Magnetic chromatography improves colloidal and MRI attributes of magnetoliposomes enabling evaluation of the impact of size on bio-distribution in an model of pancreatic cancer.

Magnetic chromatography was exploited to fractionate suspensions of magnetoliposomes (SML: lumen-free lipid-encapsulated clusters of multiple magnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles) improving their colloidal properties and relaxivity (magnetic resonance image contrast capability). Fractionation (i) removed sub-populations that do not contribute to the MRI response, and thus (ii) enabled evaluation of the size-dependence of relaxivity for the MRI-active part, which was surprisingly weak in the 55-90 nm range. MC was therefore implemented for processing multiple PEGylated SML types having average sizes ranging from 85 to 105 nm, which were then shown to have strongly size-dependent uptake in an pancreatic cancer model.

Little change in plastic loads in South Atlantic seabirds since the 1980s.

Despite growing concern about the large amounts of waste plastic in marine ecosystems, evidence of an increase in the amount of floating plastic at sea has been mixed. Both at-sea surveys and ingested plastic loads in seabirds show inconsistent evidence of significant increases in the amount of plastic since the 1980s. We use 3727 brown skua Catharacta antarctica regurgitations, each containing the remains of a single seabird, to monitor changes in plastic loads in four seabird taxa breeding at Inaccessible Island, Tristan da Cunha in nine years from 1987 to 2018.