Zuhair Saleh’s scientific contributions

Cancer is one of the most mortal diseases in the world .This work was planned to prepare a new chemical cross linking starch/gum Arabic hydrogel system in the presence of potassium persulfate(K2S2O8)as initiator, to describe the characteristic of the new material , and to investigate its potential utilizations in controlled drug delivery and cancer therapy. Crosslinked starch /gum Arabic hydrogel will be manufacture with changeable levels of starch and gum Arabic then were loaded with hydroxyurea. The structure of the native starch and starch/gum Arabic blends was characterized by FTIR, SEM. The starch and starch/gum Arabic blends were analyzed for in vitro drug release studies by using UV-vis spectroscopy. The swelling test, MTT assay were also investigated. The drug release and swelling test was monitored at pH 4 and pH7.4. The experimental results proved that the production of starch/gum Arabic blends was reduced the swell ability which lead to slow release of hydroxyurea, and the rate of hydroxyurea release was significantly higher at pH 7.4 than pH4, at constant incubation time. The swelling ratio and drug release of the blends was decreased with increasing gum Arabic levels. In vitro cytotoxicity study show the killing of 63% colorectal cancer cells at 500µg/ml of hydroxyurea concentration while the 49% destruction of cells require for the starch/gum Arabic/hydroxyurea blends at the same concentration and after 24hr of incubation. The sustained released of hydroxyurea-loaded starch/gum Arabic blend shows much better anticancer efficacy thereby, revealing a novels vehicle for the treatments of cancer.

The conventional drug delivery system has serious limitations. These limitations can be overcome by using the smart materials to produce an effective drug delivery system. Corn starch cross-linked chitosan using potassium persulfate as an accelerator with different ratios of corn starch/chitosan blends were prepared as smart materials for drug delivery system. The hydroxyurea drug was loaded in smart materials blends to evaluate the efficacy of new materials on therapy of Rhabdomyosarcoma cancer cell line (RD). The FT-IR results revealed that the reaction was occurred between blends materials (starch/chitosan). SEM tests illustrated that the different morphologies were obtained in blend films surface. The rate of drug release was sensitive to pH and significantly increased at pH 2.2 as compared to pH 7.4. Furthermore, the percentage of swelling was higher in acidic solution than in neutral solution. It was concluded that the starch/chitosan smart materials may be suitable for medical applications like drug delivery system to RD cell line as confirmed by the availability and morphology test of RD cell line.