The aim of this study was to design a controlled release vehicle for insulin to preserve its stability and biological activity during fabrication and release. A modified, double emulsion, solvent evaporation, technique using homogenisation force optimised entrapment efficiency of insulin into biodegradable nanoparticles (NP) prepared from poly (DL-lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) and its PEGylat...

Diabetes is a set of diseases characterized by defects in insulin utilization, either through autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing cells (Type I) or insulin resistance (Type II). Treatment options can include regular injections of insulin, which can be painful and inconvenient, often leading to low patient compliance. To overcome this problem, novel formulations of insulin are being inve...

Biodegradable oligolysine and oligoarginine-type homopeptides functionalized with PEG of two different molecular weights interact with insulin, at physiological pH, affording complexes studied by dynamic light scattering, ζ-potential, circular dichroism, FTIR spectroscopy, and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC). High levels of insulin complexation efficiencies (>99.5%) were determined for a...

Fluorescent nanoparticles have enabled many discoveries regarding how molecular machines function. Quantum dots have been the dominant class of fluorescent nanoparticles but suffer from blinking and from a substantial dark fraction--particles where the fluorescence is never seen--complicating any analysis of biological function. Nanoparticles composed of conjugated fluorescent polymers (Pdots) ...

PURPOSE Here, we investigated the formation and functional properties of self-assembled lecithin/chitosan nanoparticles (L/C NPs) loaded with insulin following insulin-phospholipid complex preparation, with the aim of developing a method for oral insulin delivery. METHODS Using a modified solvent-injection method, insulin-loaded L/C NPs were obtained by combining insulin-phospholipid complexe...

OBJECTIVES The objectives of this study were to use magnetic resonance (MR) molecular imaging to 1) characterize the aortic neovascular development in a rat model of atherosclerosis and 2) monitor the effects of an appetite suppressant on vascular angiogenesis progression. BACKGROUND The James C. Russell:LA corpulent rat strain (JCR:LA-cp) is a model of metabolic syndrome characterized by obe...

Nanoparticles or microparticles created by physical complexation between two polyelectrolytes may have a prospective use as an excipient for oral insulin administration. Natural polymers such as tragacanth, alginate, dextran, pullulan, hyaluronic acid, gelatin and chitosan can be potential candidates for this purpose. In this research, insulin particles were prepared by the inclusion of insulin...

We present a proof-of-principle study of superconducting single photon detectors (SSPD) for the detection of individual neutral molecules/nanoparticles at low energies. The new detector is applied to characterize a laser desorption source for biomolecules and allows retrieval of the arrival time distribution of a pulsed molecular beam containing the amino acid tryptophan, the polypeptide gramic...