The delivery of curcumin, a broad-spectrum anticancer drug, has been explored in the form of liposomal nanoparticles to treat osteosarcoma (OS). Curcumin is water insoluble and an effective delivery route is through encapsulation in cyclodextrins followed by a second encapsulation in liposomes. Liposomal curcumin’s potential was evaluated against cancer models of mesenchymal (OS) and epithelial origin (breast cancer). The resulting 2-Hydroxypropyl-γ-cyclodextrin/curcumin - liposome complex shows promising anticancer potential both in vitro and in vivo against KHOS OS cell line and MCF-7 breast cancer cell line. An interesting aspect is that liposomal curcumin initiates the caspase cascade that leads to apoptotic cell death in vitro in comparison with DMSO-curcumin induced autophagic cell death. In addition, the efficiency of the liposomal curcumin formulation was confirmed in vivo using a xenograft OS model. Curcumin-loaded γ-cyclodextrin liposomes indicate significant potential as delivery vehicles for the treatment of cancers of different tissue origin. From the Clinical Editor Curcumin-loaded γ-cyclodextrin liposomes were demonstrated in vitro to have significant potential as delivery vehicles for the treatment of cancers of mesenchymal and epithelial origin. Differences between mechanisms of cell death were also evaluated.

An automatic, continuous, online monitoring technique was used to follow the polymerization of acrylamide under a variety of temperature and initiator conditions, without chromatographic columns. The technique furnishes, as a function of time, the weight-average polyacrylamide mass M w, the monomer conversion, reduced viscosity, and certain measures of polydispersity. After a complex initial phase following initiator addition, wherein impurities competed with monomer for free radicals, monomer conversion followed a first-order decay during most of the subsequent reaction. For fixed monomer concentration, at every point in conversion beyond very early points, M w was proportional to the inverse square root of the initiator concentration. Furthermore, the monomer decay time also scales in the same way, and M w vs conversion is linear during most of the conversion, with a negative slope. Hence, the overall reaction scheme falls within the quasi-steady state approximation (QSSA) of ideal polymerization kinetics. The rate constant for initiator decay, as well as the ratio of propagation rate constant squared to termination rate constant were determined. The activation energy for the potassium persulfate initiator decomposition was also determined. Deviations from the ideal kinetics at early and late conversion are rationalized by existing models. Using a technique for determining instantaneous polydispersity from the derivative of M w, it was possible to follow the evolution of the polydispersity for the polyacrylamide reactions.

Exploiting differences in refractivity and ultraviolet absorption between pairs of monomers and their associated polymers, automatic, continuous, online monitoring of polymerization reactions (ACOMP) was extended to copolymerization. ACOMP uses no chromatographic separation columns. Copolymerization of methyl methacrylate and styrene was chosen for developing the method. Both the instantaneous concentrations of comonomers and their incorporation rates into copolymer are obtained, which allows model-independent evolution of the average copolymer composition to be followed. Using the compositional information and simultaneous light-scattering data permits monitoring model-independent M w (cumulative weight-average molecular weight), without requiring measurements in different solvents. Simultaneous use of a viscometer allows a cross check on the light-scattering data. Molecular weight and composition data are used to obtain the copolymer bivariate mass and composition distribution. Monomer reactivity ratios are found by an errors in variables method. The reactivity ratios and composition distribution allow sequence length distributions to be computed.