Desenvolvimento de carreadores lipídicos nanoestruturados para administração cutânea de fluconazol

O fluconazol (FLU) é um antifúngico muito utilizado no tratamento de dermatomicoses devido à sua eficácia e segurança. No entanto, este pode apresentar perfil farmacocinético muitas vezes inadequado, promovendo recorrência da doença ou resistência do fungo, apresentando uma série de efeitos colaterais além de alta toxicidade. Por esta razão, há uma busca contínua de novos medicamentos antifúngicos mais potentes, mas, sobretudo, mais seguros que os existentes. Os carreadores lipídicos nanoestruturados (NLCs) são compostos por uma matriz contendo lipídio liquido e sólido, e possui como uma de suas vantagens a alta capacidade de encapsulamento. O objetivo do trabalho foi desenvolver e caracterizar NLCs para administração cutânea de fluconazol. A solubilidade do FLU foi avaliada em ácido oleico (AO) e monoestearato de glicerila (GMS) e observou-se uma maior incorporação de FLU na mistura desses lipídios do que nos compostos isolados. Os NLCs contendo AO, GMS, poloxamer-407, fosfatidilcolina de soja (PC) e FLU foram desenvolvidos empregando o método de homogeneização em alta velocidade de cisalhamento à quente. A caracterização foi realizada por espectroscopia de correlação de fótons e os resultados de diâmetro médio, índice de polidispersidade e potencial zeta foram de 218,63 e 314,1nm, 0,417 e 0,640 e -28,4 e -25,8mV para os NLCs com (NLC_FLU) e sem o FLU (NLC) respectivamente. No estudo de estabilidade, as formulações NLC e NLC_FLU foram armazenados à 8ºC e à temperatura ambiente e os resultados mostraram maior estabilidade durante os seis meses para os NLC_FLU armazenada à 8ºC. A morfologia dos NLCs foi determinada por microscopia eletrônica de varredura de efeito de campo na qual os NLCs apresentaram morfologia esférica e escala nanométrica. Uma metodologia foi validada por espectrofotometria na região do ultravioleta para a determinação da eficiência de encapsulação (EE) do fármaco que foi ...

Caracterização e infecção de células tronco mesenquimais e células semelhantes a neurônios, derivadas de cordão umbilical bovino pelo herpesvírus bovino Tipo 5 (BoHV-5)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Development of Cationic Solid Lipid Nanoparticles with Factorial Design-Based Studies for Topical Administration of Doxorubicin

Topical chemotherapy using doxorubicin, a powerful anticancer drug, can be used as an alternative with reduced systemic toxicity when treating skin cancer. The aim of the present work was to use factorial design-based studies to develop cationic solid lipid nanoparticles containing doxorubicin; further investigations into the influence of these particles on the drug's cytotoxicity and cellular uptake in B16F10 murine melanoma cells were performed. A 3(2) full factorial design was applied for two different lipid phases; one phase used stearic acid and the other used a 1:2 mixture of stearic acid and glyceryl behenate. The two factors investigated included the ratio between the lipid and the water phase and the ratio between the surfactant (poloxamer) and the co-surfactant (cetylpyridinium chloride). It was observed that the studied factors did not affect the mean diameter or the polydispersity of the obtained nanoparticles; however, they did significantly affect the zeta potential values. Optimised formulations with particle sizes ranging from 251 to 306 nm and positive zeta potentials were selected for doxorubicin incorporation. High entrapment efficiencies were achieved (97%) in formulations with higher amounts of stearic acid, suggesting that cationic charges on doxorubicin molecules may interact with the negative charges in stearic acid. Melanoma culture cell experiments showed that cationic solid lipid nanoparticles without drug were not cytotoxic to melanoma cells. The encapsulation of doxorubicin significantly increased cytotoxicity, indicating the potential of these nanoparticles for the treatment of skin cancer.

Inhibition of Fas-associated death domain-containing protein (FADD) protects against myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury in a heart failure mouse model

AIM As technological interventions treating acute myocardial infarction (MI) improve, post-ischemic heart failure increasingly threatens patient health. The aim of the current study was to test whether FADD could be a potential target of gene therapy in the treatment of heart failure. METHODS Cardiomyocyte-specific FADD knockout mice along with non-transgenic littermates (NLC) were subjected to 30 minutes myocardial ischemia followed by 7 days of reperfusion or 6 weeks of permanent myocardial ischemia via the ligation of left main descending coronary artery. Cardiac function were evaluated by echocardiography and left ventricular (LV) catheterization and cardiomyocyte death was measured by Evans blue-TTC staining, TUNEL staining, and caspase-3, -8, and -9 activities. In vitro, H9C2 cells transfected with ether scramble siRNA or FADD siRNA were stressed with chelerythrin for 30 min and cleaved caspase-3 was assessed. RESULTS FADD expression was significantly decreased in FADD knockout mice compared to NLC. Ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) upregulated FADD expression in NLC mice, but not in FADD knockout mice at the early time. FADD deletion significantly attenuated I/R-induced cardiac dysfunction, decreased myocardial necrosis, and inhibited cardiomyocyte apoptosis. Furthermore, in 6 weeks long term permanent ischemia model, FADD deletion significantly reduced the infarct size (from 41.20 ± 3.90% in NLC to 26.83 ± 4.17% in FADD deletion), attenuated myocardial remodeling, improved cardiac function and improved survival. In vitro, FADD knockdown significantly reduced chelerythrin-induced the level of cleaved caspase-3. CONCLUSION Taken together, our results suggest FADD plays a critical role in post-ischemic heart failure. Inhibition of FADD retards heart failure progression. Our data supports the further investigation of FADD as a potential target for genetic manipulation in the treatment of heart failure.

Characterization of the potential role for RNA-binding protein FUS in DNA damage response: A quantitative proteomic approach

FUS/TLS (fused in sarcoma/translocated in liposarcoma) is a ubiquitously expressed protein of the hnRNP family, that has been discovered as fused to transcription factors in several human sarcomas and found in protein aggregates in neurons of patients with an inherited form of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis [Vance C. et al., 2009]. FUS is a 53 kDa nuclear protein that contains structural domains, such as a RNA Recognition Motif (RRM) and a zinc finger motif, that give to FUS the ability to bind to both RNA and DNA sequences. It has been implicated in a variety of cellular processes, such as pre-mRNA splicing, miRNA processing, gene expression control and transcriptional regulation [Fiesel FC. and Kahle PJ., 2011]. Moreover, some evidences link FUS to genome stability control and DNA damage response: mice lacking FUS are hypersensitive to ionizing radiation (IR) and show high levels of chromosome instability and, in response to double-strand breaks, FUS is phosphorylated by the protein kinase ATM [Kuroda M. et al., 2000; Hicks GG. et al., 2000; Gardiner M. et al., 2008]. Furthermore, preliminary results of mass spectrometric identification of FUS interacting proteins in HEK293 cells, expressing a recombinant flag-tagged FUS protein, highlighted the interactions with proteins involved in DNA damage response, such as DNA-PK, XRCC-5/-6, and ERCC-6, raising the possibilities that FUS is involved in this pathway, even though its role still needs to be clarified. This study aims to investigate the biological roles of FUS in human cells and in particular the putative role in DNA damage response through the characterization of the proteomic profile of the neuroblastoma cell line SH-SY5Y upon FUS inducible depletion, by a quantitative proteomic approach. The SH-SY5Y cell line that will be used in this study expresses, in presence of tetracycline, a shRNA that targets FUS mRNA, leading to FUS protein depletion (SH-SY5Y FUS iKD cells). To quantify changes in proteins expression levels a SILAC strategy (Stable Isotope Labeling by Amino acids in Cell culture) will be conducted on SH-SY5Y FUS iKD cells and a control SH-SY5Y cell line (that expresses a mock shRNA) and the relative changes in proteins levels will be evaluated after five and seven days upon FUS depletion, by nanoliquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (nLC-MS/MS) and bioinformatics analysis. Preliminary experiments demonstrated that the SH-SY5Y FUS iKD cells, when subjected to genotoxic stress (high dose of IR), upon inducible depletion of FUS, showed a increased phosphorylation of gH2AX with respect to control cells, suggesting an higher activation of the DNA damage response.

Liquid crystal temperature sensor based on a micrometric structure and a metallic nanometric layer

This letter presents a novel temperature sensor, which consists of an interdigitated comb electrode structure with a micrometric-scale size, nanometric metallic layer, and nematic liquid crystal (NLC) film. This sensor exploits the permittivity dependence of the NLC with temperature and principle of electrical conductivity above the percolation threshold in thin film metallic layers. The latter has been demonstrated to increase the temperature sensitivity considerably. The high impedance input reduces the power dissipation, and the high enough voltage output makes it easy to measure the output signal with high precision. The operation principle and fabrication process as well as the characterization of the temperature sensor are presented. Experimental results show that the device offers a sensitivity of 9 mV/°C and is dependent on the applied voltage. This is six times greater than the same structure without the use of a nanometric layer.

Optical-phase conjugation nonlinearity compensation in Flexi-Grid optical networks

Optical-phase conjugation nonlinearity compensation (OPC-NLC) in optical networks is evaluated using a built-in tool including self-channel and crosstalk channel interference effects. Though significant improvements are observed, a further refined launch power policy is required to fully take advantage of OPC-NLC capability.

Sistemas semissólidos à base de nanopartículas lipídicas

As nanopartículas lipídicas foram desenvolvidas no início dos anos 90 e, atendendo às vantagens que apresentam comparativamente a outros sistemas coloidais, têm-se demonstrado muito promissoras, tanto para uso cosmético como farmacêutico. No entanto, atualmente apenas existem comercializados produtos cosméticos à base de nanopartículas lipídicas, o que pode ser justificado pelas restrições regulamentares relacionadas com a introdução de medicamentos no mercado. Existem dois tipos de nanopartículas lipídicas, as nanopartículas de lípidos sólidos (Solid Lipid Nanoparticles, SLN) e os vetores lipídicos nanoestruturados (Nanostructured Lipid Carriers, NLC), consistindo ambos em dispersões aquosas de nanopartículas sólidas. A baixa viscosidade destes sistemas dificulta a sua aplicação tópica. Neste contexto, têm sido desenvolvidas várias formulações semissólidas à base de nanopartículas lipídicas para aplicação tópica, nomeadamente cutânea, ocular, nasal e vaginal. A primeira parte desta dissertação consiste na revisão bibliográfica relativa ao estado da arte dos sistemas semissólidos à base de nanopartículas lipídicas, para uso farmacêutico e cosmético, baseada nos estudos realizados por diversos autores, entre 2012 e 2016. Na segunda parte, são apresentados resultados do trabalho experimental relativo ao desenvolvimento e caraterização de uma formulação semissólida à base de nanopartículas lipídicas.

Nanostructured lipid carriers for nose-to-brain delivery in neurodegenerative diseases therapy

191 p.