Publications by authors named "M I Afouna"

Treatment of colon diseases presents one of the most significant obstacles to drug delivery due to the inability to deliver sufficient drug concentration selectively to the colon. The goal of the proposed study was to develop, optimize, and assess an effective colon target delivery system of theophylline-based nanovesicles (TP-NVs) surrounded by a biodegradable polymeric shell of chitosan (CS) and Eudragit L100 (E) for the treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC). TP-loaded nanovesicles were fabricated using the ethanol injection method and coated with CS and E, respectively.

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Glimepiride (3rd-generation sulfonylurea) is used for treatment of type 2 diabetes, but its oral administration has been associated with severe gastric disturbances such as nausea, vomiting, heartburn, anorexia, haemolytic anaemia. Accordingly, the transdermal route may represent a potentially suitable alternative. This work investigates the usefulness of a novel drug carrier system for transdermal application.

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The use of peptide ligand modified PEGylated liposomes has been widely investigated for tumor targeting. Peptides are mainly inserted in the liposomal lipid bilayer using PEG-lipid spacer (Peptide-PEG-DSPE). However, a lower cellular uptake from longer nonlinear PEG spacer was reported, we here synthesized a high functionality and quality (HFQ) lipid with a short, linear serine-glycine repeated peptide [(SG)] spacer.

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Candesartan Cilexetil (CC) is a prodrug widely used in the treatment of hypertension and heart failure, but it has some limitations, such as very poor aqueous solubility, high affinity to P-glycoprotein efflux mechanism, and hepatic first-pass metabolism. Therefore, it has very low oral bioavailability. In this study, glyceryl monostearate (GMS) and Capryol™ 90 were selected as solid and liquid lipids, respectively, to develop CC-NLC (nanostructured lipid carrier).

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Porous carriers have been put forward as a promising alternative for stabilizing the amorphous state of loaded drugs, and thus significantly improving the dissolution rate of poorly soluble compounds. The purpose of this study was to enhance the saturation solubility, dissolution rate and drug loading of the poorly water-soluble drug silymarin via incorporation into mesoporous silica nanospheres within a lyophilized tablet to obtain a unique formulation. 3 full factorial design was applied to study the effect of both independent variables, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as stabilizer and binder and sucrose as cryoprotectant and disintegrant; and on the dependent variables that included the mean particle size (Y), disintegration time (Y), tablet strength (Y) and % of drug release after 2 min, R,Y.

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