A comparison of blind intubation with the intubating laryngeal mask FASTRACH™ and the intubating laryngeal mask Ambu Aura-i™ a prospective randomised clinical trial.

Background: The intubating laryngeal mask Fastrach™ is considered a gold standard for blind intubation as well as for fibreoptic guided intubation via a laryngeal mask. Recently, a single use version of the mask has been introduced. We compared the Fastrach single use with the new, low-priced single use intubating laryngeal mask Ambu Aura-i™.

Translational learning from clinical studies predicts drug pharmacokinetics across patient populations.

Early indication of late-stage failure of novel candidate drugs could be facilitated by continuous integration, assessment, and transfer of knowledge acquired along pharmaceutical development programs. We here present a translational systems pharmacology workflow that combines drug cocktail probing in a specifically designed clinical study, physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling, and Bayesian statistics to identify and transfer (patho-)physiological and drug-specific knowledge across distinct patient populations. Our work builds on two clinical investigations, one with 103 healthy volunteers and one with 79 diseased patients from which we systematically derived physiological information from pharmacokinetic data for a reference probe drug (midazolam) at the single-patient level.

[Robotic-Assisted Oesophageal Surgery].

Background: Abdominothoracic oesophageal resections, also known as Ivor Lewis procedures, are complex visceral surgery procedures. In recent years, substeps have increasingly been performed using minimally invasive techniques. However, intrathoracic anastomosis is still a challenge given the instrumental and technological possibilities available to date.

Discovery of substituted lactams as novel dual orexin receptor antagonists. Synthesis, preliminary structure-activity relationship studies and efforts towards improved metabolic stability and pharmacokinetic properties. Part 1.

Starting from a thiazolidin-4-one HTS hit, a novel series of substituted lactams was identified and developed as dual orexin receptor antagonists. In this Letter, we describe our initial efforts towards the improvement of potency and metabolic stability. These investigations delivered optimized lead compounds with CNS drug-like properties suitable for further optimization.

Caged retinoids as photoinducible activators: implications for cell differentiation and neurite outgrowth.

Aiming to control neurite formation and navigate the axonal growth by an extrinsic guidance, we report on the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of caged retinoids. Agonists of RARβ have been temporarily blocked either by the [(α-methyl-2-nitropiperonyl)oxy]carbonyl (MeNPOC) group or by immobilization using nitrocatechol linkers on TiO2 particles. Release on demand has been achieved by release under UV irradiation, leading to the biologically active compounds, which have been shown to induce neuronal differentiation and neurite outgrowth.