Respiratory illnesses are prevalent around the world, and inhalation‐based therapies provide an attractive, noninvasive means of directly delivering therapeutic agents to their site of action to improve treatment efficacy and limit adverse systemic side effects. Recent trends in medicine and nanoscience have prompted the development of inhalable nanomedicines to further enhance effectiveness, patient compliance, and quality of life for people suffering from lung cancer, chronic pulmonary diseases, and tuberculosis. Herein, we discuss recent advancements in the development of inhalable nanomaterial‐based drug delivery systems and analyze several representative systems to illustrate their key design principles that can translate to improved therapeutic efficacy for prevalent respiratory diseases. This article is categorized under: Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Nanomedicine for Respiratory Disease

Four hundred tons of sulfamethazine are fed to livestock annually in North America to prevent disease and promote growth, but most of the drug is excreted unmetabolized into the environment. Because of slow degradation and high mobility, sulfamethazine contaminates groundwater supplies and causes aquatic ecosystem damage. Current water treatment methods to remove pharmaceuticals are not universally effective and have considerable limitations, which necessitate newer remediation techniques. Hypercrosslinked adsorbents, polystyrene polymers 100% crosslinked with methylene bridges, show promise because of high surface areas, high mechanical strength, and regenerable properties. This study screened four Purolite hypercrosslinked adsorbents (MN152, MN250, PAD400, and PAD600) to remove sulfamethazine from contaminated water and then characterized the most efficient resin, MN250, with batch adsorption and desorption experiments to optimize its use. Sulfamethazine adsorption onto MN250 displayed an L-class isotherm shape consistent with monolayer adsorption, negligible solute-solute interactions at the adsorbent surface, and decreasing activation energies of desorption with increasing surface coverage. MN250 had a maximum experimental adsorption capacity of 111 mg g, showing high correlation to the Langmuir and Freundlich models. Adsorption kinetics revealed prolonged adsorption over 59 h and were best described by Ho's pseudo-second-order model. There was minimal desorption from MN250 in distilled water, indicating an irreversible adsorption process. MN250's high capacity for sulfamethazine adsorption, minimal desorption in water, and ability to be regenerated make it a practical solution for sulfamethazine removal in areas that have contaminated groundwater supplies (e.g., areas near concentrated livestock operations), especially as current treatment methods have significant drawbacks.

Spraying serves as an attractive, minimally invasive means of administering hydrogels for localized delivery, particularly due to high-throughput deposition of therapeutic depots over an entire target site of uneven surfaces. However, it remains a great challenge to design systems capable of rapid gelation after shear-thinning during spraying and adhering to coated tissues in wet, physiological environments. We report here on the use of a collagen-binding peptide to enable a supramolecular design of a biocompatible, bioadhesive, and sprayable hydrogel for sustained release of therapeutics. After spraying, the designed peptide amphiphile-based supramolecular filaments exhibit fast, physical cross-linking under physiological conditions. Our ex vivo studies suggest that the hydrogelator strongly adheres to the wet surfaces of multiple organs, and the extent of binding to collagen influences release kinetics from the gel. We envision that the sprayable organ-adhesive hydrogel can serve to enhance the efficacy of incorporated therapeutics for many biomedical applications.

Four hundred tons of sulfamethazine are fed to livestock annually in North America for disease prevention and growth promotion, but the majority is excreted unmetabolized into the environment. Due to its slow degradation and high mobility, sulfamethazine contaminates groundwater and causes aquatic ecosystem damage. Sulfamethazine remediation methods are not universally effective, necessitating newer techniques. Hypercrosslinked polystyrene adsorbents show promise because of high surface areas, durability, and regenerable properties. Using batch techniques, sulfamethazine adsorption onto Purolite MN250 was evaluated in the presence of dissolved humic acid and under variable pH and ionic strength. The adsorption capacity () of MN250 for sulfamethazine with humic acid was 109.3 mg g. In simulated groundwater, at pH 5 was 51 to 62% higher than at pH 9. The maximum at pH 7 (144.0 mg g) exceeded pH 5 performance (128.3 mg g). In 0.005 M KCl, was 181.0 mg g, which decreased by 34% in 0.05 M KCl. In 0.5 M, KCl, (153.4 mg g) increased 26% over 0.05 M KCl. For all matrices, equilibration was attained between 120 and 168 h, best fit by Ho's pseudo-second-order model. Overall, is pH dependent because the sulfamethazine speciation and the zeta potential of MN250 vary as a function of pH. Increasing ionic strength initially decreases by altering the activity coefficient of sulfamethazine and by altering the properties of the electrical double layer, while salting-out becomes prominent at seawater concentration. MN250's high sulfamethazine capacity in environmentally relevant aqueous matrices highlights its potential for groundwater remediation.