Abstract Dental caries, or tooth decay, is a widespread problem and is generally considered irreversible, yet a regeneration solution exists to cure them. In this study, a multifunctional and ...biocompatible dental scaffold is fabricated by a unique vapor sublimation and deposition polymerization process with the well‐accepted material Parylene, resulting in the construction of a 3D and porous polymer scaffold that accommodates living cells and a combination of growth factor molecules in a single fabrication process, which differentiates the coating formation from a conventional vapor process. Physically, a directional interior structure is constructed to guide dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) attachment and alignment. Biochemically, necessary growth factors, including Wnt‐3a and FGF‐2, are incorporated within the scaffold during fabrication to guide the cell differentiation of odontogenesis. The synergistic effects of the attachment and alignment of DPSCs, as well as the biocompatibility and odontogenic activities of the components accommodated in the scaffold, result in the upregulation of the cell differentiation into odontoblasts, as shown by the morphology of odontoblasts and the expressions of odontogenesis markers. Thus, the reported fabrication technique and its products represent an alternative approach for dentin regeneration in dental caries and tooth decay.
In the present study, acute onset of severe lupus nephritis was successfully treated in mice using a new, benzamide‐linked, small molecule that targets immune modulation and the NLRP3 inflammasome. ...Specifically, 6‐(2,4‐difluorophenyl)‐3‐(3‐(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)‐2H‐benzoe1,3oxazine‐2,4(3H)‐dione (Cf‐02) (a) reduced serum levels of IgG anti‐dsDNA, IL‐1β, IL‐6, and TNF‐α, (b) inhibited activation of dendritic cells and differentially regulated T cell functions, and (c) suppressed the NF‐κB/NLRP3 inflammasome axis, targeting priming and activating signals of the inflammasome. Moreover, treatment with Cf‐02 significantly inhibited secretion of IL‐1β in lipopolysaccharide‐stimulated macrophages, but this effect was abolished by autophagy induction. These results recommend Cf‐02 as a promising drug candidate for the serious renal conditions associated with systemic lupus erythematosus. Future investigations should examine whether Cf‐02 may also be therapeutic in other types of chronic kidney disease involving NLRP3 inflammasome‐driven signaling.
Multifunctional scaffolds are needed for neurogenetic tissue engineering. The rationale of the proposed advanced scaffold features a friendly vapor‐phased fabrication process involving no solvents, ...initiators, or harmful chemical agents. The state‐of‐the‐art fabrication mechanism is exploited in this study to fabricate a neuron‐guiding porous scaffold based on controlling the thermodynamic properties and mass‐transport phenomenon of the molecules that involve two simultaneous processes of water molecule sublimation and poly‐p‐xylylene deposition. More importantly, variations in the functional molecules are arranged in terms of the composition and spatial location within the scaffold construct to provide multiple functions, including excellent biocompatibility by poly‐p‐xylylene, electrical conductivity by poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS), and multicomponent growth factors by platelet‐rich plasma (PRP). In addition, pheochromocytoma 12 cell line (PC‐12) cells are preloaded to ensure homogeneous distribution. High cell viability is also observed with spherical aggregates of PC‐12 cells, verifying enhanced cell–cell interactions and cell–matrix interactions and finally enhancing cellular responses, while increased efficiency of neurogenetic differentiation with upregulated Nestin and Tuj‐1 gene expression is confirmed, showing enhancement of neuron‐like cells differentiation in fabricated scaffold constructs. The advanced scaffold represents a prospective synthetic tissue engineering product with sophisticated engineering guidance of molecular composition and distribution and control of cellular activities and differentiation.
Vapor‐phased fabrication based on the use of an ice template for sublimation and vapor deposition of poly‐p‐xylylene is exploited to accommodate multiple functional molecules, including living cells, to fabricate a neuron‐guiding scaffold.
Abstract
Purpose
Currently, there are no accurate markers for predicting potentially lethal prostate cancer (PC) before biopsy. This study aimed to develop urine tests to predict clinically ...significant PC (sPC) in men at risk.
Methods
Urine samples from 928 men, namely, 660 PC patients and 268 benign subjects, were analyzed by gas chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrophotometry (GC/Q-TOF MS) metabolomic profiling to construct four predictive models. Model I discriminated between PC and benign cases. Models II, III, and GS, respectively, predicted sPC in those classified as having favorable intermediate risk or higher, unfavorable intermediate risk or higher (according to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network risk groupings), and a Gleason sum (GS) of ≥ 7. Multivariable logistic regression was used to evaluate the area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC).
Results
In Models I, II, III, and GS, the best AUCs (0.94, 0.85, 0.82, and 0.80, respectively; training cohort, N = 603) involved 26, 24, 26, and 22 metabolites, respectively. The addition of five clinical risk factors (serum prostate-specific antigen, patient age, previous negative biopsy, digital rectal examination, and family history) significantly improved the AUCs of the models (0.95, 0.92, 0.92, and 0.87, respectively). At 90% sensitivity, 48%, 47%, 50%, and 36% of unnecessary biopsies could be avoided. These models were successfully validated against an independent validation cohort (N = 325). Decision curve analysis showed a significant clinical net benefit with each combined model at low threshold probabilities. Models II and III were more robust and clinically relevant than Model GS.
Conclusion
This urine test, which combines urine metabolic markers and clinical factors, may be used to predict sPC and thereby inform the necessity of biopsy in men with an elevated PC risk.
Women with unilateral breast cancer are at an increased risk for the development of contralateral breast cancers. We hypothesis that combined breast MRI would detect more contralateral synchronous ...breast cancer than conventional imaging alone, and resulted in less contralateral metachronous breast cancer during follow-up.
We retrospectively collected two groups of breast cancer patients diagnosed from 2009 to 2013 for evaluating the effectiveness and value of adding pre-operative breast MRI to conventional breast images (mammography and sonography) for detection of contralateral synchronous breast cancer. The new metachronous contralateral breast cancer diagnosed during follow-up was prospectively evaluated and compared.
Group A (n = 733) comprised patients who underwent conventional preoperative imaging and group B (n = 735) combined with MRI were enrolled and compared. Seventy (9.5%) of the group B patients were found to have contralateral lesions detected by breast MRI, and 65.7% of these lesions only visible with MRI. The positive predictive value of breast MRI detected contralateral lesions was 48.8%. With the addition of breast MRI to conventional imaging studies, more surgical excisions were performed in contralateral breasts (6% (44/735) versus 1.4% (10/733), P< 0.01), more synchronous contralateral breast cancer detected (2.9% (21/735) versus 1.1% (8/733), P = 0.02), and resulted in numerical less (2.2% (16/714) versus 3% (22/725), p = 0.3) metachronous contralateral breast cancer during a mean follow-up of 102 months.
Our study provides useful estimates of the pre-operative breast MRI for the increased detection of contralateral synchronous breast cancer and less subsequent contralateral metachronous breast cancer.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
•Carbon dots derived from prawn shells were successfully synthesized.•A simple, sensitive, selective and label free sensing of Cu2+ was developed.•The detection limit of developed method achieved ...5nM.•The sensor system was demonstrated to detect Cu2+ in environmental water sample.
A facile, economical and effective green method was developed for synthesis of fluorescent carbon dots (C-dots) from prawn shells. The results showed that these C-dots (with an average diameter of 4nm) possess many excellent features such as to eliminate blue fluorescence under UV light (λ=365nm), with high monodispersity, good stability, excellent water solubility and high quantum yield (9%). We further explored these C-dots as effective sensing probes for Cu2+ detection and found that they exhibit excellent selectivity and sensitivity toward Cu2+ with a low detection limit of 5nM. We further demonstrated this novel sensing platform on Cu2+ ions analysis from seawater samples. This method is extremely rapid, low cost, ecofriendly, highly selective and sensitive for Cu2+ ions sensing from various sources of environment such as drinking water, river water and sea water.
The existence of spontaneous magnetization in low dimensional magnetic systems has attracted intensive studies since the early 60s and research remains very active even now. Only recently, magnetic ...van der Waals (vdW) systems down to a few layers have been broadly discussed for their magnetic order ground states at finite temperature. The naturally inherited layered structure of the vdW magnetic systems possessing onsite magnetic anisotropy from band electrons can suppress the long‐range fluctuations. This provides an excellent vehicle to study the transition of magnetism to 2D limits both theoretically and experimentally. Here the current status of 2D vdW magnetic system and its potential applications are briefly summarized and discussed.
Recently, magnetic van der Waals (vdW) systems down to the single layer limit have been studied intensively. Herein, the current status of 2D vdW magnetic systems is summarized from both a theoretical and an experimental point of view. The fundamental physics of 2D magnetism are discussed, along with the future outlook and potential applications of 2D vdW magnetic systems.
Meningitis caused by Cryptococcus tetragattii fungus is rare and has been found in specific geographic regions. We report a case of meningitis caused by C. tetragattii (molecular type VGIV) in an ...immunocompetent patient in Taiwan. The patient had traveled to Egypt and was positive for granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor autoantibody.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Coloring and identification procedures for medical devices are important to reduce the risks of defective medical devices or incorrect operations and implantations. The study herein reports a novel ...platform of color pigment‐modified Parylene coatings to fulfill the needs of medical coatings, providing a surface modification route to alter the important property of color for an underlying material and/or device from its original color. Modification with a naphthalimide derivative is employed for the Parylene precursor. The synthesis of the final color Parylene coating is performed based on a vapor‐phase deposition polymerization process, and the coating is conformally coated on a variety of materials regardless of the shape or dimension. Furthermore, control of the color to create a series of color‐changing Parylene coatings is enabled by vapor deposition copolymerization with a second Parylene derivative source, and predictable color tuning from a primary to a secondary and/or tertiary color is achievable in the experiments and shows accordance with color theory. The reported coating platform represents a colored coating tool and is biocompatible for biotechnological applications.
A series of vapor phase‐synthesized color pigment‐modified Parylene coatings are fabricated with tuning of the chromatism, providing a surface modification route to alter the color property for an underlying material or device from its original color.
High‐performance and long‐term stable self‐powered photodetectors (PDs) based on methylammonium lead iodide nanowires (NWs) are demonstrated by incorporating n‐type conjugated polymer ...poly{2,5‐bis(2‐dodecylhexadecyl)‐3,6‐di(thiophen‐2‐yl)pyrrolo‐3,4‐cpyrrole‐1,4(2H,5H)‐dione‐alt‐(E)‐1,2‐bis(3‐cyanothiophen‐2‐yl)ethene} (DPP‐CNTVT) as multi‐functional interfacial layer. Incorporating DPP‐CNTVT with abundant Lewis base functional groups can effectively passivate under‐coordinated Pb2+ defects, enabling perovskite NWs to exhibit remarkable stability and optoelectronic properties. Meanwhile, high electron mobility, together with the proper energy level of DPP‐CNTVT, makes it ideal for use as an electron transport layer. Particularly, by taking advantage of the low bandgap of DPP‐CNTVT, the utilization of low energy photons can be improved. The resulting PDs exhibit responsivity up to 0.50 A W−1, specific detectivity approaching 1014 Jones, and a wide linear dynamic range of nearly 265 dB under zero bias operation, which represent the best results ever reported for self‐powered perovskite PDs. More encouragingly, with the incorporation of an appropriate encapsulation layer, nearly 90% of the initial detectivity of PDs can be secured after 15 300 h of continuous operation in ambient conditions. The application of NWs PDs for solution‐processed reflective‐mode pulse oximetry is also demonstrated. This study provides valuable insights into developing efficient and ultra‐stable self‐powered perovskite PDs through interfacial engineering, which can accelerate the practical applications of this emerging technology.
High‐performance and ultra‐stable self‐powered photodetectors (PDs) based on perovskite nanowires (NWs) are achieved by using n‐type conjugated polymer poly{2,5‐bis(2‐dodecylhexadecyl)‐3,6‐di(thiophen‐2‐yl)pyrrolo‐3,4‐cpyrrole‐1,4(2H,5H)‐dione‐alt‐(E)‐1,2‐bis(3‐cyanothiophen‐2‐yl)ethene} as multi‐functional interfacial layer. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the performance and stability achieved herein represent the best results ever reported for perovskite PDs. More encouragingly, the application of NWs PDs for solution‐processed reflective‐mode pulse oximetry is also demonstrated.
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