Paper accepted: "Design and characterization of chitosan nanoformulations for the delivery of antifungal agents"

After a gap of several months, we can finally again report on the acceptance of a manuscript for publication. It is the work of Dr. Natalia Calvo and Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar, with their Argentinian co-workers Laura Svetaz, María Lamas, and Dario Leonardi as well as their German co-worker Bruno Moerschbacher. Natalia had spent a short postdoctoral research stay with us last year. With Sruthi’s help, she prepared chitosan nano-capsules and loaded them with two different azoles, antifungal compounds used to treat vaginal Candida infections in human patients. These compounds are poorly soluble in water, limiting their bioavailability and efficacy, and nano-formulation is a possible solution to this problem. Sruthi and Natalia characterised the loading efficiency and the slow drug release of the azole-containing nano-capsules, then determined their cytotoxicity and fungicidal potential. They were able to show that nano-encapsulation leads to stable complexes that exhibit fungicidal activity against C. albicans at non-toxic concentrations to human cells. This is the first step towards a new therapy. Another problem to be solved is the rapid clearance of drugs, including nano-formulated drugs, from the vaginal tract. Therefore, our Argentinian partners are currently incorporating the drug-loaded nano-capsules into a flexible biopolymer film that will improve retention in the vaginal tract in spite of its self-cleansing action.