Figure 4.

In vitro and in vivo examples of cubosome formulations in delivery and imaging. A: Photomicrographs of histopathological sections representing burned skin of rat groups following treatment using cubogels for 21 days. Reproduced with permission from Morsi et al.[137] B: i) Viability of HeLa cells after incubation with uncoated (RF) and coated (RFPεL) cubosomes (assayed by MTT). The error bar is standard error from three independent experiments done in triplicate. ii) Cellular uptake of Nile Red (NR) loaded cubosomes indicated by the shift in NR fluorescence intensity for the cell count due to the uptake of RFNR (red) and RFPεLNR (blue) compared to the control (gray). iii) Cellular uptake of NR loaded cubosomes observed by fluorescence microscopy. DAPI was used for counterstaining nucleus. Imaging was done at 63× magnification: (blue) DAPI, (red) cubosomes. Scale bar = 20 μm. Reproduced with permission from Deshpande et al.[35] C: In vivo MRI images of male C57Bl/6 mouse spleen and liver pre-injection (i and iii) and 30 minutes post-injection (ii and iv) of NIRF-MRI cubosomes. Enhanced MRI signals were observed from regions marked by dotted lines for the spleen and the liver. Reproduced with permission from Tran et al.[148] D: i) Viability of HeLa cells after incubating with Naproxen-loaded uncoated (RFNap) and coated (RFPεLNap) cubosomes for 24 hours. The error bar is standard error of three independent experiments performed in triplicate. Statistical significance is indicated by *** (p < 0.001). ii) Images of HeLa cells after incubation with Nile Red (NR) and Naproxen (Nap) loaded cubosomes. The live cells were stained with calcein AM. Red represents fluorescence due to NR. Imaging was done at 20× magnification: (green) calcein AM, (red) cubosomes. Scale bar = 100 μm. Reproduced with permission from Deshpande et al.[35]