This new method will enable the scale-up and manufacture of SPLP required for preclinical and clinical studies. Additionally, this method now allows for the acceleration of SPLP formulation development, enabling the rapid development and evaluation of novel carrier systems.

in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).To date, there is limited knowledge available regarding the key features of pretreated lignocellulosic substrates that promote the effective enzymatic hydrolysis of the cellulose component to glucose during bioconversion processes to produce ethanol. Fundamentally, cellulase enzymes require access to the cellulose to carry out effective hydrolysis. Porosity and the overall surface area of substrates have major structural features influencing the hydrolysis of pretreated substrates by cellulases. Simons' Stain (SS) is a potentially useful semiquantitative method for estimating the available surface area of lignocellulosic substrates. In this study, a modified, rapid SS method was developed, where the processing time was decreased from [50 to 6 h and the maximum dye adsorbed on the substrate was calculated using the adsorption isotherm for the orange and blue components of the dye mixture. The modified SS test readily measures the decrease in accessibility and hydrolyzability of a steam pretreated substrate that had been dried under three different drying regimes. For each of the lignocellulosic substrates, the total dye adsorption correlated well with the hydrolysis yields resulting in a correlation coefficient of r 2 ¼ 0.95. The modified SS procedure is an effective tool for assessing how lignocellulosic substrates might be potentially hydrolyzed by cellulases.

Utilization of ethanol produced from biomass has the potential to offset the use of gasoline and reduce CO(2) emissions. This could reduce the effects of global warming, one of which is the current outbreak of epidemic proportions of the mountain pine beetle (MPB) in British Columbia (BC), Canada. The result of this is increasing volumes of dead lodgepole pine with increasingly limited commercial uses. Bioconversion of lodgepole pine to ethanol using SO(2)-catalyzed steam explosion was investigated. The optimum pretreatment condition for this feedstock was determined to be 200 degrees C, 5 min, and 4% SO(2) (w/w). Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) of this material provided an overall ethanol yield of 77% of the theoretical yield from raw material based on starting glucan, mannan, and galactan, which corresponds to 244 g ethanol/kg raw material within 30 h. Three conditions representing low (L), medium (M), and high (H) severity were also applied to healthy lodgepole pine. Although the M severity conditions of 200 degrees C, 5 min, and 4% SO(2) were sufficiently robust to pretreat healthy wood, the substrate produced from beetle-killed (BK) wood provided consistently higher ethanol yields after SSF than the other substrates tested. BK lodgepole pine appears to be an excellent candidate for efficient and productive bioconversion to ethanol.

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Fiber size analysis, water retention value, and Simons' stain measurements were assessed for their potential to predict the susceptibility of a given substrate to enzymatic hydrolysis. Slight modifications were made to the fiber size analysis and water retention protocols to adapt these measurements to evaluate substrates for cellulolytic hydrolysis rather than pulps for papermaking. Lodgepole pine was pretreated by the steam and ethanol-organosolv processes under varying conditions. The Simons' stain procedure proved to be an effective method for indicating the potential ease of enzymatic hydrolysis of substrates pretreated by either process or when the pretreatment conditions were altered.