Current Nanomaterials - Volume 10, Issue 3, 2025

Excipients are increasingly employed in novel dosage forms to accomplish specialized roles, and they also directly or indirectly alter the extent and rate of drug release and absorption. The trend toward using plant-based and natural goods has raised demand and, in some ways, replaced synthetic additives with natural ones. Natural and semisynthetic materials offer various advantages over synthetic materials since they are chemically inert, less toxic, less expensive, biodegradable, increase product shelf life, and are widely accessible.

This review aims to cover the natural excipients’ role in nanoformulations and associated prospects.

More than 500 manuscripts were collected from ScienceDirect, PubMed, google, and other sources; however the manuscripts were excluded based on their relevance to the subject and finally 80 manuscripts were analyzed for the data.

The substation of synthetic lipids with natural and semisynthetic for developing lipid-based nano drug delivery, and the use of gelatin and chitosan in developing encapsulated and nano particulates are a few examples to understand the above-mentioned transition.

This review provides an overview of the types of excipients used in the formulation of novel drug delivery systems with special emphasis on their characteristics, safety aspects, benefits associated, and common methods through, which they are employed in nanoformulations.

Self-assembly of preformed nanoparticles into larger and more complex materials, termed nanoarchitectonics, is an area of great interest as the resulting higher-order architectures can exhibit advanced supramolecular properties important in sensor design, catalysis, and ferromagnetic properties.

The aim of the current investigation is to explore the application of self-assembling protein networks to serve as molecular scaffolds for immobilization of enzyme catalysts. The use of 12 nm ferritin cage proteins to serve as components of these scaffolds would expand the application of these types of multifunctional proteins to the fabrication of advanced biomaterials.

Humicola insolens cutinase was immobilized on a supramolecular protein scaffold using bioconjugation to biotinylate the enzyme of interest. The protein-based scaffold consisted of a ferritin-biotin-avidin system, and the interaction of biotin and avidin was used to suspend the enzyme molecules onto this network. Matrix-assisted laser desorption mass spectrometry, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy were employed to analyze the supramolecular cage protein scaffold at various stages of fabrication.

The activities of these scaffold-bound enzymes towards chromogenic esters and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) were analyzed and found to remain active towards both substrates following biotinylation and immobilization.

Biotinylated Humicola insolens cutinase enzymes can be immobilized on nanodimensional protein networks composed of avidin and biotinylated horse spleen ferritin and exhibit catalytic activity toward a small substrate, p-nitrophenylbutyrate, as well as an industrial plastic. Self-assembling protein networks may provide new approaches for biomolecular immobilization.

Psoriasis vulgaris is an autoimmune associated skin disease causing plaques or scales formation where the skin cells form quicker than in their typical life cycle. The phenolic phytoconstituents reported in Nigella sativa are effective for the treatment of skin disorders. Transfersomes is an emerging nanoencapsulation drug delivery approach which can squeeze themselves due to its elastic nature as an intact vesicle across narrow pores. It improves the potency of topical formulations with higher permeation efficiencies compared to other vesicular drug delivery systems.

This research work focused to prepare Nigella sativa or black seed extract loaded transfersomes as nanoformulation and further incorporating them in the gel system to give improved therapeutic efficacy due to their self-regulating and self-optimizing capabilities.

The phenolic content of Nigella sativa or black seed was extracted in ethanol and the solvent was removed using a vacuum with suitable storage conditions at 22°C. Transfersomes of ethanol extract were prepared by thin layer hydration method and further incorporated into gel formulations. The anti-psoriasis activity of prepared gel formulation was performed with histopathology study in the Imiquimod induced albino rat model.

A nanoformulation prepared with 0.85 mg lecithin and 0.10 mg tween 80 has the highest entrapment efficiency. The entrapment efficiency, vesicle size, polydispersity index and zeta potential of optimized transferosomes batch were found to be 69.3 ± 2.6%, 178 ± 11 nm, 1.1 ± 0.2, -29.4 mV, respectively. Anti-psoriatic activity of N. sativa seed extract loaded transfersomes showed a more significant reduction in thickness of the epidermis and less elongation of rete ridges with capillary loop dilation as compared to conventional gel formulation.

We concluded that the Nigella sativa seed ethanolic extract loaded transfersomes gel formulation showed significant ant-psoriasis activity in an albino rat model.

The rise of infectious diseases especially due to drug-resistant microbes and free radicals has caused a serious threat to public health worldwide. Green synthesized nanomaterials (NMs) have emerged as promising candidates to minimize the damage due to these problems. Doping the bioactive and stable silver atom into the biocompatible CuO by capping the nanoparticles with phytochemicals from honey enhanced the biological activity. The present study aimed to synthesize Ag- CuO NCs using the honey solution for antimicrobial and antioxidant activity evaluation.

The nanoparticles (NPs) and nanocomposites (NCs) were successfully synthesized using the honey solution and characterized by spectroscopic techniques such as XRD, UV-Vis, FTIR, and SEM. The role of the secondary metabolites in honey solution is to stabilize the fabricated NMs by capping.

The red shift observed with the addition of Ag dopant indicates the narrowing of the CuO band gap. FT-IR characterization confirmed the presence of various functional group bands in the synthesized NMs. The spectral band between 900–500 cm⁻¹ displays the presence of metal-oxygen and metal-metal bonds, confirming the production of pure CuO NPs and Ag-CuO NCs. The fabricated CuO NPs and Ag-CuO NCs have crystalline structures with crystallite sizes of 14.14 and 17.40 nm respectively. SEM data showed that CuO NPs are spherical and Ag-CuO NCs have a mixture of spherical and cubic shapes. The NMs displayed concentration-dependent biological activities.

The successful incorporation of silver into the crystal lattice of CuO integrated with the presence of secondary metabolites on the surface improved the potential. Hence, the prepared NMs may have pharmaceutical applications in the future with some modifications for the enhancement of their potential.

New nanoparticles (NPs) and biomaterials are utilized more frequently in biological research for vaccinations, diagnostic procedures, and drug administration. Nanomaterials are materials with d50 value from 1 to 100 nm. They are also found in various consumer goods, the environment, and work. Thus, it has become crucial for the appropriate development of nanotechnology to assess the safety and potential therapeutic applications of these nanomaterials. The BCS Cass II medication pioglitazone hydrochloride, used to treat hypoglycaemia, has poor bioavailability after oral treatment because it dissolves poorly in gastrointestinal fluids.

This study aimed to create adjusted pioglitazone nanoparticles to decrease dose-related side effects and prolong its release when used against type 2 diabetes.

The emulsion solvent evaporation approach was used to create nanoparticles utilising HPMC K15M and Eudragit S100 as polymers, and Tween 80 as a surfactant. On framed nanoparticles, in-vitro evaluation approaches for drug-polymer compatibility, percentage yield, particle size, zeta potential, polydispersity index, surface morphology, encapsulation effectiveness, and in-vitro drug release study were used, followed by in-vivo acute toxicity experiment.

FTIR studies revealed there was no significant drug-polymer interaction. The percentage yield of all formulations was in the range of 58.02% to 79.03%. The particle size of the pioglitazone nanoparticles generated ranged from 158.12 ± 1.11 nm to 175.54 ± 2.25 nm whereas, the zeta potential ranges from -13.47 ± 2.11 to -19.71 ± 1.41 mV. The polydispersity index (PDI) of the nanoparticles formulations ranges from 0.31 ± 0.02 to 0.19 ± 0.02. SEM studies showed spherical nanoparticles with rough and porous surfaces. Pioglitazone nanoparticles encapsulation effectiveness ranged from 67.91% to 74.33%. The CDR of the optimized formulation was 95% in 10 hours in the phosphate buffer (pH 7.4). The in-vivo study of pioglitazone nanoparticles on adult zebrafish showed no acute toxicity on them.

From the obtained data, it can be said that a suitable optimized formulation of pioglitazone nanoparticles was prepared, which offered extended drug release of 95% in 10 hours.

Carbon nanocones possess exceptional properties compared to other nanomaterials, such as nanotubes, graphene, etc. Hence, they can be used as an alternative to other nanostructures. This work helps in determining various properties of the nanocone structure through topological descriptors. In this paper, various degree-based topological descriptors, along with their entropy measures, are evaluated for the adjacently and non-adjacently configured pentagonal structure of carbon nanocones.

Carbon nanoparticles are gaining much importance in the contemporary world. Carbon nanocones have a wide range of acceptance in the field of nanotechnology due to their effective properties and applications. Nanocones, also known as nanohorns, are carbon networks that are planar in structure and have the majority of hexagonal faces along with some non-hexagonal faces, which are most commonly pentagons. Nanocones that include pentagons in their structure can be referred to as adjacently or non-adjacently configured pentagonal structures of nanocones. Various topological descriptors for a few nanocone classes were derived by researchers earlier, but not for the class of nanocones in this paper. Through this work, we try to fill the research gap in this field.

The degree-based descriptors and corresponding graph entropies for the adjacently and non-adjacently configured pentagonal structure of nanocones were determined, which further can be applied in quantitativestructure–activity property relationship studies. The concept of graph entropy is to assign a probability function to the edges in the chemical graph using the topological descriptor, and it helps to characterize the complexity of graphs.

We have employed the degree counting method and edge partition based on the vertices and edges of the adjacently and non-adjacently configured pentagonal nanocone structures to obtain the edge partitions and then using the corresponding mathematical expression, the degree-based descriptors and their corresponding entropies were determined.

The analytically closed formulas to compute the degree-based topological descriptors and graph entropies for any generation of the class of nanocone structures were obtained.

In this work, the degree-based descriptors and the corresponding graph entropies for the adjacently and non-adjacently configured pentagonal structure of carbon nanocones are determined by applying the degree counting method and edge partition based on the vertices and edges. Also, a graphical comparative study was done with the help of the obtained results.

The synthesis of metal nanoparticles using highly tunable ionic liquids is being investigated for many pharmacological applications and their usage in catalysis.

Ionic liquids belong to the class of green solvents and are distinguished by their simple yet distinctive physical properties that are related to their structure. These properties include their remarkable thermal stability, exceptional thermal conductivity, and negligible vapor pressure. Additionally, they are suitable and inert for a wide range of catalytic applications. Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) have been considered a cost-effective choice that requires modest reaction conditions to provide a high yield of the required products with remarkable selectivity in a short amount of time. Consequently, an investigation into the synthesis of ZnO-NPs in an ionic liquid medium has been attempted in the current work.

In this context, the current work has used the co-precipitation approach to synthesize ZnO-NPs. The production of ZnO nanoparticles with a range of morphologies utilizing an imidazolium ionic liquid system has been the main topic of discussion.

The co-precipitation method has successfully been administered for the synthesis of morphologically diverse nano-crystalline ZnO particles using different ionic liquids, such as 1-propyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide (pmim)(Br), 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide ([bmim][Br]), and 1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide (hmim)(Br) as an additive.

Modern analytical tools, including X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and FT-IR absorption spectroscopy have been employed to confirm the structure of these ZnO nanoparticles. The IR absorption peak below 480 cm^-1 and the XRD pattern showed all the peaks in the diffraction diagram, revealing the formation of ZnO-NPs. FE-SEM images showed various morphologies of ZnO-NPs and they have been found to be separated from the agglomerated clusters.

The characteristic results have revealed ionic liquids to have substantial effects on the size of the zinc nano-species as well as provide the appropriate environment for the growth of the nanoparticles.