Revolutionizing IBD research with on-chip models of disease modeling and drug screening.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) comprises chronic inflammatory conditions with complex mechanisms and diverse manifestations, posing significant clinical challenges. Traditional animal models and ethical concerns in human studies necessitate innovative approaches. This review provides an overview of human intestinal architecture in health and inflammation, emphasizing the role of microfluidics and on-chip technologies in IBD research.

Shedding Light on Cellular Secrets: A Review of Advanced Optical Biosensing Techniques for Detecting Extracellular Vesicles with a Special Focus on Cancer Diagnosis.

In the relentless pursuit of innovative diagnostic tools for cancer, this review illuminates the cutting-edge realm of extracellular vesicles (EVs) and their biomolecular cargo detection through advanced optical biosensing techniques with a primary emphasis on their significance in cancer diagnosis. From the sophisticated domain of nanomaterials to the precision of surface plasmon resonance, we herein examine the diverse universe of optical biosensors, emphasizing their specified applications in cancer diagnosis. Exploring and understanding the details of EVs, we present innovative applications of enhancing and blending signals, going beyond the limits to sharpen our ability to sense and distinguish with greater sensitivity and specificity.

3D Breast Cancer Model on Silk Fibroin-Integrated Microfluidic Chips.

To imitate in vivo environment of cells, microfluidics offer controllable fashions at micro-scale and enable regulate flow-related parameters precisely, leveraging the current state of 3D systems to 4D level through the inclusion of flow and shear stress. In particular, integrating silk fibroin as an adhering layer with microfluidic chips enables to form more comprehensive and biocompatible network between cells since silk fibroin holds outstanding mechanical and biological properties such as easy processability, biocompatibility, controllable biodegradation, and versatile functionalization. In this chapter, we describe design and fabrication of a microfluidic chip, with silk fibroin-covered microchannels for the formation of 3D structures, such as MCF-7 (human breast cancer) cell spheroids as a model system.

A Sustainable Solution to Skin Diseases: Ecofriendly Transdermal Patches.

Skin is the largest epithelial surface of the human body, with a surface area of 2 m for the average adult human. Being an external organ, it is susceptible to more than 3000 potential skin diseases, including injury, inflammation, microbial and viral infections, and skin cancer. Due to its nature, it offers a large accessible site for administrating several medications against these diseases.

Smart materials-integrated sensor technologies for COVID-19 diagnosis.

After the first case has appeared in China, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose an omnipresent threat to global health, affecting more than 70 million patients and leading to around 1.6 million deaths. To implement rapid and effective clinical management, early diagnosis is the mainstay.