To investigate cytokine profile of cholesteatoma and to collect information about important intercellular signaling pathways by establishing two different cell culture models, to block important ...intercellular signaling pathways in cholesteatoma by applying immune system modifier drugs to develop alternative medical therapy options for cholesteatoma.
To observe the pathogenesis of cholesteatoma and to apply the immunomodulatory drugs, cholesteatoma tissue culture models were constituted with HEKa cells and cholesteatoma keratinocytes, which were obtained from 3 patients who underwent operations for cholesteatoma. Medicines including 5-fluorourasil, imiquimod, cyclosporine, and tacrolimus were applied on both cholesteatoma keratinocytes and HEKa cells. After 48 h of incubation, IL-1, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, TNF-α, and Ki67 levels were measured to determine cell viability rates.
In the cholesteatoma control group, IL-6 and TNF-α levels were found higher than in the HEKa control group. All repurposed drugs in the study demonstrated anti-inflammatory, anti-proliferative, and cytotoxic effects on cholesteatoma. Imiquimod and tacrolimus in particular are potential treatment prospects for cholesteatoma due to their strong anti-inflammatory and cytotoxic effects.
Medical therapy options for cholesteatoma are still missing and surgery is not the ultimate solution. We have focused on intercellular inflammatory processes, which play significant roles in the pathogenesis of cholesteatoma in our paper. Inflammation and proliferation of cholesteatoma decreased after all repurposed drug applications in our study. Anti-inflammatory and anti-proliferative effects of tacrolimus and imiquimod was more significant than other drugs in the study. For this reason, tacrolimus and imiquimod should be examined in depth with in vivo studies in terms of efficacy and safety for medical treatment of cholesteatoma.
We develop a simple model of ionic current through neuronal membranes as a function of membrane potential and extracellular ion concentration. The model combines a simplified Poisson-Nernst-Planck ...(PNP) model of ion transport through individual mechanosensitive ion channels with channel activation functions calibrated from ad hoc in-house experimental data. The simplified PNP model is validated against bacterial Gramicidin A ion channel data. The calibrated model accounts for the transport of calcium, sodium, potassium, and chloride and exhibits remarkable agreement with the experimentally measured current-voltage curves for the differentiated human neural cells. All relevant data and code related to the ion flow models are available at DaRUS.
Even micromachines with tailored functionalities enable targeted therapeutic applications in biological environments, their controlled motion in biological media and drug delivery functions usually ...require sophisticated designs and complex propulsion apparatuses for practical applications. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs), new chemically versatile and nanoporous materials, offer microscale multi-purpose solutions, which are not explored in light-driven micromachines. We describe and compare two different types of COFs, uniformly spherical TABP-PDA-COF sub-micron particles and texturally highly nanoporous, irregular, micron-sized TpAzo-COF particles as light-driven microrobots. They can be used as highly efficient visible-light-driven drug carriers in aqueous ionic and cellular media, even in intraocular fluids. Their absorption ranging down to red light enables phototaxis even in deeper biological media and the organic nature of COFs enables their biocompatibility. The inherently porous structure with ~2.5 nm structural pores, and large surface areas allow for targeted and efficient drug loading even for insoluble drugs and peptides, which can be released on demand. Also, indocyanine green (ICG) dye loading in the pores enables photoacoustic imaging or optical coherence tomography and hyperthermia in operando conditions. The real-time visualization of the drug-loaded COF microswimmers enables new insights into the function of porous organic micromachines, which will be useful to solve various drug delivery problems.
After physical or surgical damage of corneal epithelium, most of analgesic drugs, like non-selective opioid agonists and non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs, cannot be used because of their negative ...effects on wound healing process. Biphalin is selective µ and Δ opioid receptor agonist which has proven analgesic effects on rodents. Our purpose of study is finding effects of biphalin on wound healing of corneal epithelium. We used primary culture of human corneal epithelial cells (HCECs) for examining effects of biphalin on wound healing. Firstly, we measured toxicity of Biphalin in various concentrations with MTT assay and we showed biphalin has no toxic effects on HCECs in lower concentrations than 100 µM in various incubation times. After MTT assay, we administered 1 µM and 10 µM biphalin at in vitro scratch assay of HCECs, biphalin increased wound closure process significantly at 1 µM concentration (p < 0.05). Then we tested effects of biphalin on cell migration and proliferation separately. Bifalin increased migration of HCECs significantly (p < 0.01) at transwell migration assay. But we did not observe any significant difference between groups in Ki67 proliferation assay. In all these experiments, we also used naloxone to inhibiting effects of biphalin. In biphalin plus naloxone groups, effects of biphalin decrease partially. Our study results suggest, biphalin has positive effects on epithelial wound healing via opioid receptors. This effect because of increased migration of HCECs under influence of biphalin. With these findings, we propose biphalin as a new analgesic agent for post-surgical and post-traumatic care of corneal epithelial wounds.