Clays have traditionally been linked to health care, being used for centuries in the fight against infections and diseases. Similarly, biohybrids produced by combinations of clays and biological species through ‘bottom-up’ approaches have been evaluated over the past decade for biomedical and pharmaceutical uses. These biohybrids show interesting features such as biocompatibility and biodegradability which make them suitable for healthcare applications. The aim of the present communication was to review recent research contributions describing progress and the role of biohybrid materials based on clays in biomedicine and pharmacy disciplines. Emphasis will be on the authors’ own experience of this topic, particularly on aspects related to controlled drug-delivery systems, adjuvants of vaccines, and vectors for non-viral gene transfection. Bionanocomposites offer several advantages for use in the design of new and efficient pharmacological formulations for cutaneous and oral administration. In these systems, the drug is typically entrapped in the clay and protected by a biopolymer matrix, and both components contribute to a gradual release of the drug. Clay-based hybrids have also shown their efficacy in vaccines as they can act as nanocarriers of viral particles, due to the biomimetic interface created on the clay surface after adsorption of suitable biomolecules such as phospholipids, while the clay acts as an adjuvant to increase the efficacy of the vaccine. Finally, a new application of clays as non-viral vectors for controlled gene delivery is attracting increasing interest in the treatment of diverse diseases; clays such as sepiolite have demonstrated their ability to act as nanocarriers of nucleic acids and facilitate their transfection in mammalian cells.

A modification of the metal processing technique known as equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) to incorporate shear plane rotation, called ECAP-R, is presented. The new process was developed to produce hybrid materials with helical architecture of their constituents, which holds promise to enable enhanced mechanical properties. The process was trialled experimentally using a specially designed laboratory-scale rig. It was shown that a positive mean stress (negative hydrostatic pressure) in a part of the multipiece billet leads to separation of the constituents within that region. A way to improving the process design was suggested based on finite element simulations. It was demonstrated that the proposed processing results in excellent bonding between the helical parts of the hybrid in the regions of positive hydrostatic pressure. Subsequent annealing gave rise to further improvement of the quality of bonding. Processing by ECAP-R at elevated temperatures was suggested as a viable method of producing hybrid materials with helical architecture.

This work is about the production of hybrid coatings of the system SiO2-PMMA (PMMA, polymethylmethacrylate). These materials have interesting mechanical and chemical properties useful for anticorrosive and wear resistance applications. SiO2-PMMA hybrids were obtained by the sol-gel traditional process, using tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) and methylmethacrylate (MMA) by Aldrich Co, as starting reagents. The SiO2:PMMA ratio was varied from 0:1 to about 1:1 at air atmosphere deposition. The coatings were obtained on acrylic sheets and silicon wafers. A diversity of coatings with chemical composition ranging from SiO2 and PMMA to obtain the SiO2-PMMA hybrids were obtained. Infrared (IR) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), were performed to determinate structural and morphological behavior.