Mechanical activation and expression of HSP27 in epithelial ovarian cancer.

Understanding the complex biomechanical tumor microenvironment (TME) is of critical importance in developing the next generation of anti-cancer treatment strategies. This is especially true in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), the deadliest of the gynecologic cancers due to recurrent disease or chemoresistance. However, current models of EOC progression provide little control or ability to monitor how changes in biomechanical parameters alter EOC cell behaviors.

Atherosclerotic three-layer nanomatrix vascular sheets for high-throughput therapeutic evaluation.

In vitro atherosclerosis models are essential to evaluate therapeutics before in vivo and clinical studies, but significant limitations remain, such as the lack of three-layer vascular architecture and limited atherosclerotic features. Moreover, no scalable 3D atherosclerosis model is available for making high-throughput assays for therapeutic evaluation. Herein, we report an in vitro 3D three-layer nanomatrix vascular sheet with critical atherosclerosis multi-features (VSA), including endothelial dysfunction, monocyte recruitment, macrophages, extracellular matrix remodeling, smooth muscle cell phenotype transition, inflammatory cytokine secretion, foam cells, and calcification initiation.

Tissue-Engineered 3D In Vitro Disease Models for High-Throughput Drug Screening.

During high-throughput drug screening, in vitro models are fabricated and the effects of therapeutics on the models evaluated in high throughput-for example, with automated liquid handling systems and microplate reader-based high-throughput screening (HTS) assays. The most frequently-used model systems for HTS, 2D models, do not adequately model the in vivo 3D microenvironment-an important aspect of which is the extracellular matrix-and therefore, 2D models may not be appropriate for drug screening. Instead, tissue-engineered 3D models with extracellular matrix-mimicking components are destined to become the preferred in vitro systems for HTS.

Pro-Healing Nanomatrix-Coated Stent Analysis in an Vascular Double-Layer System and in a Rabbit Model.

Cardiovascular stent technologies have significantly improved over time. However, their optimal performance remains limited by restenosis, thrombosis, inflammation, and delayed re-endothelialization. Current stent designs primarily target inhibition of neointimal proliferation but do not promote functional arterial healing (pro-healing) in order to restore normal vascular reactivity.