Nano Design for Smart Gels


Book Description

Nano Design for Smart Gels addresses the formation and application of technological gels and how nanostructural prospects are fundamental to gelling. Topics focus on the classification of gels based on small molecules and polymer gellers, biogels, stimulation conditions, topological, thermodynamic and kinetic aspects and characterization techniques. The book outlines structure and characterization concepts in order to provide pragmatic tools for the design and tailoring of new functional gel architectures. It provides an important source for readers and researchers who are currently or may soon be in research with gels, presenting an overview of fundamental topics. - Highlights the building-blocks that make up the main functional groups that result in gelator compounds - Provides an accessible source to the most common responses of gels, classified in their functional groups - Outlines major characterization techniques, showing how they can be combined




Smart Polymeric Nano-Constructs in Drug Delivery


Book Description

Smart Polymeric Nano-Constructs in Drug Delivery: Concept, Design and Therapeutic Applications provides a thorough discussion of the most state of the art material and polymer exploitations for the delivery of bioactive(s) as well as their current and clinical status. The book enables researchers to prepare a variety of smart drug delivery systems to investigate their properties as well as to discover their uses and applications. The novelty of this approach addresses an existing need of exhaustively understanding the potential of the materials including polymeric drug delivery systems that are smartly designed to deliver bioactive(s) into the body at targeted sites without showing side effects. The book is helpful for those in the health sector, specifically those developing nanomedicine using smart material-based nano-delivery systems. Polymers have unique co-operative properties that are not found with low-molecular-weight compounds along with their appealing physical and chemical properties, constituting the root of their success in drug delivery. Smart Polymeric Nano-Constructs in Drug Delivery: Concept, Design and Therapeutic Applications discusses smart and stimuli responsive polymers applicable in drug delivery, followed detailed information about various concepts and designing of polymeric novel drug delivery systems for treatment of various type of diseases, also discussing patents related to the field. The book helps readers to design and develop novel drug delivery systems based on smart materials for the effective delivery of bioactive that take advantage of recent advances in smart polymer-based strategies. It is useful to those in pharmaceutical sciences and related fields in developing new drug delivery systems. - Provides comprehensive overview of the potential role of polymeric systems in drug delivery - Explores the design, synthesis, and application of different smart material-based delivery systems - Includes fundamental and clinical applications




Nanofabrication for Smart Nanosensor Applications


Book Description

Nanofabrication for Smart Nanosensor Applications addresses the design, manufacture and applications of a variety of nanomaterials for sensing applications. In particular, the book explores how nanofabrication techniques are used to create more efficient nanosensors, examines their major applications in biomedicine and environmental science, discusses the fundamentals of how nanosensors work, explores different nanofabrication techniques, and comments on toxicity and safety issues relating to the creation of nanosensors using certain nanomaterial classes. This book is an important resource for materials scientists and engineers who want to make materials selection decisions for the creation of new nansensor devices. - Summarizes current research and applications of a variety of nanofabrication techniques for the creation of efficient sensing devices - Provides readers with an understanding of surfaces and interfaces, a key challenge for those working on hybrid nanomaterials, carbon nanotubes, graphene, polymers and liquid crystal electro-optical imaging - Discusses the variability and sight recognition of biopolymers, such as DNA molecules, which offer a wide range of opportunities for the self-organization of nanostructures into much more complex patterns




Stimuli-Responsive Gels


Book Description

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Stimuli-Responsive Gels" that was published in Gels




Organic Materials as Smart Nanocarriers for Drug Delivery


Book Description

Organic Materials as Smart Nanocarriers for Drug Delivery presents the latest developments in the area of organic frameworks used in pharmaceutical nanotechnology. An up-to-date overview of organic smart nanocarriers is explored, along with the different types of nanocarriers, including polymeric micelles, cyclodextrins, hydrogels, lipid nanoparticles and nanoemlusions. Written by a diverse range of international academics, this book is a valuable reference for researchers in biomaterials, the pharmaceutical industry, and those who want to learn more about the current applications of organic smart nanocarriers. - Explores the most recent molecular- and structure-based applications of organic smart nanocarriers in drug delivery - Highlights different smart nanocarriers and assesses their intricate organic structural properties for improving drug delivery - Assesses how molecular organic frameworks lead to more effective drug delivery systems




Microbial Enzymes and Biotechniques


Book Description

This book compiles the latest research on the multifarious roles of microbial enzymes, and provides an overview of microbial enzymes and biotechnologies. It discusses the use of microbial enzymes in innovative areas like nanomedicine and synthetic biotechnology, as well as the use of starch digesting enzymes and bioactive proteins as biotherapeutics, all of which have applications in modern drug discovery processes. The book also examines the concept of microbial biotransformation and protein engineering, and covers topics such as the immobilization of therapeutic enzymes, bioengineering of enzymes for bioactive compounds, the production of hydrolytic and oxidative enzymes from plant raw materials, and prebiotics and probiotics. Given its multidisciplinary scope, this book will appeal to researchers and industry experts in the fields of microbiology, biotechnology and molecular medicine.




Chemomechanical Instabilities in Responsive Materials


Book Description

The present volume includes most of the material of the invited lectures delivered at the NATO Advanced Study Institute “Morphogenesis through the interplay of nonlinear chemical instabilities and elastic active media” held from 2th to 14th July 2007 at the Institut d’Etudes Scientifiques de Cargèse (http://www.iesc.univ-corse.fr/), in Corsica (France). This traditional place to organize Summer Schools and Workshops in a well equipped secluded location at the border of the Mediterranean sea has, over many years now, earned an increasing deserved reputation. Non-linear dynamics of non equilibrium systems has worked its way into a great number of fields and plays a key role in the understanding of se- organization and emergence phenomena in domains as diverse as chemical reactors, laser physics, fluid dynamics, electronic devices and biological morphogenesis. In the latter case, the viscoelastic properties of tissues are also known to play a key role. The control and formulation of soft responsive or “smart” materials has been a fast growing field of material science, specially in the area of po- mer networks, due to their growing applications in bio-science, chemical sensors, intelligent microfluidic devices, ... . Nature is an important p- vider of active materials whether at the level of tissues or at that of s- cellular structures. As a consequence, the fundamental understanding of the physical mechanisms at play in responsive materials also shines light in the understanding of biological artefacts.




Polymeric Nanosystems


Book Description

Polymeric Nanosystems: Theranostic Nanosystems, Volume One examines the applications of nanotherapeutic systems and nanodiagnostics in relation to polymeric nanosystems. In the last decade, numerous biopolymers have been utilized to prepare polymeric nanosystems for therapeutic applications. These biopolymers include polylactic acid, polylactide-co-glycolide, polycaprolactone, acrylic polymers, cellulose and cellulose derivatives, alginates, chitosan, gellan gum, gelatin, albumin, chontroitin sulfate, hyaluronic acid, guar gum, gum Arabic, gum tragacanth, xanthan gum, and starches. Besides these biopolymers, grafted polymers are also being used as advanced polymeric materials to prepare many theranostic nanocarriers and nanoformulations. This book explores the array of polymeric nanosystems to understand therapeutic potentials. It will be useful to pharmaceutical scientists, including industrial pharmacists and analytical scientists, health care professionals, and regulatory scientists actively involved in the pharmaceutical product and process development of tailor-made polysaccharides in drug delivery applications. - Contains in-depth discussions of the polymeric nanosystems including high-quality graphics, flowcharts, and graphs for enhanced understanding - Reviews the literature on polymeric nanosystems while also suggesting new avenues - Includes contributions in all areas of polymeric nanosystems, providing a thorough and interdisciplinary work




Supramolecular Soft Matter


Book Description

The pivotal text that bridges the gap between fundamentals and applications of soft matter in organic electronics Covering an expanding and highly coveted subject area, Supramolecular Soft Matter enlists the services of leading researchers to help readers understand and manipulate the electronic properties of supramolecular soft materials for use in organic opto-electronic devices, such as photovoltaics and field effect transistors, some of the most desired materials for energy conservation. Rather than offering a compilation of current trends in supramolecular soft matter, this book bridges the gap between fundamentals and applications of soft matter in organic electronics in an effort to open new directions in research for applying supramolecular assembly into organic materials while also focusing on the morphological functions originating from the materials' self-assembled architectures. This unique approach distinguishes Supramolecular Soft Matter as a valuable resource for learning to identify concepts that hold promise for the successful development of organic/polymeric electronics for use in real-world applications. Supramolecular Soft Matter: Combines important topics to help supramolecular chemists and organic electronics researchers work together Covers an interdisciplinary field of prime importance to government-supported R&D research Discusses the concepts and perspectives in a dynamic field to aid in the successful development of organic electronics Includes applications for energy conservation like photovoltaics and field effect transistors Teeming with applicable information on both molecular design and synthesis, as well as the development of smart molecular assemblies for organic electronic systems, Supramolecular Soft Matter provides more practical in-depth coverage of this rapidly evolving technology than any other book in its field.




Smart Nanocontainers


Book Description

Smart Nanocontainers explores the fundamental concepts and emerging applications of nanocontainers in biomedicine, pharmaceuticals and smart materials. In pharmaceuticals, nanocontainers have advantages over their micro-counterparts, including more efficient drug detoxification, higher intracellular uptake, better stability, less side effects and higher biocompatibility with tissue and cells. In materials science, such as coating technology, they help by making coatings smarter, stronger and more durable. This important reference will help anyone who wants to learn more on how nanocontainers are used to provide the controlled release of active agents, including their applications in smart coatings, corrosion, drug delivery, diagnosis, agri-food and gas storage. - Discusses how the molecular design of nanocarriers can be optimized to increase performance - Explores how nanocarriers are being used to produce a new generation of active coatings - Explains how nanocarriers are being used to deliver more effective nanoscale drug delivery