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Atherosclerosis is an impairment of the artery walls made up of two membrane layers, intima and media. Oxidative stress, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia are the three main factors that cause atherosclerosis. These conditions are frequently found together and may cause atherogenesis to rapidly occur. The edible genus Pleurotus is commonly known as oyster mushrooms. Pleurotus spp. has been proven to have valuable medicinal attributes. Hence, they have been listed among "mushroom nutriceuticals" and categorized as both functional foods and medicinal mushrooms. In this review, we report the benefits of Pleurotus spp. for the prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis via reduction of oxidative stress, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia in terms of the therapeutic compounds responsible. This review revealed that at least ten different types of Pleurotus spp. have been reported to have anti-atherogenic capabilities, with six of them possessing high levels of anti-atherogenic compounds such as ACE inhibitor peptide, ergothioneine, chrysin, and lovastatin. Hence, it has been demonstrated that Pleurotus spp. has great potential for use as food or extracts from fruiting bodies or mycelium in an alternative therapy for atherosclerosis, through prevention and treatment of oxidative stress, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia.

The application of graphene in the field of drug delivery has attracted massive interest among researchers. However, the high toxicity of graphene has been a drawback for its use in drug delivery. Therefore, to enhance the biocompatibility of graphene, a new route was developed using ternary natural deep eutectic solvents (DESs) as functionalizing agents, which have the capability to incorporate various functional groups and surface modifications. Physicochemical characterization analyses, including field emission scanning electron microscope, fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, Brunauer−Emmett−Teller, X-ray diffraction, and energy dispersive X-ray, were used to verify the surface modifications introduced by the functionalization process. Doxorubicin was loaded onto the DES-functionalized graphene. The results exhibited significantly improved drug entrapment efficiency (EE) and drug loading capacity (DLC) compared with pristine graphene and oxidized graphene. Compared with unfunctionalized graphene, functionalization with DES choline chloride (ChCl):sucrose:water (4:1:4) resulted in the highest drug loading capacity (EE of 51.84% and DLC of 25.92%) followed by DES ChCl:glycerol:water (1:2:1) (EE of 51.04% and DLC of 25.52%). Following doxorubicin loading, graphene damaged human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7) through the generation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (>95%) and cell cycle disruption by increase in the cell population at S phase and G2/M phase. Thus, DESs represent promising green functionalizing agents for nanodrug carriers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that DES-functionalized graphene has been used as a nanocarrier for doxorubicin, illustrating the potential application of DESs as functionalizing agents in drug delivery systems.