Biocompatibility in research and development of advanced prosthetics is a current problem faced by medical researchers. Hydroxyapatite (HA) is a natural ceramic (responsible for strength and stability in the human skeletal system) operable as a biocomposite coating to improve the biocompatibility of materials such as silicon nitride, typically used for bone replacement. In this study, polymer based composites were prepared by electrospinning HA with a biocompatible polymer for the development of a structurally stable casing for prosthetic devices. Presented in this paper is the morphological and structural study of electrospun polymer-HA mats. Electrospun mats were calcinated at the phase transformation temperature of HA revealing pure HA wires with diameters just under 1 mm and lengths of the order of 10 to 50 mm. Results have outlined the dispersion mechanism of HA electrospun with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and cellulose acetate (CA) in varying solvents to discern the effects of acidic additives and electrospinning on the production of HA wires.

Since the conceptualization of nanomedicine, numerous nanostructure‐mediated drug formulations have progressed into clinical trials for treating cancer. However, recent clinical trial results indicate such kind of drug formulations has a limited improvement on the antitumor efficacy. This is due to the biological barriers associated with those formulations, for example, circulation stability, extravasation efficiency in tumor, tumor penetration ability, and developed multi‐drug resistance. When employing for nanomedicine formulations, pristine organic‐based and inorganic‐based nanostructures have their own limitations. Accordingly, organic/inorganic (O/I) hybrids have been developed to integrate the merits of both, and to minimize their intrinsic drawbacks. In this context, the recent development in O/I hybrids resulting from a self‐assembly strategy will be introduced. Through such a strategy, organic and inorganic building blocks can be self‐assembled via either chemical covalent bonds or physical interactions. Based on the self‐assemble procedure, the hybridization of four organic building blocks including liposomes, micelles, dendrimers, and polymeric nanocapsules with five functional inorganic nanoparticles comprising gold nanostructures, magnetic nanoparticles, carbon‐based materials, quantum dots, and silica nanoparticles will be highlighted. The recent progress of these O/I hybrids in advanced modalities for combating cancer, such as, therapeutic agent delivery, photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, and immunotherapy will be systematically reviewed.

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The general clinical procedure for viral DNA detection or gene mutation diagnosis following polymerase chain reaction (PCR) often involves gel electrophoresis and DNA sequencing, which is usually time-consuming. In this study, we have proposed a facile strategy to construct a DNA biosensor, in which the platinum electrode was modified with a dual-film of electrochemically synthesized poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) resulting in immobilized gold nanoparticles, with the gold nanoparticles easily immobilized in a uniform distribution. The DNA probe labeled with a SH group was then assembled to the fabricated electrode and employed to capture the target DNA based on the complementary sequence. The hybridization efficiency was evaluated with differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) in the presence of daunorubicin hydrochloride. Our results demonstrated that the peak current in DPV exhibited a linear correlation the concentration of target DNA that was complementary to the probe DNA. Moreover, the electrode could be reused by heating denaturation and re-hybridization, which only brought slight signal decay. In addition, the addition of the oxidized form of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) could dramatically enhance the sensitivity by more than 5.45-fold, and the limit-of-detection reached about 100 pM.