The alternative use of natural products, like royal jelly (RJ), may be an important tool for the treatment of infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. RJ presents a large number of bioactive substances, including antimicrobial compounds. In this study, we carried out the chemical characterization of fresh and lyophilized RJ and investigated their antibacterial effects with the purpos...

The preservation of Bacillus firmus strain 37 cells by lyophilization was evaluated and response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) production by cells immobilized on loofa sponge. Interactions were studied with the variables temperature, pH and dextrin concentration using a central composite design (CCD). Immobilization time influence on β-CD production wa...

Cell-free protein synthesis is a promising tool to take biotechnology outside of the cell. A cell-free approach provides distinct advantages over in vivo systems including open access to the reaction environment and direct control over all chemical components for facile optimization and synthetic biology integration. Promising applications of cell-free systems include portable diagnostics, biot...

Drying is a common pharmaceutical process, whose potential to modify the final drug and/or dosage form properties is often underestimated. In the present study, pellets consisting of the matrix former calcium stearate (CaSt) incorporating the active pharmaceutical ingredient ibuprofen were prepared via wet extrusion and spheronization. Subsequent drying was performed by either desiccation, flui...

We studied the effect of lyophilization of serum pools on the determination of cholesterol with the enzymatic methods used in five automated analyzers: SMAC (Technicon), the RA-1000 (Technicon), the aca (Du Pont), the TDx (Abbott), and the Ektachem 700P (Kodak). We prepared two serum pools: pool A (2.2 g/L) and pool B (1.9 g/L). We separated each pool into three groups for treatment by lyophili...

Alpha-2-macroglobulin is an abundant secreted protein that is of particular interest because of its diverse ligand binding profile and multifunctional nature, which includes roles as a protease inhibitor and as a molecular chaperone. The activities of alpha-2-macroglobulin are typically dependent on whether its conformation is native or transformed (i.e. adopts a more compact conformation after...

Abstract This work introduces the novel gelatin/chitosan blend scaffolds containing different amounts of functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (f-MWCNTs) up to 0.1wt%, which were prepared by freeze drying (freezing and lyophilization). The composite scaffolds were characterized by Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to distinguish the functional groups and different bonds in...

Background: The short life time of human platelet units has led to a chronic shortage of fresh platelets in blood transfusion centers. Many approaches have been investigated experimentally to produce new hemostatically active platelet products that are capable of long term storage. Infusible platelet membrane (IPM) prepared from fresh or outdated human platelets have been developed as an altern...