Encapsulation of Anti-Tuberculosis Drugs within Mesoporous Silica and Intracellular Antibacterial Activities.

Tuberculosis is a major problem in public health. While new effective treatments to combat the disease are currently under development, they tend suffer from poor solubility often resulting in low and/or inconsistent oral bioavailability. Mesoporous materials are here investigated in an intracellular assay, for the effective delivery of compound PA-824; a poorly soluble bactericidal agent being developed against Tuberculosis (TB).

High content screening for compounds that induce early stages of human embryonic stem cell differentiation.

Embryonic stem cells, due to their self-renewal and pluripotency properties, can be used to repair damaged tissues and as an unlimited source of differentiated cells. Although stem cells represent an important opportunity for cell based therapy and small molecules screening (in the context of drug or target discovery) many drawbacks are still preventing their widespread use. One of the most significant limitations is related to the complexity, as well as the reliability, of current protocols driving stem cells into any homogeneously differentiated cellular population.