Agonists of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are potent activators of the innate immune system and hold promise as vaccine adjuvant and for anticancer immunotherapy. Unfortunately, in soluble form they readily enter systemic circulation and cause systemic inflammatory toxicity. Here we demonstrate that by covalent ligation of a small-molecule imidazoquinoline-based TLR7/8 agonist to 50-nm-sized degra...

Use of sulfur crosslinked nanogels to improve various properties of virgin elastomers was investigated for the first time. Natural rubber (NR) and styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) nanogels were prepared by prevulcanization of the respective rubber lattices. These nanogels were characterized by dynamic light scattering, atomic force microscopy (AFM), solvent swelling, mechanical, and dynamic mecha...

BACKGROUND Emulsions stabilized by colloidal particles are known as Pickering emulsions. To date, soft microgel particles as well as inorganic and organic particles have been utilized as Pickering emulsifiers. Although cyclodextrin (CD) works as an attractive emulsion stabilizer through the formation of a CD-oil complex at the oil-water interface, a high concentration of CD is normally required...

Ovalbumin and ovotransferrin are two proteins in hen egg white with isoelectric points of 4.8 and 6.8, respectively. A convenient and green method was developed in this study to prepare ovalbumin-ovotransferrin nanogels: a mixture of the two proteins was adjusted to a certain pH and then heated. Heat induced denaturation and gelation of the proteins, but the negative charges of ovalbumin preven...

Although the behavior of nanoscopic delivery systems in blood is an important parameter when contemplating their intravenous injection, this aspect is often poorly investigated when advancing from in vitro to in vivo experiments. In this paper, the behavior of siRNA loaded dextran nanogels in human plasma and blood is examined using fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy, platelet aggregometry, ...

With the rapid development of new medical devices including dental implants, bacterial biofilm infections become more and more frequent. We developed a methodology to design bioactive coatings for medical devices based on functional aqueous nanogels. Nanogels with a controlled amount of surface-grafted anti-bacterial molecules (isoeugenol) were synthesized. The crucial step for the nanogel synt...

A facile temperature induced self-assembly and self-crosslinking method has been developed for preparing bioreducible nanogels/microgels without need of any stabilizer, catalyst or additional crosslinking agent. The size of formed nanogels/microgels can be easily tuned via the polymer concentration.

Nowadays the application of nanotechnology in different biomedical fields such as drug delivery is increasing due to its unique advantages. With this in mind, it is widely believed that nanogels as the nanometer-sized networked polymeric particles have a considerable impact on drug delivery systems as biocompatible nanocarriers due to their unique characteristics such as high loading capacity, ...