University of Nigeria, Nsukka

About: University of Nigeria, Nsukka is a education organization based out in Nsukka, Nigeria. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 10211 authors who have published 13685 publications receiving 138922 citations.

Liposomal Drug Delivery Systems and Anticancer Drugs

Abstract: Cancer is a life-threatening disease contributing to ~3.4 million deaths worldwide. There are various causes of cancer, such as smoking, being overweight or obese, intake of processed meat, radiation, family history, stress, environmental factors, and chance. The first-line treatment of cancer is the surgical removal of solid tumours, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. The systemic administration of the free drug is considered to be the main clinical failure of chemotherapy in cancer treatment, as limited drug concentration reaches the tumour site. Most of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) used in chemotherapy are highly cytotoxic to both cancer and normal cells. Accordingly, targeting the tumour vasculatures is essential for tumour treatment. In this context, encapsulation of anti-cancer drugs within the liposomal system offers secure platforms for the targeted delivery of anti-cancer drugs for the treatment of cancer. This, in turn, can be helpful for reducing the cytotoxic side effects of anti-cancer drugs on normal cells. This short-review focuses on the use of liposomes in anti-cancer drug delivery.

Role of hydrophobic components of soil organic matter in soil aggregate stability

Abstract: Little is known about the effects of the individual components of organic matter (OM) on aggregate stability (AS) We hypothesized that AS of a Typic Haplustalf from which native OM was either removed or retained would be affected by incubation periods and application rates of a hydrophilic polysaccharide gum (G) and a hydrophobic stearic acid (S) with or without pretreatment with a hydrophobic humic acid (HA) Removal of OM reduced AS of unmodified soil by 40 and 20% after soil incubation for 7 and 40 d, respectively In both soil samples, AS was best at the highest rate of G (50 g kg 1 ) Its effect was better on Soil A (where OM was removed) than Soil B (where OM was retained) but diminished rapidly during 40 d At this rate, G increased AS by 750% in Soil A and by 335% in Soil B compared with no addition With S, aggregate stability increased more with time in Soil B than in Soil A Its maximum effect was also at the highest application rate (50 g kg -1 ), where AS increased 100% on Soil A and 131% on Soil B At the highest rate (02 g kg -1 ), HA increased AS by 73% on Soil B and 27% on Soil A The effect of HA alone did not vary with time Soil pretreatment with HA before addition of G reduced significantly both the state of aggregation and AS of both soils The reverse occurred when HA was applied before S After 40 d, S+HA increased AS in Soil B by 34%, whereas G and G+HA decreased AS by 14 and 4%, respectively We found that soil AS was improved and maintained with time more by hydrophobic than by hydrophilic components of organic matter Long-lasting aggregate stability of soils can be thus achieved by addition of hydrophobic humic material with hydrophobic organic wastes