Nanocellulose,
as a promising natural material, has recently received
much attention because of its remarkable features including recyclability,
biocompatibility, low risk of toxicity, and tunable surface properties.
This review article first introduces three types of nanocellulose
(nanocrystalline, nanofibrillar, and bacterial) and evaluates their
production processes. In addition, contemporary research is discussed
in the formulations of nanoparticles, tablets, hydrogels, and aerogels.
As reported in the literature, the release time of nanocellulose-based
systems varies from a few minutes to several days as they provide
a controlled and sustained release. Thus, such systems have shown
considerable potential for developing a novel generation of controlled
drug delivery for different routes of administration (oral, transdermal,
etc.). This review facilitates the selection of proper source and
processing techniques for nanocellulose production while addressing
opportunities and challenges ahead ending up with identifying sustainable
ongoing research directions into its applications in drug delivery.
This
Review aims to provide a systematic analysis of the literature
regarding ongoing debates in protein corona research. Our goal is
to portray the current understanding of two fundamental and debated
characteristics of the protein corona, namely, the formation of mono-
or multilayers of proteins and their binding (ir)reversibility. The
statistical analysis we perform reveals that these characterisitics
are strongly correlated to some physicochemical factors of the NP–protein
system (particle size, bulk material, protein type), whereas the technique
of investigation or the type of measurement (in situ or ex situ) do not impact the results, unlike commonly
assumed. Regarding the binding reversibility, the experimental design
(either dilution or competition experiments) is also shown to be a
key factor, probably due to nontrivial protein binding mechanisms,
which could explain the paradoxical phenomena reported in the literature.
Overall, we suggest that to truly predict and control the protein
corona, future efforts should be directed toward the mechanistic aspects
of protein adsorption.
A new theoretical framework that enables the use of differential dynamic microscopy (DDM) in fluorescence imaging mode to quantify in situ protein adsorption onto nanoparticles (NP) while simultaneously monitoring for NP aggregation is proposed. This methodology is used to elucidate the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of the protein corona (PC) in vitro and in vivo. The results show that protein adsorption triggers particle aggregation over a wide concentration range and that the formed aggregate structures can be quantified using the proposed methodology. Protein affinity for polystyrene (PS) NPs is observed to be dependent on particle concentration. For complex protein mixtures, this methodology identifies that the PC composition changes with the dilution of serum proteins, demonstrating a Vroman effect never quantitatively assessed in situ on NPs. Finally, DDM allows monitoring of the evolution of the PC in vivo. This results show that the PC composition evolves significantly over time in zebrafish larvae, confirming the inherently dynamic nature of the PC. The performance of the developed methodology allows to obtain quantitative insights into nano‐bio interactions in a vast array of physiologically relevant conditions that will serve to further improve the design of nanomedicine.
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