In Vitro Carcinoma Treatment Using Magnetic Nanocarriers under Ultrasound and Magnetic Fields

Nowadays, tumor hypoxia has become a more predominant problem for diagnosis as well as treatment of cancer due to difficulties in delivering chemotherapeutic drugs and their carriers to these regions with reduced vasculature and oxygen supply. In such cases, external physical stimulus-mediated drug delivery, such as ultrasound and magnetic fields, would be effective. In this work, the effect of simultaneous exposure of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound and static magnetic field on colon (HCT116) and hepatocellular (HepG2) carcinoma cell inhibition was assessed in vitro. The treatment, in the presence of anticancer drug, with and without magnetic carrier, significantly increased the reactive oxygen species production and hyperpolarized the cancer cells. As a result, a significant increase in cell inhibition, up to 86%, was observed compared to 50% inhibition with bare anticancer drug. The treatment appears to have relatively more effect on HepG2 cells during the initial 24 h than on HCT116 cells. The proposed treatment was also found to reduce cancer cell necrosis and did not show any inhibitory effect on healthy cells (MC3T3). Our in vitro results suggest that this approach has strong application potential to treat cancer at lower drug dosage to achieve similar inhibition and can reduce health risks associated with drugs

Mahanine exerts in vitro and in vivo antileishmanial activity by modulation of redox homeostasis

Earlier we have established a carbazole alkaloid (mahanine) isolated from an Indian edible medicinal plant as an anticancer agent with minimal effect on normal cells. Here we report for the first time that mahanine-treated drug resistant and sensitive virulent Leishmania donovani promastigotes underwent apoptosis through phosphatidylserine externalization, DNA fragmentation and cell cycle arrest. An early induction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) suggests that the mahanine-induced apoptosis was mediated by oxidative stress. Additionally, mahanine-treated Leishmania-infected macrophages exhibited anti-amastigote activity by nitric oxide (NO)/ROS generation along with suppression of uncoupling protein 2 and Th1-biased cytokines response through modulating STAT pathway. Moreover, we have demonstrated the interaction of a few antioxidant enzymes present in parasite with mahanine through molecular modeling. Reduced genetic and protein level expression of one such enzyme namely ascorbate peroxidase was also observed in mahanine-treated promastigotes. Furthermore, oral administration of mahanine in acute murine model exhibited almost complete reduction of parasite burden, upregulation of NO/iNOS/ROS/IL-12 and T cell proliferation. Taken together, we have established a new function of mahanine as a potent antileishmanial molecule, capable of inducing ROS and exploit antioxidant enzymes in parasite along with modulation of host’s immune response which could be developed as an inexpensive and nontoxic therapeutics either alone or in combination

Use of ultrasound with magnetic field for enhanced in vitro drug delivery in colon cancer treatment

Drug delivery systems (DDSs) have been developed to target tumor cells by releasing active biomolecules at the specific site of infection, thus eliminating the side effects of anticancer drugs. However, DDSs are generally limited by high drug dosage, biobarriers, poor target recognition, etc. To address these deficiencies, we propose a new noninvasive method consisting of exposing the cancer cells to a combination of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) and static magnetic field (SMF). This combined treatment found to negatively regulate colon cancer cell (HCT116) activities in vitro by altering their cell membrane potential and permeability thus increased the DDS efficacy by 40%. The treated cancer cell membrane became hyperpolarized leading to cancer cell death. The combination treatment (LIPUS + SMF) restricted the cancer cell proliferation to 16 and 5% in the presence of bare anticancer drug and DDS, respectively, in 72 h, which is almost 40% higher than that observed without the treatment. The acceleration of cancer cellular inhibition was confirmed by the significant increase in the apoptosis of the cell exposed to the LIPUS + SMF treatment. The observed improvement is believed to be due to changes in the cell membrane stability/permeability as a result of mechanical (20-22 kPa) and electrical (19-23 mu V/cm) stimuli generated during the LIPUS + SMF treatment

Development of Polyaniline-Poly(methylmethacrylate) Blend Coated Optical Fiber RI Sensor for Ammonia Detection

Development of polyaniline-poly(methylmethacrylate) blend coated modified-clad optical fiber as refractive index (RI) sensor is presented. This RI sensor exhibit linear optical intensity modulation with increasing ammonia concentration and promising candidate for ammonia detection

Enhanced strength, in vitro bone cell differentiation and mineralization of injectable bone cement reinforced with multiferroic particles

Self-setting calcium sulphate hemihydrate (CSH) composites were prepared by reinforcing with BiFeO3 (BF, a multiferroic material) with an aim to induce in situ charge generating capacity and increase its strength. CSH-BF composites (0-15 wt%BF), prepared by ball-milling, were evaluated in terms of setting and injectability, compressive strength, in vitro degradation, electrical/magnetic properties. Compressive strength of CSH-BF composites increased with BF concentration and up to 3-fold increase was observed compared to pure-CSH. Injectability and setting time of these composites were comparable to that of standard bone cements. In vitro degradation studies revealed similar to 27-33% degradation with good apatite precipitation on these composites. Remanant polarization of these composites varied between 0.056 and 0.251 mu C/cm(2). The composites with BF <= 5 wt% exhibited 200-375% increase in the cell viability with 200mT magnetic treatment. Osteoblast differentiation experiments showed high and rapid production of Alkaline Phosphatase followed by accelerated bone mineralization on the composites compared to pure-CSH. Electrical stimuli (remanant polarization) and its coupling during magnetic field treatment are responsible for enhanced bone-cell differentiation and mineralization on CSH-BF composites. Our results show that BF reinforcement of CSH not only improves its strength but also impart charge generating capacity, which can be effectively utilized to accelerate tissue healing or regeneration. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd

Influence of ultrasound and magnetic field treatment time on carcinoma cell inhibition with drug carriers: an in vitro study

The influence of exposing carcinoma cells to a static magnetic field (SMF) and low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS), for different durations (15-45 min/d), in the presence of magnetic and non-magnetic drug carriers, on their in vitro inhibition is examined. Increasing the exposure time by 15 min/d decreased the culture duration by 24 h to achieve the same level of inhibition in colon (HCT116) and hepatocellular (HepG2) cells. Cell cycle analysis revealed enhanced cellular blockage in G1 and S phases with SMF + LIPUS exposure, and exposure for 45 min/d completely suppressed the S -> G2 transition. Apoptosis of both types of cells increased with SMF + LIPUS treatment time, and HepG2 cells exhibited elevated necrosis with >30 min/d exposure. HepG2 cells also had higher amounts of reactive oxygen species (seven- to eightfold) than HCT116 cells (two- to sixfold), suggesting treatment effectiveness is cell and drug carrier dependent. The accelerated cellular activities are attributed to the enhanced internalization of drug carriers as a consequence of destabilized cellular membranes caused by the SMF + LIPUS-generated mechanical and electrical stimuli. (E-mail: [email protected]) (C) 2020 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology. All rights reserved

Physicochemical Study of Rare Earth beta-Diketonate Precursor for Optimizing MCVD-Vapor Phase Doping Technique

Systematic investigation was performed to identify any physicochemical property change of rare earth (RE) beta-diketonate precursor due to prolonged exposure to successive heating cycles. It is evident from the obtained results that the physical characteristics change rapidly in proportion to the thermal exposures which may lead to decomposition of the heated sample at much lower temperature than that of fresh sample. The observations further indicate, this RE chelate compound can be used satisfactorily as bulk precursor in vapor phase doping (VPD) process for up to five consecutive production cycles following which the sublimator needs to be refilled with fresh charge to maintain process reproducibility. It is also important to achieve the targeted specifications of laser/amplifier fiber preforms. According to our knowledge, this is the first ever study to identify any physicochemical behavioral change of RE precursor due to the thermal history as well as aging which would otherwise affect the performance of MCVD-VPD process. (C) 2017 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved