With the rapid development of biomaterials and biotechnologies, various functional materials-based drug delivery systems (DDS) are developed to overcome the limitations of traditional drug release formulations, such as uncontrollable drug concentration in target organs/tissues and unavoidable adverse reactions. Polymer nanofibers exhibit promising characteristics including easy preparation, adjustable features of wettability and elasticity, tailored surface and interface properties, and surface-to-volume ratio, and are used to develop new DDS. Different kinds of drugs can be incorporated into the polymer nanofibers. Additionally, their release kinetics can be modulated via the preparation components, component proportions, and preparation processes, enabling their applications in several fields. A timely and comprehensive summary of polymeric nanofibers for DDS is thus highly needed. This review first describes the common methods for polymer nanofiber fabrication, followed by introducing controlled techniques for drug loading into and release from polymer nanofibers. Thus, the applications of polymer nanofibers in drug delivery were summarized, particularly focusing on the relation between the physiochemical properties of polymeric nanofibers and their DDS performance. It is ended by listing future perspectives.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are major contributors to food spoilage, animal diseases, and the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria in healthcare, highlighting the urgent need for effective treatments. Bacteriocins produced by lactic acid bacteria (LAB) have gained attention for their non-toxic nature and strong antimicrobial properties. LAB-derived bacteriocins have been successfully applied in food preservation and are classified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as ‘food-grade’ or ‘generally recognized as safe’ (GRAS). This review summarizes recent progress in the production, purification, and emerging applications of LAB bacteriocins. It emphasizes their versatility in food preservation, agriculture, and medicine, providing insights into their role in antimicrobial development and functional food innovation.

Oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis of virus infection and antioxidants are becoming promising candidates as therapeutic agents. This study is designed to investigate the effect of total flavonoids of Spatholobus suberectus Dunn (TFSD) on oxidative stress in mice induced by porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) infection. The PCV2 infection leads to significant decrease in thymus and spleen indices, elevation of xanthine oxidase (XOD) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) activities, reduction in GSH level and GSH to GSSG ratio and decline of superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, indicating the formation of immunosuppression and oxidative stress. TFSD treatment recovered the alteration of viscera index, antioxidant content and activities of oxidative-associated enzymes to a level similar to control. Our findings suggested that PCV2 induced immunosuppression and oxidative stress in mice and TFSD might be able to protect animals from virus infection via regulation of immune function and inhibition of oxidative stress.

Reactions between halogen substituted terpyridine ligands F- (L¹), Cl- (L²), Br- (L³) and I-4′-phenyl-terpyridine (L⁴) and ZnBr₂ or ZnI₂ led to the formation of complexes [Zn(Br)₂L¹] (1), [Zn(I)₂L¹] (2), [Zn(Br)₂L²] (3), [Zn(I)₂L²] (4), [Zn(Br)₂L³] (5), [Zn(I)₂L³] (6), [Zn(Br)₂L⁴] (7), and [Zn(I)₂L⁴] (8), respectively, which were characterized by elemental analysis, ¹H NMR, IR and single crystal X-ray diffraction. Their photoluminescence properties, solution stabilities, hydrophilicity/lipophilicity properties and anti-proliferative activity against three cancer cell lines as well as structure–function relationships are analyzed. All the complexes, which show high solution stabilities and lipophilicity under determination conditions, reveal much higher antiproliferative activities than cisplatin against the human lung carcinoma cell line (A549), human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (Bel-7042) and human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7) in vitro. Fluorescence spectroscopy and circular dichroic analysis reveal that the compounds have strong affinity binding with ctDNA and stack onto the base pairs of the ctDNA. The results obtained are further explained in terms of the electronic properties of the compounds by density functional theory (DFT) calculations, and it is found that the halogen anions play critical roles in the antitumor activity of these compounds. Their affinities to HSP90 proteins, ALK, EGFR and HER2 kinases and the binding sites on these proteins have been determined by computational docking analysis, and the results indicate that the only form of their binding is van der Waals forces.

A series of ZnCl₂ complexes (compounds 1–10) with 4′-(substituted-phenyl)-2,2′:6′,2′′-terpyridine that bears hydrogen (L¹), p-methyl (L²), p-methoxy (L³), p-phenyl (L⁴), p-tolyl (L⁵), p-hydroxyl (L⁶), m-hydroxyl (L⁷), o-hydroxyl (L⁸), p-carboxyl (L⁹), or p-methylsulfonyl (L¹⁰) were prepared and then characterized by ¹H NMR, electrospray mass-spectra (ESI-MS), IR, elemental analysis, and single crystal X-ray diffraction. In vitro cytotoxicity assay was used to monitor the antiproliferative activities against tumor cells. Absorption spectroscopy, fluorescence titration, circular dichroism spectroscopy, and molecular modeling studied the DNA interactions. All of the compounds display interesting photoluminescent properties and different maximal emission peaks due to the difference of the substituent groups. The cell viability studies indicate that the compounds have excellent antiproliferative activity against four human carcinoma cell lines, A549, Bel-7402, MCF-7, and Eca-109, with the lowest IC₅₀ values of 0.33 (10), 0.66 (6), 0.37 (7), and 1.05 (7) μM, respectively. The spectrophotometric results reveal that the compounds have strong affinity binding with DNA as intercalator and induce DNA conformational transition. Molecular docking studies indicate that the binding is contributed by the π…π stacking and hydrogen bonds, providing an order of nucleotide sequence binding selectivity as ATGC > ATAT > GCGC. These compounds intercalate into the base pairs of the DNA of the tumor cells to affect their replication and transcription, and the process is supposed to play an important role in the anticancer mechanism.