Development of Fast-Dissolving Tablets of Flurbiprofen-Cyclodextrin Complexes

The present study was aimed at developing a tablet formulation based on an effective flurbiprofen-cyclodextrin system, able to allow a rapid and complete dissolution of this practically insoluble drug. Three different cyclodextrins were evaluated: the parent β-cyclodextrin (previously found to be the best partner for the drug among the natural cyclodextrins), and two amorphous, highly soluble β-cyclodextrin derivatives, i.e., methyl-β-cyclodextrin and hydroxyethyl-β-cyclodextrin. Equimolar drug-cyclodextrin binary systems prepared according to five different techniques (physical mixing, kneading, sealed-heating, coevaporation, and colyophilization) were characterized by Differential Scanning Calorimetry, x-ray powder diffractometry, infrared spectroscopy, and optical microscopy and evaluated for solubility and dissolution rate properties. The drug solubility improvement obtained by the different binary systems varied from a minimum of 2.5 times up to a maximum of 120 times, depending on both the cyclodextrin type and the system preparation method. Selected binary systems were used for preparation of direct compression tablets with reduced drug dosage (50 mg). Chitosan and spray-dried lactose, alone or in mixture, were used as excipients. All formulations containing drug-cyclodextrin systems gave a higher drug dissolved amount than the corresponding ones with drug alone (also at a dose of 100 mg); however, the drug dissolution behavior was strongly influenced by formulation factors. For example, for the same drug-cyclodextrin product the time to dissolve 50% drug varied from less than 5 minutes to more than 60 minutes, depending on the excipient used for tableting. In particular, only tablets containing the drug kneaded with methyl-β-cyclodextrin or colyophilized with β-cyclodextrin and spray-dried lactose as the only excipient satisfied the requirements of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for rapid dissolving tablets, allowing more than 85% drug to be dissolved within 30 minutes. Finally, it can be reasonably expected that the obtained drug dissolution rate improvement will result in an increase of its bioavailability, with the possibility of reducing drug dosage and side effects.     

High-gain mode-adapted semiconductor optical amplifier with12.4-dBm saturation output power at 1550 nm

A mode-adapted semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) has been fabricated and packaged. At the gain peak, 1500 nm, the fiber to fiber gain was measured to be 32.5 dB. Statistics for eight packaged devices indicate that a fiber-to-fiber gain of 26.3 dB ± 1.3 dB and a saturation output power of 12.4 dBm ± 0.4 dBm are typical at a bias of 500 mA for λ = 1550 nm. Polarization sensitivity at 1550 nm was measured to be 1.1 dB ± 0.4 dB and the transverse electric (TE) polarization state noise figure (NF) was determined to be 7.0 dB ± 0.5 dB. The coupling loss was 1.3 dB ± 0.1 dB per facet. This SOA, with a 1.3-nm filter, was used as an optical preamplifier in a 10-Gb/s return-to-zero (RZ) system testbed with a pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) of 2³¹ -1. A 14.5-dB improvement in receiver sensitivity was observed at a bit error rate (BER) of 10^-11     

High-Density Plasmonic Nanopores for DNA Sensing at Ultra-Low Concentrations by Plasmon-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

Solid-state nanopores are implemented in new and promising platforms that are capable of sensing fundamental biomolecular constituents at the single-molecule level. However, several limitations and drawbacks remain. For example, the current strategies based on both electrical and optical sensing suffer from low analyte capture rates and challenging nanofabrication procedures. In addition, their limited discrimination power hinders their application in the detection of complex molecular constructs. In contrast, Raman spectroscopy has recently demonstrated the ability to discriminate both nucleotides and amino acids. Herein, a plasmonic nanoassembly is proposed supporting nanopores at high density, in the order of 100 pores per µm². These findings demonstrate that the device has a high capture rate in the range of a few fm . The pore size is ≈10 nm in diameter and provides an amplification of the electromagnetic field exceeding 10³ in intensity at 785 nm. Owing to these features, single-molecule detection is achieved by means of surface-enhanced Raman scattering from a solution containing 50 fm DNA molecules (≈4.4 kilobase pairs). Notably, the reported spectra show an average number of 2.5 Raman counts per nucleotide. From this perspective, this number is not far from what is necessary to discriminate the DNA sequence.