1,721,010 research outputs found
POWDER COMPOSITION BASED ON MICROPARTICLES EMBEDDING NANOPARTICLES FOR THE DELIVERY OF THERAPEUTIC/DIAGNOSTIC COMPOUNDS
No full textCardiovascular inhalation for targeted drug delivery in cardiac disease
No full textRecombinant proteins, cell, and gene therapies are collectively defined as biological drugs or biologics. These therapies have transformed the lives of millions of patients over the past decades, with the number of FDA-approved biologics increasing exponentially in recent years. However, out of approximately 700 biological therapies approved by the FDA in the last 20 years, less than 1% are indicated for cardiac pathologies. The application of biologics in cardiovascular disease has faced significant challenges, including short plasma half-life, the multifactorial complexity of cardiac disease, and the lack of efficient, non-invasive, and patient-friendly drug-delivery routes. This translational gap is particularly pressing given the immense socioeconomic burden of cardiovascular disease, which remains the leading cause of death globally and accounts for billions in annual healthcare costs and lost productivity. Inhalation-based drug delivery has recently emerged as a promising strategy for treating cardiovascular disease, with several proof-of-concept studies demonstrating its potential in heart failure, the most prevalent cardiac condition. This narrative review summarizes the latest experimental evidence in the novel field of Cardiovascular Inhalation, i.e., the lung-to-heart route for biologics. We discuss translational challenges, preclinical evidence, and future perspectives for bringing this innovative approach to clinical practice
Heart failure: Targeting transcriptional and post-transcriptional control mechanisms of hypertrophy for treatment
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Nanomedicine Approaches for the Pulmonary Treatment of Cystic Fibrosis
No full textCystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disease affecting today nearly 70,000 patients worldwide and characterized by a hypersecretion of thick mucus difficult to clear arising from the defective CFTR protein. The over-production of the mucus secreted in the lungs, along with its altered composition and consistency, results in airway obstruction that makes the lungs susceptible to recurrent and persistent bacterial infections and endobronchial chronic inflammation, which are considered the primary cause of bronchiectasis, respiratory failure, and consequent death of patients. Despite the difficulty of treating the continuous infections caused by pathogens in CF patients, various strategies focused on the symptomatic therapy have been developed during the last few decades, showing significant positive impact on prognosis. Moreover, nowadays, the discovery of CFTR modulators as well as the development of gene therapy have provided new opportunity to treat CF. However, the lack of effective methods for delivery and especially targeted delivery of therapeutics specifically to lung tissues and cells limits the efficiency of the treatments. Nanomedicine represents an extraordinary opportunity for the improvement of current therapies and for the development of innovative treatment options for CF previously considered hard or impossible to treat. Due to the peculiar environment in which the therapies have to operate characterized by several biological barriers (pulmonary tract, mucus, epithelia, bacterial biofilm) the use of nanotechnologies to improve and enhance drug delivery or gene therapies is an extremely promising way to be pursued. The aim of this review is to revise the currently used treatments and to outline the most recent progresses about the use of nanotechnology for the management of CF
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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