PLGA Nanoparticle-Based Formulations to Cross the Blood–Brain Barrier for Drug Delivery: From R&D to cGMP

The blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a natural obstacle for drug delivery into the human brain, hindering treatment of central nervous system (CNS) disorders such as acute ischemic stroke, brain tumors, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1-associated neurocognitive disorders. Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) is a biocompatible polymer that is used in Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved pharmaceutical products and medical devices. PLGA nanoparticles (NPs) have been reported to improve drug penetration across the BBB both in vitro and in vivo. Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), and poloxamer (Pluronic) are widely used as excipients to further improve the stability and effectiveness of PLGA formulations. Peptides and other linkers can be attached on the surface of PLGA to provide targeting delivery. With the newly published guidance from the FDA and the progress of current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) technologies, manufacturing PLGA NP-based drug products can be achieved with higher efficiency, larger quantity, and better quality. The translation from bench to bed is feasible with proper research, concurrent development, quality control, and regulatory assurance

Antifungal Activities of Ageratum conyzoides L. Extract against Rice Pathogens Pyricularia oryzae Cavara and Rhizoctonia solani Kühn

Blast disease and sheath blight disease caused by infection with Pyricularia oryzae and Rhizoctonia solani, respectively, are serious fungal diseases in paddy fields. Although synthetic fungicides have been used to control these diseases, the development of ecologically friendly alternatives is required because fungicides can cause health problems and environmental pollution. Natural herbs possessing antifungal activities are among the candidates as alternatives. Ageratum conyzoides is known to contain antifungal compounds, such as precocene II and polymethoxyflavones. Here, we report the antifungal activities of five compounds isolated after ethanol extraction from Ageratum conyzoides against Pyricularia oryzae and Rhizoctonia solani in vitro. Further, we demonstrated the protective effect of the extract on rice from Pyricularia oryzae infection by field trial testing in a shaded net-house

Comparative Examination of Phytonutrients and Antioxidant Activity of Commonly Consumed Nuts and Seeds Grown in Vietnam

The aim of the present study was to determine the phenolics, carotenoids, B-vitamins, and antioxidant activity of nuts and seeds grown in Vietnam. The concentrations of carotenoids and B-vitamins may vary among the nuts and seeds. Watermelon seed contained the highest level of lutein while pumpkin seed was the β-carotene richest sample. Sachi inchi and sunflower seed comprised considerable levels of vitamin B1, B6, and B9. The phenolic analysis revealed that cashew contained the highest total amount of flavonoids (466.04 μg/g), with catechin, epicatechin, and procyanidin B2 predominating over the other flavonoids. Likewise, chlorogenic and neochlorogenic acids made up the highest total amount of phenolic acids in sunflower seed (1870.41 μg/g). Walnut appeared to possess the highest antioxidant activity evaluated by DPPH, ABTS, FRAP, and reducing power assays. The correlation analysis indicated strong positive correlations between total phenolic content with DPPH and FRAP values. Principal component analysis graphically showed the distant positioning of cashew and sunflower seed, highlighting their significantly higher levels of phenolics. The findings of the study would be useful to improve nutrient database contents for flavonoids and phenolic acids as well as to promote the consumption of nut and seed products in Vietnam

Nutraceuticals in HIV and COVID-19-Related Neurological Complications: Opportunity to Use Extracellular Vesicles as Drug Delivery Modality

People living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) are at an increased risk of severe and critical COVID-19 infection. There is a steady increase in neurological complications associated with COVID-19 infection, exacerbating HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) in PLWHA. Nutraceuticals, such as phytochemicals from medicinal plants and dietary supplements, have been used as adjunct therapies for many disease conditions, including viral infections. Appropriate use of these adjunct therapies with antiviral proprieties may be beneficial in treating and/or prophylaxis of neurological complications associated with these co-infections. However, most of these nutraceu-ticals have poor bioavailability and cannot cross the blood–brain barrier (BBB). To overcome this challenge, extracellular vesicles (EVs), biological nanovesicles, can be used. Due to their intrinsic features of biocompatibility, stability, and their ability to cross BBB, as well as inherent homing capabilities, EVs hold immense promise for therapeutic drug delivery to the brain. Therefore, in this review, we summarize the potential role of different nutraceuticals in reducing HIV-and COVID-19-associated neurological complications and the use of EVs as nutraceutical/drug delivery vehicles to treat HIV, COVID-19, and other brain disorders

Convolutional Neural Networks Improve Radiologists’ Performance in Breast Cancer Screening for Vietnamese patients

Nowadays, breast cancer is one of the leading cancers in Vietnam, and it causes approximately 6000 deaths every year. The rate of breast cancer patients was calculated as 26.4/100000 persons in 2018. There are 21,555 new cases reported in 2020. However, these figures can be reduced with early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer disease in women through mammographic imaging. In many hospitals in Vietnam, there is a lack of experienced breast cancer radiologists. Therefore, it is helpful to develop an intelligent system to improve radiologists’ performance in breast cancer screening for Vietnamese patients. Our research aims to develop a convolutional neural network-based system for classifying breast cancer X-Ray images into three classes of BI-RADS categories as BI-RADS 1 (“normal”), BI-RADS 23 (“benign”) and BI-RADS 045 (“incomplete and malignance”). This classification system is developed based on the convolutional neural network with ResNet 50. The system is trained and tested on a breast cancer image dataset of Vietnamese patients containing 7912 images provided by Hanoi Medical University Hospital radiologists. The system accuracy uses the testing set achieved a macAUC (a macro average of the three AUCs) of 0.754. To validate our model, we performed a reader study with the breast cancer radiologists of the Hanoi Medical University Hospital, reading about 500 random images of the test set. We confirmed the efficacy of our model, which achieved performance comparable to a committee of two radiologists when presented with the same data. Additionally, the system takes only 6 seconds to interpret a breast cancer X-Ray image instead of 450 seconds interpreted by a Vietnamese radiologist. Therefore, our system can be considered as a “second radiologist,” which can improve radiologists’ performance in breast cancer screening for Vietnamese patients

Plga nanoparticle-based formulations to cross the blood-brain barrier for drug delivery: From r&d to cgmp

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a natural obstacle for drug delivery into the human brain, hindering treatment of central nervous system (CNS) disorders such as acute ischemic stroke, brain tumors, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1-associated neurocognitive disorders. Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) is a biocompatible polymer that is used in Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved pharmaceutical products and medical devices. PLGA nanoparticles (NPs) have been reported to improve drug penetration across the BBB both in vitro and in vivo. Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), and poloxamer (Pluronic) are widely used as excipients to further improve the stability and effectiveness of PLGA formulations. Peptides and other linkers can be attached on the surface of PLGA to provide targeting delivery. With the newly published guidance from the FDA and the progress of current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) technologies, manufacturing PLGA NP-based drug products can be achieved with higher efficiency, larger quantity, and better quality. The translation from bench to bed is feasible with proper research, concurrent development, quality control, and regulatory assurance