A well-defined poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether-b-poly(lactic acid) copolymer (mPEG-PLA) featuring a new, Y-shaped, architecture with a hydroxyl functional group between the two blocks has been prepared and thoroughly characterized. The functional copolymer was then readily coupled to diglycolyl-cabazitaxel. The resulting copolymer conjugates assembled into stable and monodisperse nanoparticles (NPs) in aqueous suspension. The architecture of the copolymer conjugate is shown to impact the spatial distribution of the drug within the nanoparticles. With the Y-shaped architecture, cabazitaxel was found localized at the interface of the hydrophobic PLA core and the hydrophilic mPEG corona of the NPs, as substantiated by variable temperature NMR analysis of the nanoparticles in D2O. Preliminary in vitro release studies reveal dependence on the architecture of the copolymer conjugate. This new approach offers promising perspectives to finely tune the position of the active ingredient in polymeric nanoparticles.

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This paper describes the analysis of the propagation of regular and irregular waves in a flume by using Fluent® model, which is based on the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations and employs the finite volume method and the Volume of Fluid (VoF) technique to deal with two-phase flows (air and water). At the end of the flume, a numerical beach is used to suppress wave reflections. The methodology consists of adding a damping sink term to the momentum equation. In this study, this term is calibrated for three cases of regular incident waves (H = 1 m, T = 5, 7.5, and 12 s) by varying the linear and quadratic damping coefficients of the formulation. In general, while lower values of damping coefficients cause residuals on the free surface elevation due to wave interactions with the outlet boundary, reflection occurs on the numerical beach when higher values are used. A range of optimal damping coefficients are found considering one of them null. In one of these cases, temporal series of free surface elevation are compared with theoretical ones and very good agreement is reached. Afterwards, an irregular wave propagation, characterized by a JONSWAP spectrum, is investigated. Several gauges along the flume are evaluated and good agreement between the spectrum obtained numerically and the ones imposed at beginning of the flume is verified. This study shows the capacity of NS models, such as Fluent®, to simulate adequately regular and irregular wave propagations in a flume with numerical beach to avoid reflections.

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