Study of erythrocytes as a novel drug carrier for the delivery of artemether

Resealed erythrocytes have been explored in various dimensions of drug delivery, owing to their high biocompatibility and inability to initiate immune response. The present research was designed to evaluate the drug delivery potential of erythrocytes by loading a hydrophobic anti-malarial drug, Artemether. Three different loading techniques were applied to achieve maximum optimized drug loading. A HPLC method was validated for drug quantification in erythrocytes. The relatively high loading was achieved using hypotonic treatment was 31.39% as compared to other two methods. These, drug loaded erythrocytes were characterized for membrane integrity via ESR showing higher ESR values for drug loaded cells as compared to normal cells. Moreover, microscopic evaluation was done to observe morphological changes in erythrocytes after successful loading which showed swollen cells with slight rough surface as compared to smooth surface of normal cells. Drug release was studied for 8 h which showed more than 80% release within 3-7 h from erythrocytes treated with different hypotonic methods. Overall, the study revealed a potential application of erythrocytes in delivery of hydrophobic drugs using hypotonic treatment as compared to other methods

In Vitro Prevention of Browning in Persian Walnut (<i>Juglans regia</i> L.) cv. Sulaiman

The present investigation was undertaken to standardize the media and the anti-browning regime in order to minimize the phenolic browning of an in vitro culture of Persian walnut cv. Sulaiman. The experiments involved two types of explants, forced and unforced shoot tips, two types of media, Driver and Kuniyuki Walnut (DKW) medium andMurashige and Skooģs (MS) medium, and three types of anti-browning agents, namely, Polyvinylpyrrolidone, ascorbic acid and activated charcoal at 150, 350 and 550 mg/L each. The investigation was replicated thrice under a completely randomized design. Forced shoot tips of cv. Sulaiman on DKW medium showed the best performance in terms of least browning (13.6 ± 10.5%) and highest survival percentage of explants (74.5 ± 2.4%) when treated with ascorbic acid at 550 mg/L. However, unforced shoot tips in MS medium did not perform well and manifested maximum browning (52.9 ± 5.2%). Based on the results, we conclude that incorporation of ascorbic acid in the DKW medium significantly reduced the media and explant browning, thus, it could set the basis of successful in vitro-propagation of walnuts