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Naturally occurring gums and resins with beneficial pharmaceutical and nutraceutical properties were tested for their possible protective effect against copper-induced LDL oxidation in vitro. Chiosmastic gum (CMG) (Pistacia lentiscus var. Chia resin) was the most effective in protecting human LDL from oxidation. The minimum and maximum doses for the saturation phenomena of inhibition of LDL oxidation were 2.5 mg and 50 mg CMG (75.3% and 99.9%, respectively). The methanol/water extract of CMG was the most effective compared with other solvent combinations. CMG when fractionated in order to determine a structure-activity relationship showed that the total mastic essential oil, collofonium-like residue and acidic fractions of CMG exhibited a high protective activity ranging from 65.0% to 77.8%. The other natural gums and resins (CMG resin 'liquid collection', P. terebinthus var. Chia resin, dammar resin, acacia gum, tragacanth gum, storax gum) also tested as above, showed 27.0%-78.8% of the maximum LDL protection. The other naturally occurring substances, i.e. triterpenes (amyrin, oleanolic acid, ursolic acid, lupeol, 18-a-glycyrrhetinic acid) and hydroxynaphthoquinones (naphthazarin, shikonin and alkannin) showed 53.5%-78.8% and 27.0%-64.1% LDL protective activity, respectively. The combination effects (68.7%-76.2% LDL protection) of ursolic-, oleanolic- and ursodeoxycholic- acids were almost equal to the effect (75.3%) of the CMG extract in comparable doses.

An inconvenient hurdle in the practice of nanomedicine is the protein corona, a spontaneous collection of biomolecular species by nanoparticles in living systems. The protein corona is dynamic in composition and may entail improved water suspendability and compromised delivery and targeting to the nanoparticles. How much of this nonspecific protein ensemble is determined by the chemistry of the nanoparticle core and its surface functionalization, and how much of this entity is dictated by the biological environments that vary spatiotemporally in vivo? How do we “live with” and exploit the protein corona without significantly sacrificing the efficacy of nanomedicines in diagnosing and curing human diseases? This article discusses the chemical and biophysical signatures of the protein corona and ponders challenges ahead for the field of nanomedicine.