The first review of synthetic strategies and engineering applications of hollow carbon spheres is given herein.

Constitutional self-instructed membranes were developed and used for mimicking the adaptive structural functionality of natural ion-channel systems. These membranes are based on dynamic hybrid materials in which the functional self-organized macrocycles are reversibly connected with the inorganic silica through hydrophobic noncovalent interactions. Supramolecular columnar ion-channel architectures can be generated by reversible confinement within scaffolding hydrophobic silica mesopores. They can be structurally determined by using X-ray diffraction and morphologically tuned by alkali-salts templating. From the conceptual point of view, these membranes express a synergistic adaptive behavior: the simultaneous binding of the fittest cation and its anion would be a case of “homotropic allosteric interactions,” because in time it increases the transport efficiency of the pore-contained superstructures by a selective evolving process toward the fittest ion channel. The hybrid membranes presented here represent dynamic constitutional systems evolving over time to form the fittest ion channels from a library of molecular and supramolecular components, or selecting the fittest ion pairs from a mixture of salts demonstrating flexible adaptation.

A novel pH- and glutathione-responsive drug delivery system has been developed by deposition of tannic acid (TA)–Fe(III) complex on the surface of mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN). The coating was easily accomplished within 30 seconds by successive addition of iron chloride (FeCl₃) and tannic acid in aqueous dispersion of MSN (e.g. MCM-41). A hydrophobic model drug, curcumin, showed sustainable drug release under physiological condition (pH 7.4), while a rapid curcumin release was triggered by lowering the pH to 6.0 or 4.5. Moreover, curcumin release could be controlled by adjusting the glutathione level, which accelerate the decomposition of TA–Fe(III) complex by competitive liganding. Therefore, these results would allow developing novel and simple pH- and glutathione-responsive drug delivery systems with potential applications such as in biomedicine.

The natural inhabitants of the gastrointestinal tract play a key role in the maintenance of human health. Over the last century, the changes on the behavior of our modern society have impacted the diversity of this gut microbiome. Among the strategies to restore gut microbial homeostasis, the use of probiotics has received a lot of attention. Probiotics are living microorganisms that promote the host health when administered in adequate amounts. Its popularity increase in the marketplace in the last decade draws the interest of scientists in finding suitable methods capable of delivering adequate amounts of viable cells into the gastrointestinal tract. Encapsulation comes into the scene as an approach to enhance the cells survival during processing, storage and consumption. This paper provides a comprehensive perspective of the probiotic field at present time focusing on the academia and industry scenarios in the past few years in terms of encapsulation technologies employed and research insights including patents. The analysis of the encapsulation technologies considering food processing costs and payload of viable bacteria reaching the gastrointestinal tract would result into successful market novelties. There is yet a necessity to bridge the gap between academia and industry.