Interaction of solutions containing phenothiazines exposed to laser radiation with materials surfaces, in view of biomedical applications Agota Simon a, b, *, Tatiana Alexandru a, b , Mihai Boni a, b , Victor Damian a , Alexandru Stoicu a, c , Victoria Dutschk d , Mihail Lucian Pascu a, b a Laser Department, National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics, 409 Atomistilor, 077125, Magurele, Ilfov, Romania b Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest, 405 Atomistilor, 077125, Magurele, Ilfov, Romania c Faculty of Chemistry, University of Bucharest, 90-92 Sos. Panduri, 030018, Bucharest, Romania d Engineering of Fibrous Smart Materials (EFSM), Faculty for Engineering Technology (CTW), University of Twente, Drienerlolaan 5, 7522 NB Enschede, The Netherlands A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 10 June 2014 Received in revised form 14 August 2014 Accepted 17 August 2014 Available online 20 August 2014 PubChem classifications: Chlorpromazine hydrochloride (PubChem CID: 6240) Promazine hydrochloride (PubChem CID: 5887) Promethazine hydrochloride (PubChem CID: 6014) Keywords: Phenothiazines Nd:YAG laser Surface tension Solid surfaces wettability Photoproducts Laser induced fluorescence A B S T R A C T Phenothiazine drugs – chlorpromazine (CPZ), promazine (PZ) and promethazine (PMZ) – were exposed to 266 nm (fourth harmonic of the Nd:YAG pulsed laser radiation) in order to be modified at molecular level and to produce an enhancement of their antibacterial activity. The irradiated samples were analysed by several methods: pH and surface tension measurements, UV–vis-NIR absorption spectroscopy, laser induced fluorescence and thin layer chromatography. The purpose of these investigations was to study and describe the modified properties of the medicines to further investigate their specific interactions with materials such as cotton, polyester and Parafilm M as a model smooth surface. The textile materials may be impregnated with phenothiazines drug solutions exposed to laser radiation in order to be used in treatments applied on the surface of the organism. Some of the phenothiazines solutions exposed prolonged time intervals to laser radiation have much better activity against several bacteria. Therefore, in the paper, it is reported the wetting behaviour of CPZ, PZ and PMZ solutions, irradiated for time intervals between 1 and 240 min, on the surfaces of the three textures in order to draw a conclusion about their wettability as a function of time. ã 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Dynamic wetting processes play a crucial role in industrial (painting, coating (Karlsson et al., 2011), printing, inkjet printing (Wijshoff, 2010), printed electronics like organic solar cells (Sliz et al., 2014)), biological (bioprinting (Campbell and Weiss, 2007)) and biomedical applications (Schott, 1971). Therefore, it is essential to accurately describe the properties of liquids to wet solid surfaces, related to viscosity, surface tension, hydrophobicity, and surface properties such as surface thickness, roughness and heterogeneity (Gerdes and Ström, 1996). As for biomedical applications, the interaction of biological or alien materials surfaces with biological fluids plays an important role in medical treatments (Eckmann et al., 2001). For this reason, wetting processes were studied in ophthalmology (e.g. tear film wettability with or without contact lens (Thai et al., 2004), tear film breakup depending on corneal surface wettability (Sharma, 1998a,b)), in dentistry (e.g. wettability of gingival surfaces with intra-oral water (van der Mei et al., 2004)), and in vascular biology (e.g. coupling biomimetic glycocalyx surfaces with dextrans, in order to increase wettability, to decrease bacterial adhesion and to prevent the adhesion of blood constituents (Ombelli et al., 2003)). Another issue is gathering information related to the study of interactions between surfaces (medicinal bandages and/or human skin) and medicine solutions, for the treatment of burned tissues, skin injuries, biological surfaces infections and/or skin cancer. On the other hand, the interest in developing new methods to fight multiple drug resistance (MDR) acquired by bacteria and/or malignant tumours has increased during the last decades and it became essential to identify new ways to overcome it. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +40 0745966309; fax: +40 21 4575739. E-mail address: agota.simon@inflpr.ro (A. Simon). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2014.08.031 0378-5173/ ã 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. International Journal of Pharmaceutics 475 (2014) e270–e281 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Pharmaceutics journa l home page : www.e lsevier.com/loca te/ijpharm