Zhiguo Zheng

A new method of nanoparticle formulation for poorly water-soluble materials was demonstrated for curcumin. The drug was dissolved in organic solvent that is miscible with water (ethanol), and drug nucleation was initiated by gradual worsening of the solution by the addition of an aqueous polyelectrolyte assisted by ultrasonication. Curcumin crystals of 60-100 nm size were obtained depending on the component concentrations, sonication power, and initial solvent. Layer-by-layer shell assembly with biocompatible polyelectrolytes was used to provide a particle coating with a high surface potential and the stabilization of drug nanocolloids. Polyelectrolyte layer-by-layer encapsulation allowed sustained drug release from nanoparticles over the range of 10-20 h.

Nano-encapsulation of a poorly soluble anticancer drug was demonstrated with a sonication assisted layer-by-layer polyelectrolyte coating (SLbL). We changed the strategy of LbL-encapsulation from making microcapsules with many layers in the walls for encasing highly soluble materials to using a very thin polycation/polyanion coating on low solubility nanoparticles to provide them with good colloidal stability. SLbL encapsulation of paclitaxel resulted in stable 100-200 nm diameter colloids with a high electrical surface ξ-potential (of -45 mV) and drug content in the nanoparticles of 90 wt%. In the top-down approach, nanocolloids were prepared by rupturing a powder of paclitaxel using ultrasonication and simultaneous sequential adsorption of oppositely charged biocompatible polyelectrolytes. In the bottom-up approach paclitaxel was dissolved in organic solvent (ethanol or acetone), and drug nucleation was initiated by the addition of aqueous polyelectrolyte assisted by ultrasonication. Paclitaxel release rates from such nanocapsules were controlled by assembling multilayer shells with variable thicknesses and were in the range of 10-20 h.

Trifluoromethylpyridine (TFMP) is a biologically active fragment formed by connecting trifluoromethyl and pyridine ring. As a result of its unique physical and chemical properties and outstanding biological activity, a variety of pesticide compounds with the TFMP fragment have been discovered and marketed and have played important roles in crop protection research. It is therefore a timely and valuable task to summarize the rationality on how to create new molecules containing TFMP fragments based on the structure-activity relationships, design mentality, and potential mechanism. This review gives a brief summary on the pesticides containing TFMP fragments in the past 5 years and introduces the latest progress of our group in this field. The aim is to provide readers with a convenient route to touch this topic and hopefully serve some educational purpose for graduate students as well.