Pharmaceutics, Volume 10, Issue 4

The development of effective forms to incorporate poorly soluble drugs into delivery systems remains a problem. Thus, it is important to find alternatives such as finding excipients that increase drug solubility. Ionic liquids (ILs), particularly cho...

The development of specific and age-appropriate pediatric formulations is essential to assure that all children and their care-givers can easily access to safe and effective dosage forms. The need for developing specific pediatric medicinal products...

Cyclosporine (CsA) has a selective property of suppressing various T-lymphocyte functions. This is of utmost importance in preventing allograft rejection by several organ transplantations, as well as in the treatment of systemic and local autoimmune...

Although glucocorticoids are highly effective in treating various types of inflammation such as skin disease, rheumatic disease, and allergic disease, their application have been seriously limited for their high incidence of side effects, particularl...

Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) or vorinostat (VOR) is a potent inhibitor of class I histone deacetylases (HDACs) that is approved for the treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. However, it has the intrinsic limitations of low water solubilit...

Background: Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a promising technique for cancer treatment; however, low tissue permeability for irradiating light and insufficient photosensitizer (PS) accumulation in tumors limit its clinical potential. Nanoparticles are...

Pharmaceutical formulations suitable for dysphagic patients are not always commercially available, motivating caregivers to crush tablets or open capsules to facilitate swallowing. Since this action may modify the characteristics of the medicine, it...

Flupirtine, a nonopioid analgesic drug, is effective in treating neonatal seizures. However, its brain delivery and pharmacokinetics are unknown in neonatal mammals. The purpose of this study was to determine the pharmacokinetics of flupirtine and th...

Many graphene-based materials (GBNs) applied to therapy and diagnostics (theranostics) in cancer have been developed. Most of them are hybrid combinations of graphene with other components (e.g., drugs or other bioactives, polymers, and nanoparticles...

The current drug development practice lacks reliable and sensitive techniques to evaluate the immunotoxicity of drug candidates, i.e., their effect on the human immune system. This, in part, has resulted in a high attrition rate for novel drugs candi...

Mesoporous silica materials (MSM) have a great surface area and a high pore volume, meaning that they consequently have a large loading capacity, and have been demonstrated to be unique candidates for the treatment of different pathologies, including...

Preclinical and clinical studies suggest that many food molecules could interact with drug transporters and metabolizing enzymes through different mechanisms, which are predictive of what would be observed clinically. Given the recent incorporation o...

The mimesis of biological systems has been demonstrated to be an adequate approach to obtain tissue engineering scaffolds able to promote cell attachment, proliferation, and differentiation abilities similar to those of autologous tissues. Bioceramic...

Nail delivery has interest for local treatment of nail diseases. Nevertheless, the low permeability of drugs in the nail plaque precludes the efficacy of local treatments. The use of penetration enhancers can increase drug permeability and improve th...

The natural sesquiterpene β-caryophyllene (CRY) has been highlighted to possess interesting pharmacological potentials, particularly due to its chemopreventive and analgesic properties. However, the poor solubility of this sesquiterpene in aqueo...

The objective of the study was to develop baicalin loaded liquid self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems (BSNEDDS) and to characterize them by physicochemical methods in order to optimize the composition and quality attributes. Atomic force micros...

Onychomycosis affects about 15% of the population. This disease causes physical and psychosocial discomfort to infected patients. Topical treatment (creams, solutions, gels, colloidal carriers, and nail lacquers) is usually the most commonly required...

Background: The antidepressant and anxiolytic effects of selenium (Se) have been proven in many studies. This work was aimed at confirming these activities of its inorganic form—sodium selenite—and examining the possible synergy of action...

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) show promising application in biomedicine and pharmaceutics owing to their extraordinarily high surface area, tunable pore size, and adjustable internal surface properties. However, MOFs are prepared from non-renewable...

Molecular self-assembling is ubiquitous in nature providing structural and functional machinery for the cells. In recent decades, material science has been inspired by the nature’s assembly principles to create artificially higher-order structu...

Pathologies of the brain, of which brain cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and multiple sclerosis, are some of the most prevalent, and that presently are poorly treated due to the difficulties associated with drug...

The microfluidic technique has emerged as a promising tool to accelerate the clinical translation of nanoparticles, and its application affects several aspects, such as the production of nanoparticles and the in vitro characterization in the microenv...

The aims of this study were to assess, in vitro, the possibility of administering propranolol transdermally and to evaluate the usefulness of the dermatopharmacokinetic (DPK) method in assessing the transport of drugs through stratum corneum, using p...

This study aimed at investigating the effect of electrical current profile upon the iontophoretic transport of (i) ascorbic acid (AA) and (ii) ellagic acid (EA), into porcine skin in vitro, and the impact of the physicochemical properties of both act...

With the increasing research and development (R&D) difficulty of new molecular entities (NMEs), novel drug delivery systems (DDSs) are attracting widespread attention. This review investigated the current distribution of Food and Drug Administrat...

Pain is inadequately relieved by escalating doses of a strong opioid analgesic such as morphine in up to 25% of patients with cancer-related severe pain complicated by a neuropathic (nerve damage) component. Hence, there is an unmet medical need for...

Pore-forming agents have a significant influence on the pore structure of hydrogels. In this study, a porogenic technique was employed to investigate the preparation of macroporous hydrogels which were synthesized by radical copolymerization of carbo...

(1) Background: Monoclonal antibodies are used in the treatment of multiple conditions including cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases. One of the initial steps in the selection of an antibody candidate for further pre-clinical develo...

Chloroquine diphosphate (CQ) is a hydrophilic drug with low entrapment efficiency in hydrophobic nanoparticles (NP). Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) is an enveloped double-stranded DNA virus worldwide known as a common human pathogen. This study...

In this study, the encapsulation of curcumin (Cur) in “drug-in-cyclodextrin-in-liposomes (DCL)” by following the double-loading technique (DL) was proposed, giving rise to DCL–DL. The aim was to analyze the effect of cyclodextrin (C...

A family of bis(2-pyridyl)amino-modified poly(amidoamine) dendrimer Cu complexes was prepared, and their chemical nuclease activities and binding affinity (K_b) levels for DNA plasmid were investigated. The K_b values of the G2 to G6 apodendrimers for...

Oral candidiasis (OC) is an infectious disease caused by microorganisms of the genus Candida, leading to lesions in the buccal cavity. Its treatment consists of the administration of topical or systemic antifungal agents, which may compromise the pat...

Manufacturing parameters may have a strong impact on the dissolution and disintegration of solid dosage forms. In line with process analytical technology (PAT) and quality by design approaches, computer-based technologies can be used to design, contr...

A simple and sensitive liquid chromatography–quadrupole-time-of-flight–mass spectrometric (LC-QTOF-MS) assay has been developed for the evaluation of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics (PK) properties of vipadenant in rat, a selective A...

Dexamethasone acetate (DXMa) has proven its efficiency to treat corneal inflammation, without a great propensity to increase intraocular pressure. Unfortunately, its poor aqueous solubility, associated with a rapid precorneal elimination, results in...

Advances in nanotechnology for drug delivery are fostering significant progress in medicine and diagnostics. The multidisciplinary nature of the nanotechnology field encouraged the development of innovative strategies and materials to treat a wide ra...

l-cysteine (Cys)- and l-serine (Ser)-modified, third-generation polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimer with multiple reduced thiols (Ser-PAMAM-Cys) was synthesized as a kidney-targeting reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenger to help prevent renal ischemia...

Netilmicin (NTM) is one of the first-line drugs for lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) therapy, but its nephrotoxicity and ototoxicity caused by intravenous injection restrict its clinical application. Dry powder inhalation (DPI) is a popular...

The objective of this study was to characterize pharmacokinetics (PKs) of kaurenoic acid (KAU) after administration of the clinical usual dose of Araliae Continentalis Radix extract powder to Korean subjects for the first time and evaluate the mechan...

The present work evaluates for the first time the use of urea-crosslinked hyaluronic acid (HA-CL), a novel derivative of native hyaluronic acid (HA), to produce microspheres (MS) by emulsification-solvent evaporation, for dermal delivery of sodium as...

Oxidative stress and inflammation are important mechanisms of cerebral ischemia reperfusion (IR) injury. Luteolin (Lu), one of the major active components in the classical Tibetan prescription, which has been used in the treatment of cardiovascular d...

The aim of this work was to prepare and optimize a solid self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system pre-concentrate (SSP) containing water-insoluble flurbiprofen (FL) using a novel pseudo-ternary phase diagram. The pseudo-ternary phase diagram, compos...

The HepaRG cell line is a highly differentiated human hepatoma cell line, displaying the expression of various drug transporters. However, functional expression of nucleoside transporters remains poorly characterized in HepaRG cells, although these t...

Diatom microalgae are the most outstanding natural source of porous silica. The diatom cell is enclosed in a three-dimensional (3-D) ordered nanopatterned silica cell wall, called frustule. The unique properties of the diatom frustule, including high...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the main contributors to disability and suicide mortality globally. Paroxetine hydrochloride (PHH) is the most potent antidepressant used for MDD treatment. Due to its reduced side effects PAXIL^® CR is a...

A major impediment to the long-term in vivo vascular imaging is a lack of suitable probes and contrast agents. Our developed mercaptosuccinic acid (MSA) capped cadmium telluride/cadmium sulfide (CdTe/CdS) ultrasmall quantum dots (QDs) have high fluor...

An amphiphilic derivative of chitosan containing quaternary ammonium and myristoyl groups, herein named as ammonium myristoyl chitosan (DMCat), was synthesized by reacting glycidyltrimethylammonium chloride (GTMAC) and myristoyl chitosan (DMCh). The...

The nootropic drug aniracetam is greatly limited in its application by low aqueous solubility and a poor oral bioavailability. The primary aim of this study was to design a parenteral formulation of aniracetam that can be administered intravenously....

The herbal medicine combination of notoginseng-safflower has been commonly used clinically for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. A reliable liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) method was developed fo...

Intracellular drug delivery by mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) carrying hydrophilic and hydrophobic fluorophores as model drug cargo is demonstrated on 2D cellular and 3D tumor organoid level. Two different MSN designs, chosen on the basis of...