Notes

Nutritional intake along with major food options for nutritional D along with calcium supplement in Colombian urban grownups.
Controlled drug delivery formulations have revolutionized treatments for a range of health conditions. Over decades of innovation, layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly has emerged as one of the most versatile fabrication methods used to develop multifunctional controlled drug release coatings. The numerous advantages of LbL include its ability to incorporate and preserve biological activity of therapeutic agents; coat multiple substrates of all scales (e.g., nanoparticles to implants); and exhibit tuned, targeted, and/or responsive drug release behavior. read more of LbL films can be related to their physicochemical properties. In this review, we highlight recent advances in the development of LbL-engineered biomaterials for drug delivery, demonstrating their potential in the fields of cancer therapy, microbial infection prevention and treatment, and directing cellular responses. We discuss the various advantages of LbL biomaterial design for a given application as demonstrated through in vitro and in vivo studies. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering Volume 22 is June 4, 2020. Please see http//www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.Graphene is a highly desirable material for a variety of applications; in the case of nanocomposites, it can be functionalized and added as a nanofiller to alter the ultimate product properties, such as tensile strength. However, often the material properties of the functionalized graphene and the location of any chemical species, attached via different functionalization processes, are not known. Thus, it is not necessarily understood why improvements in product performance are achieved, which hinders the rate of product development. Here, a commercially available powder containing few-layer graphene (FLG) flakes is characterized before and after plasma or chemical functionalization with either nitrogen or oxygen species. A range of measurement techniques, including tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS), time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS), and NanoSIMS, were used to examine the physical and chemical changes in the FLG material at both the micro- and nanoscale. This is the first reported TERS imaging of commercially available FLG flakes of submicron lateral size, revealing the location of the defects (edge versus basal plane) and variations in the level of functionalization. Graphene-polymer composites were then produced, and the dispersion of the graphitic material in the matrix was visualized using ToF-SIMS. Finally, mechanical testing of the composites demonstrated that the final product performance could be enhanced but differed depending on the properties of the original graphitic material.Block copolymer micelles have received increasing attention in the last decades, in particular for their appealing properties in nanomedicine. #link# However, systematic investigations of the interaction between polymeric micelles and immune cells are still rare. Therefore, broader studies comparing the structural effects remain inevitable for a comprehensive understanding of the immune response and for the design of efficient, nonimmunogenic delivery systems. Here, we present novel block copolymer micelles with the same hydrophobic core, based on a copolymer of BA and VDM, and various hydrophilic shells ranging from common PEG derivatives to morpholine-based materials. The influence of these shells on innate immune responses was studied in detail. In addition, we investigated the impact of micelle stability by varying the cross-linking density in the micellar core. Surprisingly, whereas different shells had only a minor impact on immune response, micelles with reduced cross-linking density considerably enhanced the release of cytokines from isolated human monocytes. Moreover, the uptake of non-cross-linked micelles by monocytes was significantly higher as compared to cross-linked materials. Our study emphasizes the importance of the micellar stability on the interaction with the immune system, which is the key for any stealth properties in vivo. Polymers based on morpholines result in a similar low response as the PEG derivative and may represent an interesting alternative to the common PEGylation.As an FDA-approved drug, teniposide, was utilized in cancer treatment but was accompanied by a strong side effect in long-term clinical trials. This work discovered potential candidate drugs with low toxicity by modifying the molecule structure of teniposide through a structure-guided drug design approach. The IC50 value of novel 4,6-O-thenylidene-β-d-glucopyranoside-(2″-acetamido, 3″-acetyl-di-S-5-fluorobenzothizole/5-fluorobenzoxazole)-4'-demethylepipodophyllotoxin (compounds 15 and 16) was 120.4-125.1 μM, which was significantly improved by around 10 times more than teniposide (11.5-22.3 μM) against healthy human cells (i.e., HL-7702, H8, MRC-5, and HMEC). In vivo studies demonstrated compounds 15 and 16 significantly suppressed the tumor growth in the HepG2 cell xenograft model without exhibiting obvious toxicity (LD50 values of 208.45 and 167.52 mg/kg), which was lower than that of teniposide (LD50 = 46.12 mg/kg). Compounds 15 and 16 caused mild γH2AX phosphorylation for low DNA toxicity and less inhibition of PI3K/Akt. Compounds 15 and 16 might be potential antitumor drugs with low toxicity.The photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) shows a multitude of emission peaks below the bright exciton line, and not all of them have been explained yet. Here, we study the emission traces of phonon-assisted recombinations of indirect excitons. To this end, we develop a microscopic theory describing simultaneous exciton, phonon, and photon interaction and including consistent many-particle dephasing. We explain the drastically different PL below the bright exciton in tungsten- and molybdenum-based materials as the result of different configurations of bright and momentum-dark states. In good agreement with experiments, our calculations predict that WSe2 exhibits clearly visible low-temperature PL signals stemming from the phonon-assisted recombination of momentum-dark K-K' excitons.
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