No abstract

Clinically, postoperative adhesions are common and serious complications, which almost always happen after abdominal or pelvic surgery. The adhesion development process is accompanied by increased inflammatory cell infiltration and oxygen-free radical production. In this study, the naturally occurring antioxidative and anti-inflammatory compounds extracted from Turkish galls by ethyl acetate (GEA) were encapsulated into an injectable and biodegradable thermosensitive hydrogel. Antiadhesion efficacy of the barrier system (GEA-NP/H) was tested on a rat peritoneum injury-cecum abrasion model. Upon injection, the mildly viscous liquid formed a potent physical barrier over the injured cecum and peritoneum without any additional cross-linkers or light sources. Once formed, GEA-NP/H acted as a durable wound dressing for more than 5 days, as well as a sustained drug depot of GEA. The polymer hydrogel can be degraded and absorbed gradually. After 14 days, severe adhesion occurred among rats treated with normal saline and GEA-loaded nanoparticles (GEA-NP). Whereas, frequency of score 1 adhesion among the blank hydrogel group is 30%, and 90% of the rats from GEA-NP/H group exhibited no adhesion. In addition, pathological sections and scanning electron microscopy assay demonstrated that operative defects treated with GEA-NP/H suffered from mild oxidative stress and inflammatory damages at early days after injury, as well as accelerated wound healing and more mature mesothelial cell deposition at the 14th day in contrast to the blank hydrogel treatment. Therefore, the study provided an available biodegradable hydrogel barrier to effectively prevent postsurgical adhesion.

No abstract

Leukemia is a clonal malignant hematopoietic stem cell disease. It is the sixth most lethal cancer and accounts for 4% of all cancers. The main form of treatment for leukemia is chemotherapy. While some cancer types with a higher incidence than leukemia, such as lung and gastric cancer, have shown a sharp decline in mortality rates in recent years, leukemia has not followed this trend. Drug resistance is often regarded as the main clinical obstacle to effective chemotherapy in patients diagnosed with leukemia. Many resistance mechanisms have now been identified, and multidrug resistance (MDR) is considered the most important and prevalent mechanism involved in the failure of chemotherapy in leukemia. In order to reverse MDR and improve leukemia prognosis, effective detection methods are needed to identify drug resistance genes at initial diagnosis. This article provides a comprehensive overview of published approaches for the detection of MDR in leukemia. Identification of relevant MDR genes and methods for early detection of these genes will be needed in order to treat leukemia more effectively.

The development of drug-loading technology will bring new and rapid development to the treatment of diseases. At present, drug delivery by nanoparticles, erythrocyte, and platelet have been studied extensively. Compared with traditional anticancer drugs, nano-drugs have shown many obvious advantages, disease treatment based on nanotechnology will bring a revolution in cancer treatment. Due to its inherent biocompatibility, large drug load and long half-life in the blood circulation, erythrocyte-inspired antibiotics, and some anticancer drugs delivery systems have also entered the clinical trial stage. At present, there are relatively few studies on drug delivery by platelets as carriers. It is necessary to overcome the shortcomings of platelets, such as easy activation, deformation, thrombosis, and difficult preservation. There are many ways to combine drugs with these carriers, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. It is necessary to seek the best combination scheme to increase drug loading and reduce the damage to therapeutic components to the carriers, so as to bring more mature and reliable methods for the clinical application of drug delivery technology. Several drug-loading technologies and their development were described according to various categories. The combination of drugs and carriers is summarized for better understanding of its practical application.