Evaluation of Prototype Cell Delivery Catheters Using Agarose Gel and Cell Culture Experiments

Neurodegenerative diseases and brain tumors affect millions of patients worldwide and are associated with significant morbidity and mortality. The blood brain barrier constitutes a major obstacle to delivery of therapeutic agents administered systemically for treating these disorders. Intracranial drug delivery provides a novel way of bypassing the blood brain barrier and achieving high concentration of therapeutic agents in the brain while avoiding systemic side effects. However damage to tissues during insertion of catheters, release of air in the brain and consequent backtracking of dye are some disadvantages with this mode of treatment. We evaluated prototype cell delivery catheters (each with outer and inner catheter) developed to minimize these complications. The catheters (1.6 mm small bore and 2.0 mm large bore) were evaluated using agarose gel and cell culture experiments. We initially delivered pheochromocytoma (PC 12) cells through a 25-gauge syringe needle to optimize cell growth. We observed in the agarose gel experiments that when the inner catheter was filled and then inserted with the outer catheter into gel, no air bubble or backtracking of dye was seen. PC 12 cells delivered through the prototype catheters appeared to growth in collagen gel and differentiate into neurons in the presence of neural growth factor. Future studies with animal experiments would be needed to confirm the findings

Development and In-vitro characterization of floating drug delivery system of ketoconazole

The oral route is increasingly being used for the delivery of therapeutic agents because the low cost of the therapy and ease of administration lead to high level of patient compliances.  Floating drug delivery system (FDDS) float in the gastric fluid and prolong GRT to obtain sufficient drug bioavailability, because of their lower bulk density compared to that of the aqueous medium. The aim of the present study is to prepare floating tablets as a delivery system for controlled release of Ketoconazole. Ketoconazole is a drug of choice in antifungal category and gives significant result. Floating tablets containing Ketoconazole were prepared by direct compression technique using varying concentrations of different grades of polymers of Hydrxy Propyl Cellulose & Xanthan gum. To evaluate the prepared floating tablets for various parameters like hardness, friability, uniformity of drug content, in-vitro floating studies, in-vitro dissolution studies. Keywords: Ketoconazole, Floating drug delivery system, Hydrxy Propyl Cellulose, Xanthan gu

Disease Diagnosis System

In this paper, aspects of the design of an intelligent medical system for diagnosis of Common disease that can be detected by patient data. A number of patient cases are selected as prototype and stored in a separate database. The knowledge is acquired from literature review and human experts of the specific domain and is used as a base for analysis, diagnosis and recommendations. Knowledge is represented via an integrated formalism that combines production rules and a neural network. This results in better representation, and facilitates knowledge acquisition and maintenance. Diagnosis is performed via the ES, based on patient data. The proposed system is experimented on various scenarios in order to evaluate its performance. In all the cases, proposed system exhibits satisfactory results