Thanks to developments in the field of nanotechnology over the past decades, more and more biosafe nanoscale materials have become available for use as pharmaceutical adjuvants in medical research. Nanomaterials possess unique properties which could be employed to develop drug carriers with longer circulation time, higher loading capacity, better stability in physiological conditions, controlled drug release, and targeted drug delivery. In this review article, we will review recent progress in the application of representative organic, inorganic and hybrid biosafe nanoscale materials in pharmaceutical research, especially focusing on nanomaterial-based novel drug delivery systems. In addition, we briefly discuss the advantages and notable functions that make these nanomaterials suitable for the design of new medicines; the biosafety of each material discussed in this article is also highlighted to provide a comprehensive understanding of their adjuvant attributes.
Charge-reversal strategy is usually employed in gene delivery to facilitate the endosomal escape of gene carriers and release of the payload into cytoplasm. However, most of charge-reversal materials are far from perfect biocompatible materials due to the cytotoxicity of themselves or their hydrolyzed products. In this study, an excellent charge-reversal material named modified bovine serum albumin (mBSA) was prepared. The charge reverse of biocompatible mBSA is a physical process and can instantly occur, which was confirmed by both zeta potential, size detection and morphological study. The introduction of mBSA can not only reduce the zeta potential of binary complexes (pDNA/PEI) but also increase the nuclease resistance ability of the pDNA/PEI binary complexes. In addition, cell viabilities tested by MTT assay and gene transfection assay demonstrated that mBSA can reduce the cytotoxicity of the pDNA/PEI binary complexes and improve their gene transfection efficiency (serum free and 10% FBS medium) both in 293T and HepG2 cells at the same time. The experimental results of cell internalization and intracellular distribution of pDNA/PEI/mBSA ternary complexes confirmed that the improvement of transfection efficiency was originated from the enhancement of endosomal escape of polyplexes. Therefore, mBSA has been proven to be a perfect charge-reversal platform to simultaneously improve transfection efficiency and biocompatibility of polyplexes.
Simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain was demonstrated using a polarization-maintaining few-mode Bragg grating (PM-FMF-FBG) based on the wavelength and phase modulation of the even LP11 mode. The wavelength shift sensitivity and the interrogated phase sensitivity of the temperature and strain were measured to be 10 pm·°C−1 and 0.73 pm·με−1 and −3.2 × 10−2 rad·°C−1 and 4 × 10−4 rad·με−1, respectively, with a discrimination efficiency of 98%. The polarization interference led to selective polarization excitation of the reflection spectra, and the calculated phase sensitivity agreed with the experimental results.
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