Nanotechnology involves the engineering of functional systems at nanoscale, thus being attractive for disciplines ranging from materials science to biomedicine. One of the most active research areas of the nanotechnology is nanomedicine, which applies nanotechnology to highly specific medical interventions for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases, including cancer disease. Over the past two decades, the rapid developments in nanotechnology have allowed the incorporation of multiple therapeutic, sensing, and targeting agents into nanoparticles, for detection, prevention, and treatment of cancer diseases. Nanoparticles offer many advantages as drug carrier systems since they can improve the solubility of poorly water-soluble drugs, modify pharmacokinetics, increase drug half-life by reducing immunogenicity, improve bioavailability, and diminish drug metabolism. They can also enable a tunable release of therapeutic compounds and the simultaneous delivery of two or more drugs for combination therapy. In this review, we discuss the recent advances in the use of different types of nanoparticles for systemic and topical drug delivery in the treatment of skin cancer. In particular, the progress in the treatment with nanocarriers of basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma has been reported.

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Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are produced for many applications but there is a lack of available data on their skin absorption. Experiments were performed using the Franz diffusion cell method with intact and damaged human skin. A physiological solution was used as receiving phase and 0.5 mL (1st exp) and 1.5 mL (2nd exp) of a solution containing 100 mgL and 7.1 ± 2.5 ng cm-2 h -1 in intact and damaged skin, respectively, with a lag time less than 1 hour. Transmission Electron Microscope analysis on skin samples and chemical analysis using Inductively Coupled PlasmaMass Spectrometry demonstrated the presence of AuNPs into epidermis and dermis. This study showed that AuNPs are able to penetrate the human skin in an in vitro diffusion cell system.

Herein is presented a rare example of salt/ cocrystal polymorphism involving the adduct between ethionamide (ETH) and salicylic acid (SAL). Both the salt and cocrystal forms have the same stoichiometry and composition and are both stable at room temperature. The synthetic procedure was successfully optimized in order to selectively obtain both polymorphs. The two adducts' structures were thoroughly investigated by means of singlecrystal X-ray diffraction, solid-state NMR spectroscopy, and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. From the solidstate NMR point of view, the combination of mono-and multinuclear experiments ( 1 H MAS, 13 C and 15 N CPMAS, 1 H-{ 14 N} D-HMQC, 1 H− 14 N PM-S-RESPDOR) provided undoubted spectroscopic evidence about the different positions of the hydrogen atom along the main N•••H•••O interaction. In particular, the 1 H− 14 N PM-S-RESPDOR allowed N−H distance measurements through the 1 H detected signal at a very high spinning speed (70 kHz), which remarkably agree with those derived by DFT optimized X-ray diffraction, even on a natural abundance real system. The thermodynamic relationship between the salt and the cocrystal was inquired from the experimental and computational points of view, enabling the characterization of the two polymorphs as enantiotropically related. The performances of the two forms in terms of dissolution rate are comparable to each other but significantly higher with respect to the pure ETH.

The order-disorder phase transition associated with the uprise of reorientational motion in (DABCOH2) , in the supramolecular salts of general formula [1⋅(DABCOH )]X (where 1=12-crown-4, DABCO=1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane, and X=Cl or Br ), has been investigated by variable temperature X-ray diffraction on single crystals and powder samples, as well as by DSC and solid-state NMR spectroscopy (SSNMR). The two compounds undergo a reversible phase change at 292 and 290 K, respectively. The two crystalline materials form solid solutions [1⋅(DABCOH )]Cl Br in the whole composition range (0 < x<1), with a decrease in the temperature of transition to a minimum of ca 280 K, corresponding to x=0.5. Activation energy values for the dynamic processes, evaluated by variable-temperature C magic-angle spinning (MAS) SSNMR and line-shape analysis are ca. 50 kJ mol in all cases. Combined diffraction and spectroscopic evidence has allowed the detection of a novel dynamic process for the (DABCOH ) dications, based on a room temperature precessional motion that is frozen out below the disorder-order transition; to the best of the authors' knowledge this phenomenon has never been observed before.