Search for: All records

Plasma's role in healthcare has been steadily gaining recognition, particularly for its capacity to produce reactive species that foster wound healing, combat microbial infections, and augment drug delivery. Despite its promise, implementation of plasma technologies is often impeded by logistical constraints, accessibility issues, and challenges integrating with established medical treatments. In this paper, we describe an innovative solution to deliver the benefits of plasma in healthcare: plasma-activated cream (PAC). PAC offers a versatile lipid-based platform for medical applications that transcends the traditional boundaries of plasma application by its flexible integration into a variety of treatment forms: as a cream base for transdermal applications, oil base for injectables, or incorporation with other biologics and lipid-soluble compounds. In this study, we reveal the novel method of creating PAC by infusing a lipophilic base with plasma-activated species, specifically focusing on nitric oxide (NO) and its related compounds (NOx). By measuring NOx concentrations before and after plasma treatment, we successfully validated the use of gliding-arc plasma to synthesize PAC. The NOx concentration rose from a baseline of 0 mg/L to an average of 2.0 mg/L post-treatment, indicative of successful infusion of plasma-activated species into PAC. This preliminary experiment unveils a novel pathway for incorporating plasma's beneficial effects into a lipid-based cream and shows the potential for PAC to act as NO storage. PAC not only brings forth new possibilities in wound-healing and antimicrobial treatments but also lays the groundwork for further exploration of plasma's role in enhancing drug delivery and NO storage.