Measurement of Convexity Characteristics: A Transdisciplinary Consensus Conference.

While convex skin barriers have been used in patient care for decades, regulatory bodies and manufacturers have not established consistent parameters for measuring the most essential characteristics of a convex skin barrier. A transdisciplinary panel of manufacturers, engineers, marketing specialists and clinical subject matter experts from the United States was convened to address this gap. An initial consensus meeting was held to establish consensus around measurement parameters for 5 characteristics of convex skin barriers: depth, slope, flexibility, compressibility, and tension location.

Epitaxial Stabilization of a Pyrochlore Interface between Weyl Semimetal and Spin Ice.

Pyrochlore materials are known for their exotic magnetic and topological phases arising from complex interactions among electron correlations, band topology, and geometric frustration. Interfaces between different pyrochlore crystals characterized by complex many-body ground states hold immense potential for novel interfacial phenomena due to the strong interactions between these phases. However, the realization of such interfaces has been severely hindered by limitations in material synthesis methods.

Development of a novel purification protocol to isolate and identify brain microglia.

Microglia, the tissue-resident macrophage of the central nervous system (CNS), play a paramount role in brain health and disease status. Here, we describe a novel method for enriching and isolating primary microglia from mouse brain tissue. This isolation method yields a high number of cells from either young or adult mice, and importantly, maintains the health and function of the cells for subsequent cell culture.

Development of spirulina for the manufacture and oral delivery of protein therapeutics.

The use of the edible photosynthetic cyanobacterium Arthrospira platensis (spirulina) as a biomanufacturing platform has been limited by a lack of genetic tools. Here we report genetic engineering methods for stable, high-level expression of bioactive proteins in spirulina, including large-scale, indoor cultivation and downstream processing methods. Following targeted integration of exogenous genes into the spirulina chromosome (chr), encoded protein biopharmaceuticals can represent as much as 15% of total biomass, require no purification before oral delivery and are stable without refrigeration and protected during gastric transit when encapsulated within dry spirulina.