Polymer Additives to Personal Protective Equipment can Inactivate Pathogens.

Face masks have been proven to be medicine's best public health tool for preventing transmission of airborne pathogens. However, in situations with continuous exposure, lower quality and "do-it-yourself" face masks cannot provide adequate protection against pathogens, especially when mishandled. In addition, the use of multiple face masks each day places a strain on personal protective equipment (PPE) supply and is not environmentally sustainable.

Leveraging Affinity Interactions to Prolong Drug Delivery of Protein Therapeutics.

While peptide and protein therapeutics have made tremendous advances in clinical treatments over the past few decades, they have been largely hindered by their ability to be effectively delivered to patients. While bolus parenteral injections have become standard clinical practice, they are insufficient to treat diseases that require sustained, local release of therapeutics. Cyclodextrin-based polymers (pCD) have been utilized as a platform to extend the local delivery of small-molecule hydrophobic drugs by leveraging hydrophobic-driven thermodynamic interactions between pCD and payload to extend its release, which has seen success both in vitro and in vivo.

Polymer Microparticles Prolong Delivery of the 15-PGDH Inhibitor SW033291.

As the prevalence of age-related fibrotic diseases continues to increase, novel antifibrotic therapies are emerging to address clinical needs. However, many novel therapeutics for managing chronic fibrosis are small-molecule drugs that require frequent dosing to attain effective concentrations. Although bolus parenteral administrations have become standard clinical practice, an extended delivery platform would achieve steady-state concentrations over a longer time period with fewer administrations.

Serum biomolecules unable to compete with drug refilling into cyclodextrin polymers regardless of the form.

Polymers that are refillable and sustain local release will have a great impact in both preventing and treating local cancer recurrence as well as addressing non-resectable diseases. Polymerized cyclodextrin (pCD) disks, which reload drugs into molecular "pockets" in vivo through affinity interactions, have been previously shown to localize doxorubicin (Dox) to treat glioblastoma multiforme. However, one concern is whether drug refilling is influenced by competition from local biomolecules.

Soil mobility of synthetic and virus-based model nanopesticides.

Large doses of chemical pesticides are required to achieve effective concentrations in the rhizosphere, which results in the accumulation of harmful residues. Precision farming is needed to improve the efficacy of pesticides, but also to avoid environmental pollution, and slow-release formulations based on nanoparticles offer one solution. Here, we tested the mobility of synthetic and virus-based model nanopesticides by combining soil column experiments with computational modelling.