Nanosistemas para el tratamiento del Parkinson

En los últimos años ha crecido el interés en la lucha contra enfermedades neurodegenerativas como el Parkinson. En la actualidad, las terapias contra el Parkinson se centran en la modificación de los síntomas motores para mejorar la calidad de vida de los pacientes, pero no evitan la neurodegeneración de las neuronas dopaminérgicas ni proporcionan una adecuada neuroprotección, no estando tampoco exentas de presentar efectos adversos. Los avances en investigación han podido establecer nuevas terapias y se han desarrollado nuevos nanosistemas de administración de sustancias activas, destinados a reducir o evitar los inconvenientes de las terapias actuales. En este trabajo se analizan los sistemas nanométricos desarrollados en los últimos años, realizando una clasificación de los mismos en función de la vía de administración

A ready-to-use dry powder formulation based on protamine nanocarriers for pulmonary drug delivery

The use of oral antibiotic therapy for the treatment of respiratory diseases as tuberculosis has promoted the appearance of side effects as well as resistance to these treatments. The low solubility, high metabolism, and degradation of drugs as rifabutin, have led to the use of combined and prolonged therapies, which difficult patient compliance. In this work, we develop inhalable formulations from biomaterials such as protamine to improve the therapeutic effect. Rifabutin-loaded protamine nanocapsules (NCs) were prepared by solvent displacement method and were physico-chemically characterized and evaluated for their dissolution, permeability, stability, cytotoxicity, hemocompatibility, internalization, and aerodynamic characteristics after a spray-drying procedure. Protamine NCs presented a size of around 200 nm, positive surface charge, and drug association up to 54%. They were stable as suspension under storage, as well as in biological media and as a dry powder after lyophilization in the presence of mannitol. Nanocapsules showed a good safety profile and cellular uptake with no tolerogenic effect on macrophages and showed good compatibility with red blood cells. Moreover, the aerodynamic evaluation showed a fine particle fraction deposition up to 30% and a mass median aerodynamic diameter of about 5 µm, suitable for the pulmonary delivery of therapeutics. © 202

A ready-to-use dry powder formulation based on protamine nanocarriers for pulmonary drug delivery

The use of oral antibiotic therapy for the treatment of respiratory diseases as tuberculosis has promoted the appearance of side effects as well as resistance to these treatments. The low solubility, high metabolism, and degradation of drugs as rifabutin, have led to the use of combined and prolonged therapies, which difficult patient compliance. In this work, we develop inhalable formulations from biomaterials such as protamine to improve the therapeutic effect. Rifabutin-loaded protamine nanocapsules (NCs) were prepared by solvent displacement method and were physico-chemically characterized and evaluated for their dissolution, permeability, stability, cytotoxicity, hemocompatibility, internalization, and aerodynamic characteristics after a spray-drying procedure. Protamine NCs presented a size of around 200 nm, positive surface charge, and drug association up to 54%. They were stable as suspension under storage, as well as in biological media and as a dry powder after lyophilization in the presence of mannitol. Nanocapsules showed a good safety profile and cellular uptake with no tolerogenic effect on macrophages and showed good compatibility with red blood cells. Moreover, the aerodynamic evaluation showed a fine particle fraction deposition up to 30% and a mass median aerodynamic diameter of about 5 µm, suitable for the pulmonary delivery of therapeuticsThis research was funded by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion RETOS - PID2019-107500RB-I00, Ministry of Human Capacities, Hungary grant TKP2021-EGA-32 and the Erasmus+ program of the European UnionS

Visual sensor fusion for active security in robotic industrial environments

This work presents a method of information fusion involving data captured by both a standard CCD camera and a ToF camera to be used in the detection of the proximity between a manipulator robot and a human. Both cameras are assumed to be located above the work area of an industrial robot. The fusion of colour images and time of light information makes it possible to know the 3D localization of objects with respect to a world coordinate system. At the same time this allows to know their colour information. Considering that ToF information given by the range camera contains innacuracies including distance error, border error, and pixel saturation, some corrections over the ToF information are proposed and developed to improve the results. The proposed fusion method uses the calibration parameters of both cameras to reproject 3D ToF points, expressed in a common coordinate system for both cameras and a robot arm, in 2D colour images. In addition to this, using the 3D information, the motion detection in a robot industrial environment is achieved, and the fusion of information is applied to the foreground objects previously detected. This combination of information results in a matrix that links colour and 3D information, giving the possibility of characterising the object by its colour in addition to its 3D localization. Further development of these methods will make it possible to identify objects and their position in the real world, and to use this information to prevent possible collisions between the robot and such objects

3D point cloud registration based on a purpose-designed similarity measure

This article introduces a novel approach for finding a rigid transformation that coarsely aligns two 3D point clouds. The algorithm performs an iterative comparison between 2D descriptors by using a purpose-designed similarity measure in order to find correspondences between two 3D point clouds sensed from different positions of a free-form object. The descriptors (named with the acronym CIRCON) represent an ordered set of radial contours that are extracted around an interest-point within the point cloud. The search for correspondences is done iteratively, following a cell distribution that allows the algorithm to converge toward a candidate point. Using a single correspondence an initial estimation of the Euclidean transformation is computed and later refined by means of a multiresolution approach. This coarse alignment algorithm can be used for 3D modeling and object manipulation tasks such as "Bin Picking" when free-form objects are partially occluded or present symmetries

Accurate estimation of airborne ultrasonic time-of-flight for overlapping echoes

In this work, an analysis of the transmission of ultrasonic signals generated by piezoelectric sensors for air applications is presented. Based on this analysis, an ultrasonic response model is obtained for its application to the recognition of objects and structured environments for navigation by autonomous mobile robots. This model enables the analysis of the ultrasonic response that is generated using a pair of sensors in transmitter-receiver configuration using the pulse-echo technique. This is very interesting for recognizing surfaces that simultaneously generate a multiple echo response. This model takes into account the effect of the radiation pattern, the resonant frequency of the sensor, the number of cycles of the excitation pulse, the dynamics of the sensor and the attenuation with distance in the medium. This model has been developed, programmed and verified through a battery of experimental tests. Using this model a new procedure for obtaining accurate time of flight is proposed. This new method is compared with traditional ones, such as threshold or correlation, to highlight its advantages and drawbacks. Finally the advantages of this method are demonstrated for calculating multiple times of flight when the echo is formed by several overlapping echoes.This work has been supported by the Spanish Government projects DPI2006-15313 and DPI2012-36959