
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