The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) is an independent organization devoted to the development of standards.

American Society for Testing and Materials

Nanomedicine and nano delivery systems are a relatively new but rapidly developing science where materials in the nanoscale range are employed to serve as means of diagnostic tools or to deliver therapeutic agents to specific targeted sites in a controlled manner Nanotechnology offers multiple benefits in treating chronic human diseases by site-specific, and target-oriented delivery of precise medicines Recently, there are a number of outstanding applications of the nanomedicine (chemotherapeutic agents, biological agents, immunotherapeutic agents etc) in the treatment of various diseases The current review, presents an updated summary of recent advances in the field of nanomedicines and nano based drug delivery systems through comprehensive scrutiny of the discovery and application of nanomaterials in improving both the efficacy of novel and old drugs (eg, natural products) and selective diagnosis through disease marker molecules The opportunities and challenges of nanomedicines in drug delivery from synthetic/natural sources to their clinical applications are also discussed In addition, we have included information regarding the trends and perspectives in nanomedicine area

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Nano based drug delivery systems: recent developments and future prospects

http://academic.oup.com/milmed/article-pdf/146/7/506/24126715/milmed-146-7-506.pdf

Goodman and Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics

I first read Davidson 30 years ago: at that time it was already in its 5th edition. A brief comparison shows that it then contained about 440,000 words in 1,100 pages: the current edition has compressed 625,000 words into 800 pages. I think I bought it as a student because it was cheap: but also because it seemed to be comprehensive and straightforward, and I have used it as a basis for my medical knowledge ever since. So I miss some of the old pictures of the acute skin rashes such as scarlet fever: in fact infectious disease has been transferred to the back and genetic factors take the first chapters. But careful linguistic comparison will still uncover the old phrases which some of us know by heart-there are minor changes such as 'alarming reactions to intravenous iron are uncommon, but have occasionally been noted', which becomes 'alarming systemic anaphyllactic reactions can occur'. Sir Stanley Davidson made 'no attempt to describe every rare disease or syndrome, but devoted most of the space available to those disorders most commonly encountered in practice'. I have grown up with successive editions, and have gradually come to appreciate the problems of the authors in the compression of knowledge. Having got to know many of them personally as real people rather than as names I can still recommend the book. It is the essential starting point for the study of internal medicine and for many doctors will remain their base reference work. The present editors have kept up-to-date and been prepared to prune the dead wood. There are many competitors in the market, and the publishers must take care with layout and illustration, although Davidson is still the best value for money. I will continue to recommend it to my clinical students: they will need to read it and know it to pass final MB. Postgraduates will need to remember the facts, but also to be able to place them in a broader perspective. The older consultant will still happily read it, and to get to know the authors themselves is really to complete your medical education. Dr John Macleod and his team have successfully kept alive the primary objective 'to provide a rational and easily comprehensible basis for the practice of medicine'. The book is economical in price and compact in size, but still contains the essential truths for the practice of good medicine.

Davidson's Principles and Practice of Medicine

This book succeeds Review of Medical Pharmacology , by Meyers, Jawetz, and Goldfien. Edited by B. G. Katzung, some of the important areas covered include drug receptors and pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics of absorption and biotransformation of drugs, autonomic pharmacology of cholinergic and adrenergic receptor stimulants and antagonists, antihypertensive agents, cardiac glycosides and other agents used in the treatment of congestive heart failure, therapeutic drugs for cardiac arrhythmias, diuretics, pharmacology of the CNS drugs such as anticonvulsants and anesthetics, antidepressants, narcotic analgesics, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents, endocrine pharmacology, antimicrobial and antimycobacterial drugs, antiprotozoal and antihelmintic drugs, cancer chemotherapy, and drugs and the immune system. Written by several prominent researchers and scientists, each chapter begins with a section on the basic pharmacology, chemistry, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of the agents under discussion. This is followed by a section on clinical pharmacology, which deals with relevant information regarding the clinical use of drugs on the various

Basic and Clinical Pharmacology

Grapefruit juice can markedly augment oral drug bioavailability was originally based on an unexpected observation from an interaction study between the dihydropyridine calcium channel antagonist, felodipine, and ethanol in which grapefruit juice was used to mask the taste of the ethanol Subsequent investigations showed that grapefruit juice acted by reducing presystemic felodipine metabolism through selective post-translational down regulation of cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4) expression in the intestinal wall Since the duration of effect of grapefruit juice can last 24h, repeated juice consumption can result in a cumulative increase in felodipine AUC and C(max) Clinically relevant interactions seem likely for most dihydropyridines, terfenadine, saquinavir, cyclosporin, midazolam, triazolam and verapamil and may also occur with lovastatin, cisapride and astemizole (Guo et al, 2000) The high variability of the magnitude of effect among individuals appeared dependent upon inherent differences in enteric CYP3A4 protein expression such that individuals with highest baseline CYP3A4 had the highest proportional increase At least 20 other drugs have been assessed for an interaction with grapefruit juice metabolism mediated by CYP3A4 appear affected by grapefruit juice Clinically relevant interactions seem likely for most dihydropyridines, terfenadine, saquinavir, cyclosporin, midazolam, triazolam and verapamil and may also occur with lovastatin, cisapride and astemizole The importance of these interactions appears to be influenced by individual patient susceptibility, type and amount of grapefruit juice and administration-related factors Although in vitro findings support the flavonoid, naringin, or the furanocoumarin, 6', 7'-dihydroxybergamottin, as being active ingredients A recent investigation indicated that neither of these substances made a major contribution to grapefruit juice-drug interactions in humans (Guo et al, 2000)

Grape fruit juice-drug interactions.

Sparfloxacin-metal complexes as antifungal agents - Their synthesis, characterization and antimicrobial activities

Simple, sensitive, rapid, and accurate high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method is developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of diltiazem, metformin, pioglitazone, and rosiglitazone hydrochloride in raw materials, their pharmaceutical formulations, and human serum. In HPLC, all the above drugs were chromatographed using acetonitrile-methanol-water (30:20:50, v/v, pH 2.59 ± 0.02) as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min at ambient temperature. The separation is carried out on a Hiber, 250-4.6 RP-18 column, equipped with a UV-vis detector at 230 nm. All the antidiabetic drugs eluted at different retention time and each showed a good resolution from diltiazem. The method is successfully applied to pharmaceutical formulations because no chromatographic interferences from the tablet excipients are found. The method is found to be linear, accurate, and precise with apposite detection and quantification limit. Suitability of the method for the quantitative determination of the drugs is proven by validation in accordance with the requirements laid down by International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) guidelines. The validation results, together with statistical treatment of the data, demonstrated the reliability of this method.

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Development and Validation of New Assay Method for the Simultaneous Analysis of Diltiazem, Metformin, Pioglitazone and Rosiglitazone by RP-HPLC and its Applications in Pharmaceuticals and Human Serum

Fexofenadine is a non-sedative and selective peripheral H1 receptor antagonist prescribed for allergic rhinitis and chronic urticaria. This article deals with a simple, feasible, and sensitive isocratic reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of fexofenadine hydrochloride in bulk drug, pharmaceutical dosage forms and in human serum. The chromatography was carried out at 20 ± 2°C using two different chromatographs and five different stationary phases. The isocratic mobile phase was phosphate buffer pH 7.4 and methanol (methanol–phosphate buffer, 35:65, v/v), detection was made at 218 nm and the mobile phase flowed at 1 ml min−1. Validation parameters included linearity, accuracy, precision, specificity, limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ), and robustness over a linearity range 5–15 μg ml−1 according to the ICH guidelines (r > 0.9999), the inter- and intra-day precisions were relative standard deviation (RSD) 2.0, tailing factor ≤ 2.0, and theoretical plates > 2000). The retention time for five different stationary phases ranged from 3.78 to 4.15 min. The LOD and LOQ for the procedure were executed on samples containing very low concentrations of analytes on two different commercial brands of detectors.

RP-HPLC method for the quantitative determination of fexofenadine hydrochloride in coated tablets and human serum

Everything in nature is built upward from the atomic level to define limits and structures to everything. Nanomedicines marked the field of medicine from nanobiotechnology, biological micro-electromechanical systems, microfluidics, biosensors, drug delivery, microarrays to tissue microengineering. Since then nanoparticles has overcome many challenges from blood brain barrier to targeting tumors. Where solid biodegradable nanoparticles were a step up liposome, targeting nanoparticles opened a whole new field for drug delivery. In this article, we attempt to discuss how the pioneered technique is serving in the drug delivery to cardiovascular system and how with the manipulation of their properties, nanoparticles can be made to fulfill desired function. Also how nanocarriers are improving molecular imaging to help improve diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease is focused in this article.

Najma Sultana

Papers

Grape fruit juice-drug interactions.

Sparfloxacin-metal complexes as antifungal agents - Their synthesis, characterization and antimicrobial activities

Development and Validation of New Assay Method for the Simultaneous Analysis of Diltiazem, Metformin, Pioglitazone and Rosiglitazone by RP-HPLC and its Applications in Pharmaceuticals and Human Serum

RP-HPLC method for the quantitative determination of fexofenadine hydrochloride in coated tablets and human serum

Review: nanoparticles in delivery of cardiovascular drugs.