Serum albumin has myriad uses in biotechnology, but its value as a nanocarrier or nanoplatform for therapeutics is becoming increasingly important, notably with albumin-bound chemotherapeutics. Another emerging field is the fabrication of biopolymeric nanoparticles using albumin as a building block to achieve highly-tunable nonimmunogenic capsules or scaffolds that may be cheaply and reliably produced. The aim of this study was to characterize and optimize the desolvation process used for fabrication of albumin nanoparticles under ambient conditions, studying both glutaraldehyde (GT) and glucose (GLU) as crosslinking agents and the effect of various synthesis conditions including pH, electrolyte concentration, and rate of desolvation on particle size and stability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) accounts for about 13.5% of all urological tumors. Healthcare research analyzes whether treatment recommendations from controlled studies or guidelines are being implemented in routine care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 outbreak has highlighted the importance of pandemic preparedness for the prevention of future health crises. One virus family with high pandemic potential are Arenaviruses, which have been detected almost worldwide, particularly in Africa and the Americas. These viruses are highly understudied and many questions regarding their structure, replication and tropism remain unanswered, making the design of an efficacious and molecularly-defined vaccine challenging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResistivity is one of the most important characteristics in the semiconductor industry. The most common way to measure resistivity is the four-point probe method, which requires physical contact with the material under test. Terahertz time domain spectroscopy, a fast and non-destructive measurement method, is already well established in the characterization of dielectrics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPatients with Lafora disease have a mutation in EPM2A or EPM2B, resulting in dysregulation of glycogen metabolism throughout the body and aberrant glycogen molecules that aggregate into Lafora bodies. Lafora bodies are particularly damaging in the brain, where the aggregation drives seizures with increasing severity and frequency, coupled with neurodegeneration. Previous work employed mouse genetic models to reduce glycogen synthesis by approximately 50%, and this strategy significantly reduced Lafora body formation and disease phenotypes.
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