Review of advanced oxidation processes for treating hospital sewage to achieve decontamination and disinfection

Hospital sewage contains various harmful pharmaceutical contaminants(e.g.,antibiotics,anti-inflammatory agents,and painkillers)and pathogens(e.g.,bacteria,viruses,and parasites),whose direct discharge into the environment will induce diseases and pose a powerful threat to human health and safety,and environmental ecology.In recent years,advanced oxidation processes(AOPs),particularly photocatalysis,electrocatalysis,and ozone catalysis have been developed as widespread and effective techniques for hospital sewage treatments.However,there is a lack of systematic comparison and review of the prior studies on hospital sewage treatment using AOPs systems.This review elaborates on the mechanisms,removal efficiencies,and advantages/disadvantages of these AOPs systems for hospital wastewater decontamination and disinfection.Meanwhile,some novel and potential technologies such as photo-electrocatalysis,electro-peroxone,Fenton/Fenton-like,and piezoelectric catalysis are also included and summarized.Moreover,we further summarize and compare the capacity of these AOPs to treat the actual hospital wastewater under the impact of the water matrix and pH,and estimate the economic cost of these technologies for practical application.Finally,the future development directions of AOPs for hospital wastewater decontamination and disinfection have been prospected.Overall,this study provides a comparison and overview of these AOP systems in an attempt to raise extensive concerns about hospital wastewater decontamination and disinfection technologies and guide researchers to discover the future directions of technologies optimization,which would be a crucial step forward in the field of hospital sewage treatment.

Preparation and Characterization of Controlled Heparin Release Waterborne Polyurethane Coating Systems

In this study, to improve hemocompatibility of biomedical materials, a waterborne polyurethane （WPU）haepafin release coating system （WPU/heparin） is fabricated via simply blending biodegradable WPU emulsions with heparin aqueous solutions. The surface compositions and hydrophilicity of these WPU/heparin blend coatings are characterized by attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy （ATR-FTIR） and water contact angle measurements. These WPU/heparin blend coatings show effectively controlled release of heparin, as determined by the toluidine blue method. Furthermore, the biocompatibility and anticoagulant activity of these blend coatings are evaluated based on the protein adsorption, platelet adhesion, activated partial thromboplastin time （APTT）, thrombin time （TT）, hemolysis, and cytotoxicity. The results indicate that better hemocompatibility and cytocompatilibity are obtained due to blending heparin into this waterborne polyurethane. Thus, the WPU/heparin blend coating system is expected to be valuable for various biomedical applications.

Effect of Trastuzumab on the Micellization Properties, Endocytic Pathways and Antitumor Activities of Polyurethane-based Drug Delivery System

Polyurethane micelles（PM）-based nanovehicles have shown great potential in targeted delivery of therapeutics and diagnostics into tumors.However,the pathways of PMs entering cancer cells and the action mechanism of targeting ligands have yet to be understood.In this contribution,the actively-targeted PM were developed using trastuzumab as a model targeting group.It was found that PM were mainly taken up by SKOV-3 tumor cells via a micropinocytosis process,while the incorporation of trastuzumab to PM enabled a receptor-mediated endocytosis of nanocarriers in cancer cells,leading to more efficient cell entry and enhanced anticancer efficacy of chemotherapeutic drugs both in vitro and in vivo.This study is advantageous to the understanding of the action mechanism of trastuzumab,and significant for the construction of improved formulations for targeted delivery and precise therapy.