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Thin films, which are able to deliver antibiotics in a controlled way, are considered as a promising approach to combat bacterial infections. A novel drug delivery method based on reservoir/diffusion barrier is introduced in this paper. As reservoir serves a film of sputtered nylon 6,6 impregnated with ampicillin, which is then covered by a diffusion barrier from the same material. It is demonstrated that the impregnation process does not affect either the morphology or the surface chemical structure. The amount of immobilized antibiotics can be tailored by changing the reservoir film thickness, while the release kinetics can be controlled by the thickness of the diffusion barrier. Finally, it is shown that the ampicillin impregnated films have an antibacterial effect against Staphylococcus epidermidis.

Current treatment of chronic diseases includes, among others, application of cytokines, monoclonal antibodies, cellular therapies, and immunostimulants. As all the underlying mechanisms of a particular diseases are not always fully clarified, treatment can be inefficient and associated with various, sometimes serious, side effects. Small secondary metabolites produced by various microbes represent an attractive alternative as future anti-inflammatory drug leads. Compared to current drugs, they are cheaper, can often be administered orally, but still can keep a high target-specificity. Some compounds produced by actinomycetes or fungi have already been used as immunomodulators—tacrolimus, sirolimus, and cyclosporine. This work documents strong anti-inflammatory features of another secondary metabolite of streptomycetes—manumycin-type polyketides. We compared the effect of four related compounds: manumycin A, manumycin B, asukamycin, and colabomycin E on activation and survival of human monocyte/macrophage cell line THP-1. The anti-cancer effect of manucycine A has been demonstrated; the immunomodulatory capacities of manumycin A are obvious when using micromolar concentrations. The application of all four compounds in 0.25–5 μM concentrations leads to efficient, concentration-dependent inhibition of IL-1β and TNF expression in THP-1 upon LPS stimulation, while the three latter compounds show a significantly lower pro-apoptotic effect than manumycin A. We have demonstrated the anti-inflammatory capacity of selected manumycin-type polyketides.

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Photocatalytic degradation of pharmaceuticals (hydrocortisone, estradiol, and verapamil) and personal care product additives (parabens-methyl, ethyl, and propyl derivatives) was investigated in the homogeneous phase (with ferric ions as the catalyst) and on TiO. Ferric ions in concentrations corresponding to concentrations in natural water bodies were shown to be a significant accelerator of the degradation in homogeneous reaction mixtures. In heterogeneous photocatalytic reactions on TiO, lower reaction rates, but mineralisation to higher extents, were observed.