Nanoscale metal-organic frameworks as an advanced tool for medical applications: Challenges and recent progress

Recently, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have received a lot of interest for application in many fields ranging from catalysis, energy storage, and gas sensing to chemosensory and biomedicine owed to their flexible composition, tunable porosity, and easy functionalization ability. In particular, nanoscale MOFs have been broadly investigated as carriers for the delivery of therapeutics to cancerous organs owed to their high encapsulating capacity and controlled cargo release, versatility, biodegradability, and good biocompatibility. Several methods such as solvothermal, mechanochemical, electrochemical, microwave, and ultrasound have been utilized to fabricate MOFs via custom-made synthesis. Many efforts have been made to functionalize MOFs through "post-synthetic modification," by adjusting the nature, size, and charge of the linkers or tuning its main components. Herein, a comprehensive literature review on recent papers dealing with drug-loaded MOFs for the detection and treatment of cancer as well as bacterial, fungal, and viral infections is presented. Different types of MOFs applied as carriers in drug delivery systems and biosensing platforms are described. Furthermore, perspectives and challenges for future research in the field, particularly for cancer therapy, are discussed. Thus, very limited literature is available on in vitro and in vivo toxicity of nanoscale MOFs. Besides, their biological stability and long-term safety are crucial factors that should be further investigated. Based on the reviewed papers, zeolite imidazolate framework (ZIF) and Materials of Institute Lavoisier (MIL) families have been the main focus for drug delivery and diagnosis applications, respectively, while many types of MOFs have exhibited antibacterial and antifungal properties regardless of their cargo.Comunidad de Madri

Cow Urine Mediated Green Synthesis of Nanomaterial and Their Applications: A State-of-the-art Review

Nowadays, green syntheses have received crucial attention as a reliable, developing and eco-benevolent protocol for synthesizing a broad range of nanomaterials (NMs) including metal/metal oxides NMs, bio-inspired materials and hybrid/composite NMs. As such, biogenic synthesis is regarded as a significant tool to mitigate the destructive impacts associated with the conventional approaches of synthesis for NMs generally utilized in industry and laboratory. In this review, we summed up the general protocols and mechanisms of green synthesis routes, especially for silver (Ag), silver oxide (Ag2O), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), copper ferrite (CuFe2O4), palladium (Pd), aceprophyline, cellulose and graphene nanomaterials/nanoparticles using cow urine. Importantly, we explored the main role of biological constituents which is existed in cow urine. These essential biomolecules act as reducing/stabilizing agents in solvent systems. The stability, phase formation and surface morphology of NMs using characterization techniques are also discussed. Finally, we covered the eclectic applications of such synthesized NMs in terms of anti-asthma, antimicrobial, antituberculosis, antioxidant, anticancer activity, catalytic activity and removal of pollutants dyes

Nanocarriers for methotrexate delivery/codelivery in the frame of cancer diagnostics and treatment: a review

Cancer is one of the most life-threatening family of diseases that cause death worldwide. As a highly researched and successful therapeutic agent, methotrexate (MTX) treats many solid tumours, hematologic malignancies, and autoimmune illnesses. Despite many benefits, methotrexate induces drug resistance and limits plasma half-life due to its poor pharmacokinetics. The variable biological availability have prompted researchers to investigate innovative delivery strategies for enhancing its therapeutic qualities. To develop more suitable methotrexate formulations, nanoparticles (NPs) have recently gained a significant interest. A wide range of nanoparticles, including polymer-based nanoparticles, carbon-based nanoparticles, lipid-based nanoparticles, as well as inorganic nanoparticles, can be deliver cancer chemotherapeutics such as methotrexate. Loading methotrexate into NPs can provide a delivery system that has shown great promise to carcinoma therapy. In this review, we will describe the feasibility of NP-based strategies to deliver methotrexate in cancer therapy, outlining the current state of the art and the challenges/promises for the future

Enhanced multifunctionality of CuO nanoparticles synthesized using aqueous leaf extract of Vernonia amygdalina plant

We report the synthesis of medicinal plant, Vernonia amygdalina Del. mediated green copper oxide nanoparticles (VeA-CuO NPs). The presence of two absorbance maxima, λmax 1 and λmax 2 at 436 nm and 452 nm, respectively confirms a mixture of biomolecules surface amalgamated CuO NPs with different morphological features. The FT-IR spectra of the plant leaf extract and VeA-CuO confirmed the efficient role of biomolecules as capping and stabilising agents. The XRD patterns of NPs approved high crystallinity of CuO. The purity of the NPs was corroborated by SEM-EDAX analysis. The average particle size of the NPs was found to be 19.68 nm. In addition, the combined TEM, HRTEM and SAED analysis substantiated the presence of CuO with a d-spacing value of 0.2854 nm, which conformed to CuO (1 1 1). The antibacterial assay revealed that VeA-CuO NPs were synergistic in their influence versus bacterial strains, S. aureus, E. coli, P. aeruginosa, and E. aerogenes. The uppermost zone of inhibition of 15 mm was observed for E. aerogenes. The bioactive compounds capped around the CuO NPs served the effective role in disrupting the cell wall of bacterial strains. The degradation efficiencies for Indigo carmine (IC) and Malachite green (MG) dyes by NPs were found to be 95% and 91%, respectively. The lowest degradation half-life was recorded to be 16.55 min for MG dye. In addition, the better electrode stability revealed by CV and EIS studies, confirms the multi-functional nature of VeA-CuO NPs, these CuO NPs exhibited multifunctional applications

Chemical and microbial characterization of North Slope viscous oils for MEOR application

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2007Viscous oil reservoirs tend to be low-energy, low-gas/oil-ratio systems with high viscosities and are difficult to produce, transport and refine by conventional methods. Some of the commonly considered viscous oil recovery methods include processes such as steam flooding, in-situ combustion and miscible gas injection. The large viscous oil deposits in the ANS cannot be produced entirely by conventional methods like pressure displacement or waterflooding. Other methods such as miscible (gas injection and water alternating gas (WAG) also have limited success. Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is one of the techniques for improving the oil recovery for viscous deposits. This method has not yet been applied to the ANS fields. This study includes experimental work to analyze the application of MEOR to the ANS oil fields. A microbial formulation was developed in order to simulate the MEOR. Coreflooding experiments were performed to simulate the improved recovery oil recovery and quantify the incremental oil recovery. Properties like viscosity, density and chemical composition of oil were monitored to propose a mechanism of oil recovery. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) was performed on the oil samples to qualitatively study the effect of the microbial formulation on a molecular scale