Noninvasive control of the transport function of fluorescent coloured liposomal nanoparticles

The use of liposomal nanoparticles with an incorporated active substance is an innovative and promising approach to diagnostics and therapy. The application of liposomal nanoparticle-based drugs allows for targeted localized delivery, overcomes the natural barriers within the body effectively, and minimizes possible side effects. Liposomes are able to contain a variety of ingredients with practically no limitations to their chemical composition, chemical properties, or size of constituent molecules. This study evaluated the ability to control the passage of fluorescent dye-filled liposomes through the intestinal mucosal barrier after oral administration. For this purpose, the increase in transcutaneous registered fluorescence from tetrabromofluorescein dye was recorded and analysed. Fluorescence intensity was measured at the proximal end of the tail of an animal model after oral administration of the liposomes. Measurements were taken at the excitation wavelengths of 365 and 450 nm. The fluorescence intensity in the group treated with the fluorescent contrast agent encapsulated in liposomal particles increased 140% of the initial level, but in the group treated with pure contrast agent, the increase in detected fluorescence intensity did not exceed 110%. Mice that received empty liposomes as well as the control group did not demonstrate statistically significant changes in fluorescence intensity. A potential application of our results is an express laser optical method of monitoring the transport of orally administered liposomal particles. The results can be used to help create new optical tools for use in the development of new drugs and in high-throughput screening used during their testing

Alzheimer's disease research: a network science approach

A limit number of studies have applied bibliometric visualisation to explore the network structure of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). This paper uses CiteSpace, Carrot and VOSviewer to analyse and visualise the intellectual structure of AD, characterizing, quantitatively and qualitatively, the global scientific outputs, and identifying their trends. The 9,753 articles obtained from the science citation index expanded database (SCI-E), from Web-of-Science, were analysed. The publication data is analysed computationally to identify publication patterns, a rate of growth of publications, types of authorship collaboration, the most productive authors, countries, institutions, journals, keywords, the citation and keyword patterns, the hotspots and the areas of research on the AD. The paper presents a detailed analytical mapping of AD research and charts the progress of discipline with various useful parameters. The authors expect to contribute to the theory, supplying researchers with new tools and enabling practitioners to improve their knowledge about the AD evolution and trends.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Senior Tourism: a network science approach over the last twenty years through CiteSpace

Adopting a co-authorship and co-citation network approach, the aim of this paper is to evaluate senior tourism research during the last twenty years and to discover structures in terms of leading papers, journals, authors, countries and institutions. The mapping of bibliometric data use CiteSpace. Data from Scopus build a network of 512 articles. The results reveal a slow increase of research, with the last period including 40.69% of outputs. The most co-cited papers are mainly older, represent 2.73% of the sample and account for 13.24% of citations. The authors with most publications are Jang M and King M, representing 1.95%. The co-cited journals show a core-periphery structure, where Tourism Management is ranked first. The co-authorship network reveals that major collaborative networks are based on geographical and institutional proximity, dominated by the United States. The keyword analysis demonstrates that motivation, attitude, satisfaction, experience, heritage and tourism management are significant areas of emerging research.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Global affective computing research in the period 1997-2017: a bibliometric analysis

Notable fallouts in marketing and financial market prediction have raised the interest by the scientific community and the business world in Affective Computing (AfC). Automatically recognizing and responding to a user’s affective states, AfC shows a great potential to improve companies capabilities of customer relationship management. The aim of this study is to evaluate this field of research during the last twenty years, identifying for one side its evolution, by the major publications, citations, journals, authors, productive countries, productive institutions, and collaboration patterns; and for another side, identifying its trends through the analysis of research hotspots, burst keywords and areas of research done so far. This bibliometric analysis is based on the science citation index expanded (SCI-E), from the Institute of Scientific Information Web-of science, which is now firmly established as an integral part of research evaluation methodology especially within the scientific and applied fields. The results show a significant 4.19 rate of growth in AfC, doubling the number of publications in 4.02 years time. This field of interest is paving the way for creativity and innovation and provides opportunities for its greater development.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Intervensi Bibliometrik terhadap Artikel Saintifik Topik Kesehatan Kawasan Indonesia

Kesehatan adalah modal penting untuk mewujudkan pembangunan berkelanjutan sehingga bidang ilmunya penting untuk ditingkatkan. ScienceDirect menjadi media berkelas bagi ilmu kesehatan dan oleh sebab itu keberadaannya menarik diungkap. Kajian ini bertujuan, 1) menganalisis artikel ilmiah topik kesehatan yang mengangkat isu-isu di Indonesia tahun 2006-2015. Untuk menganalisisnya dilibatkan bibliometrik guna mengetahui jurnal penampung dan produktivitasnya, 2) arsitektur dan rasio kolaborasi, dan 3) kontributor termasuk zona geografisnya. Diperoleh 146 artikel yang terdistribusi ke dalam 66 jurnal ilmiah. Melihat pertumbuhannya selama tiga tahun terakhir, jumlah artikel beserta kontributornya konsisten mengalami peningkatan. Satu hingga empat lebih formasi menjadi ciri khas dalam pemroduksian artikel dan kebanyakan ditempuh secara berkolaborasi. Kedua indeks kolaborasi yakni penulis dan institusi menunjukan rasio multipel lebih, kecuali negara meskipun indikasinya kuat mendekati. Pelibatan kekuatan lokal sebesar 41.12% dimana Universitas Indonesia terdepan diantara 107 afiliasi. Posisi Indonesia meraih terbaik dengan prestasi 45.89% dan mengindikasikan kemandirian dalam mengatasi problem kesehatannya sendiri. Menurut bingkai geografis lainnya terdapat 6 regional dan 4 benua.ABSTRACTThis study aims to analyze scientific articles on health topics that address issues in Indonesia in 2006-2015. To analyze it involved bibliometrics in order to know the collection journal and its productivity, (2) architecture and collaboration ratio, and (3) contributors including the geographic zone. The result for a decade obtained 146 articles distributed into 66 scientific journals. Looking at its growth over the past three years, the number of articles and its contributors has consistently improved. One to four more formations are characteristic of article production and most are collaborated. Both collaboration indexes are authors and institutions show more multiplier ratios, with the exception of the country despite strong indications of approaching. The involvement of national power is 41.12% where University of Indonesia is ahead of 107 affiliates. The position of Indonesia achieved the best with 45.89% achievement and indicated independence in overcoming its own health problems. According to other geographical frames there are 6 regional and 4 continents. Thus health issues in Indonesia have been viewed as a common problem with a wide spectrum. This review is useful to raise the interest of Indonesian authors in discussing health issues in their are

Liposomes, The Attractive Vehicles for Drug Delivery: A Scientometric Mapping of Web of Science Indexed Literature

The Liposome is a spherical-shaped vesicle composed of one or more phospholipid bilayers, closely resembling cell membranes' structure. It has a novel drug delivery system (NDDS); the lipid bilayer can fuse with other bilayers, such as the cell membrane, thus delivering the liposome contents. The present study has been conducted to map the research productivity of 'liposomes as drug delivery' between 1980 and 2021. This study employed the scientometric method to analyze 629 research papers indexed in the Web of Science database. Different bibliometrics indicators were used to assess the annual research growth, prolific authors, authorship pattern, funding agencies, productive source, organization, country, author keywords, cited paper and cited references, etc. Biblioshiny, Bibexcel, VOSviewer, and MS Office were used to analyze the 629 published papers. The findings show that 629 publications were published between 1980 and 2001, with 24674 citations. 2018 and 2019 recorded the highest research with 49 publications and 758 and 471 citations, respectively. Journal of Controlled Release was the most relevant source in the field, with 45 publications and 3063 citations. LIU Y was the most productive author, with 15 publications and 342 citations. Northwestern University USA has the highest record with 11 publications, and the USA was the most productive country with 181 publications, while China emerged as a leading collaborator with the USA (19 publications). Liposomes and cationic liposomes were identified as the most important research themes. Permeability, ocular drug delivery, Chemotherapy, Cancer therapy, Hypoxia, Combination therapy, and hyaluronic acid were research topics that had gained recent popularity. At the same time, Vesicles targeted drug delivery, cellular uptake, ultrasound, Chitosan, and Pegylation were identified as the research areas that require further attention in the field of liposomes as drug delivery research

Advanced targeting approaches to drive nanoparticles inside the body

The development of new chemical entities is expensive and time consuming. Therefore, the path taken by research into the last century was directed to find new methods to exploit the already existing pharmaceutical tools. “There’s plenty of room at the bottom” was the title of a lecture delivered in 1959 by Richard Feynman, who introduced the concept of nanotechnology as an important field for future research. This novel science covers areas of biomedical disciplines and engineering involved in the development of materials and devices in the nanometer scale. These systems is nowadays drawing major attention in the medical field for the delivery of therapeutics, especially in the treatment of complex diseases such as cancer. in fact, this malignancy possesses unique features that perfectly suits the concepts underlying nano delivery. Amongst all, the enhanced and permeability retention efffect (EPR) certainly is widely recognized as the rational basis for using nanotherapeutics in the treatment of cancer. EPR is phenomenon by which macromolecules preferentially accumulate in tumor tissues due to immature, tortuous, and multi-fenestrated cancer vessels. Moreover, the opportunity to improve drug pharmacokinetics without affecting the chemical features of the carried molecules, provides not only the ability to overcome several biological obstacles that normally reduce the accumulation of therapeutics into the target area but also to increase their therapeutic impact. The general aim of this thesis was to develop different strategies for the delivery of conventional chemotherapeutics in the field of cancer therapies. Infact, different nanocarriers for cancer treatment have been developed so far basically differing for composition, size and shape, as well as stiffness. Particularly promising are those based on amphiphilic block polyester copolymers (NPs). Polymeric NPs of poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) covered with a hydrophilic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) can be employed as passive delivery system and possibly decorated with targeting ligands such as folate to accumulate in cancerous tissue. However, the density and conformation of PEG on the surface affect the exposition of small targeting ligands and the receptor mediated cell uptake. In this context Chapter 3 – Shedding light on surface exposition of poly(ethylene glycol) and folate targeting units on nanoparticles of poly(ε-caprolactone) diblock copolymers: beyond a paradigm – is dedicated to PEG-PCL NPs targeted to folate receptor. The impact of preparation method on PEGylation extent and folate surface exposition is fully addressed in the attempt to relate quality attributes of NPs to biological behavior. Although the EPR effect has been postulated to carry NPs and spread inside the cancer tissue, only a small percentage (0.7% median) of the total administered nanoparticle dose is usually able to reach a solid tumor. New strategies based on the microscale and combining different disciplines together such as biology, chemistry, physics and engineering has been proposed to address this issue. The multistage vector (MSV) is an platform that combine nano and microcarriers conceived to overcome the biological obstacles in a sequentially manner. This platform consists of three components. The first stage is a discoidal porous silicon microparticles designed to navigate into the circulatory stream and preferentially adhere to the tumor abnormal endothelial wall. Depending on the application, different types of NPs can be loaded into the pores of the microparticle as second stage. In contrast to the discoidal microparticle, the second stage enter into the cells by exploiting the fenestrature of vascular endothelium and finally releases the third stage, i.e. the therapeutic agent that can be freely selected depending on the application. In addition to this general concept, a new generation of MSV that display additional properties was developed in the attempt to improve the therapeutic performance of the platform. As an example MSV that possesses a biomimetic coating, novel approaches to load multiple types of nanotherapeutics inside the microdiscoidal carrier and more recently the application of this platform to cancer immunotherapy have been proposed. Despite all these applications, this versatile vector has not yet been used to treat brain disease. This is because brain represent a major challange in drug delivery due to the presence of the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). Within this framework the aim of the project described in Chapter 4 – Strategies to overcome the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) – is the development of novel approaches based on the combination of micro- and nano-delivery systems to treat brain metastases arisen from primary tumors as melanoma and breast cancer. The idea is to functionalize the micro-vector surface to promote preferential accumulation at the brain microvasculature and after obtaining the intended accumulation, near the endothelial wall, the capacity of transporting simultaneously more than one active component in the porous micro particle. The concept is validated by the development of in vitro and in vivo models. Despite the considerable progress made with NPs, only a limited number of NPs have been approved for clinical use. As an example, Doxil® the first FDA approved formulation for the delivery of Doxorubicin (Dox) is able to reduced systemic side effects compared to the free drugs but not to significantly improve the antitumor effects into the metastatic diseases. This clinical evidence suggests that further delivery approaches needs to be developed and that there is a need for an in depth study of the anatomical knowledge of the EPR. In this context, the aim of the work described in Chapter 2 – Synthesis and characterization of rationally-designed Dextran-Doxorubicin conjugate: a novel strategy to improve the antitumor efficacy of doxorubicin in multiple breast cancer liver metastases – is to develop a rationally-designed Dox-dextran conjugate with appropriate molecular weight (MW) based on estimated EPR effect in established liver metastases to overcome the limited clinical efficacy of PEGylated liposomes and Dox. In the two annexes the development of a novel antibacterial polymeric film of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) for the release of nitric oxide (NO) under visible light is reported (Annex I) and a study of the growth of the drug delivery literature published during 1974-2015 was discussed (Annex II)