292 research outputs found
CLEANING MONITORING USING CONTROLLED NANO-VIBRATIONS
The monitoring of fouling and cleaning has become very important in order to optimize production cycles, to increase the quality of the final product and to reduce environmental impacts. The aim of the study here presented was to use the MSS – Mechatronic Surface Sensor, to detect the cleaning end-point of hair shampoo removal under different cleaning conditions. It was found that this new monitoring tool was able to clearly identify when the equipment was cleaned, producing different cleaning curves for different cleaning conditions
A novel enzymatically-mediated drug delivery carrier for bone tissue engineering applications: combining biodegradable starch-based microparticles and differentiation agents
In many biomedical applications, the performance
of biomaterials depends largely on their degradation
behavior. For instance, in drug delivery applications, the
polymeric carrier should degrade under physiological
conditions slowly releasing the encapsulated drug. The aim
of this work was, therefore, to develop an enzymaticmediated
degradation carrier system for the delivery of
differentiation agents to be used in bone tissue engineering
applications. For that, a polymeric blend of starch with
polycaprolactone (SPCL) was used to produce a microparticle
carrier for the controlled release of dexamethasone
(DEX). In order to investigate the effect of enzymes on the
degradation behavior of the developed system and release
profile of the encapsulated osteogenic agent (DEX), the
microparticles were incubated in phosphate buffer solution
in the presence of a-amylase and/or lipase enzymes (at
physiological concentrations), at 37 C for different periods
of time. The degradation was followed by gravimetric
measurements, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and
Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and the
release of DEX was monitored by high performance liquid
chromatography (HPLC). The developed microparticles
were shown to be susceptible to enzymatic degradation, as observed by an increase in weight loss and porosity with
degradation time when compared with control samples
(incubation in buffer only). For longer degradation times,
the diameter of the microparticles decreased significantly
and a highly porous matrix was obtained. The in vitro
release studies showed a sustained release pattern with
48% of the encapsulated drug being released for a period of
30 days. As the degradation proceeds, it is expected that
the remaining encapsulated drug will be completely
released as a consequence of an increasingly permeable
matrix and faster diffusion of the drug. Cytocompatibility
results indicated the possibility of the developed microparticles
to be used as biomaterial due to their reduced
cytotoxic effects
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