Hyperpigmentation (HP) is an unfavorable skin disease that typically caused by injury, inflammation, or photoaging and leads to numerous physical and psychological issues in patients. Recently, development and application of natural whitening substances, particularly compound curcumin (CUR), is one of the most prevalent treatments for HP. However, it is still a formidable challenge to improve the percutaneous delivery of CUR due to its inadequate solubility in water and excellent barrier function of skin. To overcome the limitations of conventional delivery and increase the percutaneous absorption of CUR, the efficient delivery of CUR is urgently required. Herein, we developed a new malic acid-sorbitol deep eutectic solvent (MS/DES) gel microneedle loaded with CUR as a transdermal delivery system for HP treatment. The MS/DES gel produces three-dimensional (3D) network structure by self-assembly of hydrogen bond interactions, which conferred the CUR-MS/DES-GMN with sufficient mechanical properties to successfully penetrate skin tissue while also helping to enhance the drug's release rate. The CUR-MS/DES-GMN exhibit high biocompatibility and mechanical property in vivo of mice. The zebrafish experiments also show that CUR-MS/DES gel has significant effect of anti-pigmentation. Therefore, the designed CUR-MS/DES-GMN system provides a novel strategy for HP treatment based on self-assembly of naturally molecules.

Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a class of bioactive fatty acids that exhibit various physiological activities such as anti-cancer, anti-atherosclerosis, and lipid-lowering. It is an essential fatty acid that cannot be synthesized by the human body and must be derived from dietary sources. The natural sources of CLA are limited, predominantly relying on chemical and enzymatic syntheses methods. Microbial biosynthesis represents an environmentally benign approach for CLA production. Pine nut oil, containing 40–60% linoleic acid, serves as a promising substrate for CLA enrichment. In the present study, we developed a novel method for the production of CLA from pine nut oil using Lactiplantibacillus plantarum (L. plantarum) Lp-01, which harbors a linoleic acid isomerase. The optimal fermentation parameters for CLA production were determined using a combination of single-factor and response surface methodologies: an inoculum size of 2%, a fermentation temperature of 36 °C, a fermentation time of 20 h, and a pine nut oil concentration of 11%. Under these optimized conditions, the resultant CLA yield was 33.47 ?g/mL. Gas chromatography analysis revealed that the fermentation process yielded a mixture of c9, t11CLA and t10, c12 CLA isomers, representing 4.91% and 4.86% of the total fatty acid content, respectively.

Optical transparency methods can facilitate biological tissue optical imaging, which enabled accurate three-dimensional (3D) signal visualization and quantification of complex biological structures. Unfortunately, existing optical clearing approaches present a compromise between maximizing clearing capability, the preservation of fluorescent protein emission and the speed of sample processing. To address this challenge, we synthesis of a 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA)-acrylamide (AAm) copolymer using antipyrine (ATP) and 2,2′-thiodiethanol (TDE) as solvent, which could embed tissue samples rapidly and highly transparent, and compatible with multiple fluorescence labeling. It can enable volumetric imaging of tissue up to the scale of mice organs, shrinkage duration of the clearing and preserve emission from fluorescent proteins and dyes. This copolymer with suitable toughness and plasticity allows the tissue of interest to be sectioned into thin slices, and histological techniques provide high-resolution two-dimensional (2D) images of cells and subcellular structures. Furthermore, HEMA-AAm copolymer -tissue transparent could distinguish cell structures between healthy and diabetic disease in dye-labeled liver tissues, which provides new insights into pathological diagnosis and analysis. Copolymer provides an environment to facilitate high-resolution 3D/2D fluorescence imaging, which enables the study of cellular and tissue morphology in experimental and clinical conditions of interest.