There is increasing interest in using natural products as anticancer agents, as many have antioxidative properties that may help to prevent cellular damage that can lead to cancer. In addition, there is the expectation that many natural products will have low toxicity and few side effects. However, most anticancer and antioxidative agents are hydrophobic, reducing their bioavailability in vivo and making them problematic to deliver. Curcumin provides a good model system for study. In low doses it shows both anticancer and antioxidation effects, whereas in high doses and delivered locally it could be cytotoxic for cancer cells. In this paper, curcumin microemulsions were formed with food-grade chemicals, including soybean lecithin, soybean oil, and Tween 80, a Food and Drug Administration-approved surfactant. The optimized composition formed curcumin microemulsions with a mean size of 40–50 nm, carrying a concentration of curcumin as high as 15 µM. The stability of curcumin microemulsions refrigerated at 5°C over at least 968 days was assessed by size distribution and zeta potential. The effects of low-frequency ultrasound on two oral squamous cell carcinoma cell lines (OSCC-4 and OSCC-25), and the synergy between treatment with curcumin microemulsions and low-frequency sonic stimulation, were tested. Finally, microscopic imaging of the cells confirmed the toxic effects of the curcumin microemulsions, showing damaged and ruptured cells after treatment. Brief exposure to the curcumin-containing microemulsions did have cytotoxic effects, but the addition of ultrasound strongly enhanced those effects, especially on OSCC-25 cells.

Resveratrol is thought to have many benefits to human health, including anti-oxidant and anti-cancer properties. It can be found in grapes and peanuts, but at low concentrations, and extraction from these sources involves enormous waste. A highly invasive and low-value plant, polygonum cuspidatum (PC) is a good source of resveratrol, provided an efficient method of extraction is developed. We report on the development of magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer particles that bind resveratrol, which could be used for the extraction of resveratrol from PC extracts. Magnetic nanoparticles were included in the synthesis to allow magnetic separations. Rather than using resveratrol itself as the imprinting template, a less expensive compound sharing important functional groups (orcinol) was used. The target recognition ability of the magnetic orcinol-imprinted poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) composite particles, MOIPs, was examined. Finally, in vitro suppression of human osteogenic sarcoma (HOS) cells by MOIPs, with and without resveratrol, was studied. Delivery of resveratrol via the imprinted polymer particles substantially increased the toxicity to these tumor cells.

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) can often bind target molecules with high selectivity and specificity. When used as MIPs, conductive polymers may have unique binding capabilities; they often contain aromatic rings and functional groups, which can undergo π-π and hydrogen bonding interactions with similarly structured target (or template) molecules. In this work, an electrochemical method was used to optimize the synthetic self-assembly of poly(aniline-co-metanilic acid) and testosterone, forming testosterone-imprinted electronically conductive polymers (TIECPs) on sensing electrodes. The linear sensing range for testosterone was from 0.1 to 100 pg/mL, and the limit of detection was as low as ~pM. Random urine samples were collected and diluted 1000-fold to measure testosterone concentration using the above TIECP sensors; results were compared with a commercial ARCHITECT ci 8200 system. The testosterone concentrations in the tested samples were in the range of 0.33 ± 0.09 to 9.13 ± 1.33 ng/mL. The mean accuracy of the TIECP-coated sensors was 90.3 ± 7.0%.

Cutaneous wound healing produces pigmented scars, especially under UV irradiation. In this work, zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) have several morphologies, including nanorods, nanoflowers, and nanospheres. Their size and specific surface area were measured by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and surface area analysis. The ability of both the ZnO NPs and blends thereof with polymers to protect against phototoxicity was measured using human fibroblast Hs68 cells. Finally, the relative gene expressions of the cellular apoptosis pathway, including p53, Bcl-2, Bax, and Capase 3, were determined by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR).

Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) is a biomarker on the surface of cells with a role in promoting self-tolerance by suppressing the inflammatory activity of T cells. In this work, one peptide of PD-1 was used as the template for molecular imprinting to form magnetic peptide-imprinted poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) composite nanoparticles (MPIP NPs). The nanoparticles were characterized by dynamic light scattering (DLS), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis, and superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) analysis. Natural killer 92 (NK-92) cells were added to these composite nanoparticles and then incubated with human hepatoma (HepG2) cells. The viability and the apoptosis pathway of HepG2 were then studied using cell counting kit-8 (CCK8) and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), respectively. These nanoparticles were found to significantly enhance the activity of natural killer cells toward HepG2 cells by increasing the expression of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), caspase 8, and especially caspase 3.