In the present work, a series of 0, 1 and 7 wt% silver nano-particles (Ag NPs) incorporated poly lactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) nano-fibers were synthesized by the electrospinning process. The PLGA/Ag nano-fibers sheets were characterized using SEM, TEM and DSC analyses. The three synthesized PLGA/silver nano-fiber composites were screened for anticancer activity against liver cancer cell line using MTT and LDH assays. The anticancer activity of PLGA nano-fibers showed a remarkable improvement due to increasing the concentration of the Ag NPs. In addition to the given result, PLGA nano-fibers did not show any cytotoxic effect. However, PLGA nano-fibers that contain 1 % nano silver showed anticancer activity of 8.8 %, through increasing the concentration of the nano silver to 7 % onto PLGA nano-fibers, the anticancer activity was enhanced to a 67.6 %. Furthermore, the antibacterial activities of these three nano-fibers, against the five bacteria strains namely; E.coli o157:H7 ATCC 51659, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 13565, Bacillus cereus EMCC 1080, Listeria monocytogenes EMCC 1875 and Salmonella typhimurium ATCC25566 using the disc diffusion method, were evaluated. Sample with an enhanced inhibitory effect was PLGA/Ag NPs (7 %) which inhibited all strains (inhibition zone diameter 10 mm); PLGA/Ag NPs (1 %) sample inhibited only one strain (B. cereus) with zone diameter 8 mm. The PLGA nano-fiber sample has not shown any antimicrobial activity. Based on the anticancer as well as the antimicrobial results in this study, it can be postulated that: PLGA nanofibers containing 7 % nano silver are suitable as anticancer- and antibiotic-drug delivery systems, as they will increase the anticancer as well as the antibiotic drug potency without cytotoxicity effect on the normal cells. These findings also suggest that Ag NPs, of the size (5-10 nm) evaluated in the present study, are appropriate for therapeutic application from a safety standpoint.

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Key words: functional soft cheese, ginger extract, pickled and un-pickled soft cheese Soft cheese fortifi ed with ginger extract as a functional dairy food was evaluated. Buffalo's milk retentate was divided into three equal portions. One batch had no ginger extract as a control. The latter batches were fortifi ed with extract at the rate of 1.5 or 3.0 g/kg. All batches were salted with 4% NaCl/water phase. The resultant cheese samples were divided into 2 parts; one was separately picked in salted permeate (4%), while the other was stored without pickling at 5±2°C for 6 weeks. The results revealed that cheese pickling increased the cheese proteolysis and lipolysis, and decreased pH and TVFAs. Fortifi cation with ginger extract enhanced cheese proteolysis and TFVAs, while reduced pH value and oxidative rancidity of cheese. Physically, un-pickled soft cheese was more springy, harder, darker and more yellowish compared with pickled cheese samples. Ginger extract caused an increase in cohesiveness, whiteness and yellowish colour degree, and decrease in hardness of both pickled and un-pickled soft cheese. Ginger extract--fortifi ed cheese enhances the growth of L. lactis ssp. lactis and L. lactis ssp. cremoris compared with control cheese. However, ginger extract exhibited the highest growth for Lactococcus strains in pickled cheese. Yeast and mould were detected only in cheese control sample after 2 weeks. Ginger extract--fortifi ed cheese gained the highest scores for fl avour, texture and overall acceptability in both pickled and un-pickled cheese, which became more acceptable to panelists than control cheese over storage.

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