Controlled degradability of PCL-ZnO nanofibrous scaffolds for bone tissue engineering and their antibacterial activity.

Up to date, tissue regeneration of large bone defects is a clinical challenge under exhaustive study. Nowadays, the most common clinical solutions concerning bone regeneration involve systems based on human or bovine tissues, which suffer from drawbacks like antigenicity, complex processing, low osteoinductivity, rapid resorption and minimal acceleration of tissue regeneration. This work thus addresses the development of nanofibrous synthetic scaffolds of polycaprolactone (PCL) - a long-term degradation polyester - compounded with hydroxyapatite (HA) and variable concentrations of ZnO as alternative solutions for accelerated bone tissue regeneration in applications requiring mid- and long-term resorption.

In Vivo evaluation of adipogenic induction in fibrous and honeycomb-structured atelocollagen scaffolds.

Nowadays, soft tissue restoration techniques are mainly focused on volume regeneration instead of function recovering. So far, autologous fat transplant has been the most popular method although its multiple reported problems like volume and function loss. Adipose tissue engineering therefore emerges as a solution for development of biological substitutes for soft tissue which promotes not only volume regeneration but also function restoration with minimal consequences.

Electrospraying technique for the fabrication of metronidazole contained PLGA particles and their release profile.

Advanced engineering of materials for the development of drug delivery devices provides scope for novel and versatile strategies for treatment of various diseases. 'Electrospraying' was used to prepare PLGA microparticles and further encapsulate the drug, metronidazole (Met) within the particles to function as a drug delivery system. Two different solvents were utilized for the preparation of drug loaded PLGA particles, whereby the polymeric solution in dichloromethane (DCM) produced particles of bigger sizes than using trifluoroethanol (TFE).

Drug delivery vehicles on a nano-engineering perspective.

Nanoengineered drug delivery systems (nDDS) have been successfully used as clinical tools for not only modulation of pharmacological drug release profile but also specific targeting of diseased tissues. Until now, encapsulation of anti-cancer molecules such as paclitaxel, vincristin and doxorubicin has been the main target of nDDS, whereby liposomes and polymer-drug conjugates remained as the most popular group of nDDS used for this purpose. The success reached by these nanocarriers can be imitated by careful selection and optimization of the different factors that affect drug release profile (i.