Cancer is one of the most common causes of death worldwide. Inability in controlling anticancer drug delivery to tumor, systemic side effect on healthy tissue, instability of anticancer drugs, low concentration of drug around the tumor, and low efficiency of drug effect on the solid tumor may cause high mortality rate in cancer patients. Drug delivery systems based on nanofibers could perform an approach to treat cancer with the least side effects. The aim of this study is to improve a nanofiber drug delivery system based on polycaprolactone/chitosan blended electrospun nanofibers containing 5-fluorouracil. Nanofiber characteristics and drug release behavior of various nanofibers were investigated. The polymeric proportion had significant effect on release behavior, mechanical properties, and nanofiber morphology. Loading efficiency of these nanofibrous drug delivery systems was good, and its rate increased by increasing chitosan proportion. Also, increasing the chitosan in nanofibers led to increasing drug release period. The release mechanism of all nanofibers was Fickian diffusion according to Korsmeyer-Peppas model. This nanofibrous drug delivery system had a great potential to perform an anticancer drug delivery system for colorectal cancer. Further studies need to be conducted to improve the release period of 5-fluorouracil from these nanofibers.
Appearance is an important property of textiles, and in specifying textile appearance luster should be taken into account. There are many problems involved in defining and measuring the luster of textile surfaces, so luster and its measurement have been the subject of extensive investigation, in both theoretical and practical aspects. Many types of surface have been studied and many methods of assessing luster have been devised. There are several devices which are designed to measure luster and gloss, some designed specifically for textiles. However, there is still a lack of information regarding measurement and evaluation of luster of textile surfaces. Current methods investigate fabric via one or more directions and are not capable of providing a general view of fabric luster with regard to appearance, in particular for uneven fabrics. This study reports on a new methodology to obtain an index for the luster of fabric, which compares the luster of fabrics via image analysis. The method produces results consistent with human evaluation of luster, whereas in previous methods the lighting and procedures used in luster calculation have differed from the real-world situations of fabric usage. The method presented in this research, for all samples, takes photographs of fabrics in various directions under constant conditions, and derives the luminance of images. An index is obtained for the luster of fabrics by analyzing the luminance of fabrics.
Hyperthermia is considered as an effective supplementary cancer treatment. However, the uneven temperature distribution is the major challenge in hyperthermia. Nanotechnology could solve this problem by applying magnetic nanoparticles directly or in nanofibers as implants. Low solubility, poor cancer targeting, and leakage are limitations of free magnetic nanoparticles. In this work, Fe3O4 nanoparticles were loaded into polycaprolactone/chitosan blended nanofibers in various contents. Magnetic, chemical, physical, and morphology of the derived nanofibrous composites were then studied. The results showed the magnetic properties of the nanocomposite had low coercivity, which was close to superparamagnetic particles. Chemical analysis showed that components had no interaction with each other. Nevertheless, Fe3O4 was slightly transformed to other iron oxides. However, the magnetic analysis showed this transformation had no significant effect on final magnetic content of the nanofibers. The results of X‐ray diffraction (XRD) (19.5 nm), transmittance electron microscopy (TEM) (21.6 nm), and vibration sample magnetometer (VSM) (17 nm) suggested that the magnetic nanoparticles were single domain. Thermal analysis results showed that 7% Fe3O4 nanofibers had more heat increase as oppose to other nanofibrous composites in the alternative magnetic field (AMF). Nonetheless, the heat performance of 3% Fe3O4 nanofibers was more than others according to its specific power absorption (SPA). Therefore, due to the importance of using nanoparticles in the least possible content, this method can be used as a postsurgical treatment by applying these nanofibrous composites as implants on the tumor site. Moreover, these nanofiber composites could carry anticancer drugs, which are applied as a multi‐mode treatment system.
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