Cardiac Dysfunction Among Breast Cancer Survivors: Role of Cardiotoxic Therapy and Cardiovascular Risk Factors.

Purpose: Cardiac dysfunction is the leading cause of mortality among 10-year breast cancer survivors. Limited information regarding long-term risks of cardiac dysfunction after cardiotoxic therapy (anthracyclines, trastuzumab/pertuzumab, radiation) has precluded development of surveillance guidelines for the survivors.

Methods: Patients with breast cancer who completed cardiotoxic therapy underwent echocardiographic screening every 2 years.

Carbodiimide-Driven Toughening of Interpenetrated Polymer Networks.

Recent work has demonstrated that temporary crosslinks in polymer networks generated by chemical "fuels" afford materials with large, transient changes in their mechanical properties. This can be accomplished in carboxylic-acid-functionalized polymer hydrogels using carbodiimides, which generate anhydride crosslinks with lifetimes on the order of minutes to hours. Here, the impact of the polymer network architecture on the mechanical properties of transiently crosslinked materials was explored.

Silky Liquid Metal Electrodes for On-Skin Health Monitoring.

Next generation on-skin electrodes will require soft, flexible, and gentle materials to provide both high-fidelity sensing and wearer comfort. However, many commercially available on-skin electrodes lack these key properties due to their use of rigid hardware, harsh adhesives, uncomfortable support structures, and poor breathability. To address these challenges, this work presents a new device paradigm by joining biocompatible electrospun spider silk with printable liquid metal to yield an incredibly soft and scalable on-skin electrode that is strain-tolerant, conformable, and gentle on-skin.

Chemically Fueled Reinforcement of Polymer Hydrogels.

Carbodiimide-fueled anhydride bond formation has been used to enhance the mechanical properties of permanently crosslinked polymer networks, giving materials that exhibit transitions from soft gels to covalently reinforced gels, eventually returning to the original soft gels. Temporary changes in mechanical properties result from a transient network of anhydride crosslinks, which eventually dissipate by hydrolysis. Over an order of magnitude increase in the storage modulus is possible through carbodiimide fueling.

KRAS G12D mutation in Brunner gland adenoma.

Brunner gland lesions (BGLs) encompass benign proliferations of the homonymous glands and have been designated as hyperplasia, adenoma (BGA), hamartoma or nodule. In general terms, lesions larger than 0.5 cm are considered true neoplasia with unknown malignant potential and unclear pathogenesis.

Neurothekeoma With PI3K w552*, ALK P1469S, SMO G461S, and ERBB3 L77M Genetic Alterations.

Neurothekeoma, a lesion of possible fibrohistiocytic origin, is a rare, benign, superficial soft tissue tumor, histologically subclassified in 3 types: myxoid, cellular, or mixed. It clinically presents as a solitary, pink to brown nodule, ranging from 0.3 to 2.

Extrusion 3D printing of keratin protein hydrogels free of exogenous chemical agents.

Keratins are a class of intermediate filament proteins that can be obtained from numerous sources including human hair. Materials fabricated from keratins offer desirable characteristics as scaffolds for tissue engineering, including intrinsic cell adhesion sequences and tunable degradation kinetics. The capacity to create 3D printed constructs from keratin-based bio-inks generates unique opportunities for spatial control of scaffold physicochemical properties to direct scaffold functions in ways not readily achieved through other means.

Aromatic foldamers as molecular springs in network polymers.

Polymer networks crosslinked with spring-like -phenylene (P) foldamers were developed. NMR analysis indicated the P crosslinkers were well-folded. Polymer networks with P-based crosslinkers showed enhanced energy dissipation and elasticity compared to divinylbenzene crosslinked networks.

3D-Printed Self-Healing Elastomers for Modular Soft Robotics.

Advances in materials, designs, and controls are propelling the field of soft robotics at an incredible rate; however, current methods for prototyping soft robots remain cumbersome and struggle to incorporate desirable geometric complexity. Herein, a vat photopolymerizable self-healing elastomer system capable of extreme elongations up to 1000% is presented. The material is formed from a combination of thiol/acrylate mixed chain/step-growth polymerizations and uses a combination of physical processes and dynamic-bond exchange via thioethers to achieve full self-healing capacity over multiple damage/healing cycles.

Heat- and Light-Responsive Materials Through Pairing Dynamic Thiol-Michael and Coumarin Chemistry.

Covalent adaptable networks (CANs) based on the thiol-Michael (TM) linkages can be thermal and pH responsive. Here, a new vinyl-sulfone-based thiol-Michael crosslinker is synthesized and incorporated into acrylate-based CANs to achieve stable materials with dynamic properties. Because of the reversible TM linkages, excellent temperature-responsive re-healing and malleability properties are achieved.

Impact of tumor-parenchyma biomechanics on liver metastatic progression: a multi-model approach.

Colorectal cancer and other cancers often metastasize to the liver in later stages of the disease, contributing significantly to patient death. While the biomechanical properties of the liver parenchyma (normal liver tissue) are known to affect tumor cell behavior in primary and metastatic tumors, the role of these properties in driving or inhibiting metastatic inception remains poorly understood, as are the longer-term multicellular dynamics. This study adopts a multi-model approach to study the dynamics of tumor-parenchyma biomechanical interactions during metastatic seeding and growth.

Self-Replicating RNAs Drive Protective Anti-tumor T Cell Responses to Neoantigen Vaccine Targets in a Combinatorial Approach.

Historically poor clinical results of tumor vaccines have been attributed to weakly immunogenic antigen targets, limited specificity, and vaccine platforms that fail to induce high-quality polyfunctional T cells, central to mediating cellular immunity. We show here that the combination of antigen selection, construct design, and a robust vaccine platform based on the Synthetically Modified Alpha Replicon RNA Technology (SMARRT), a self-replicating RNA, leads to control of tumor growth in mice. Therapeutic immunization with SMARRT replicon-based vaccines expressing tumor-specific neoantigens or tumor-associated antigen were able to generate polyfunctional CD4 and CD8 T cell responses in mice.

CD8 T cells mediate protection against Zika virus induced by an NS3-based vaccine.

Zika virus (ZIKV) is associated with congenital malformations in infants born to infected mothers, and with Guillain-Barré syndrome in infected adults. Development of ZIKV vaccines has focused predominantly on the induction of neutralizing antibodies, although a suboptimal antibody response may theoretically enhance disease severity through antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). Here, we report induction of a protective anti-ZIKV CD8 T cell response in the HLA-B*0702 transgenic mice using an alphavirus-based replicon RNA vaccine expressing ZIKV nonstructural protein NS3, a potent T cell antigen.

Anilinium Salts in Polymer Networks for Materials with Mechanical Stability and Mild Thermally Induced Dynamic Properties.

Dynamic nucleophilic exchange of quaternary anilinium salts has been incorporated into rehealable and malleable polymeric materials that can be activated under mild (60 °C) thermal stimulus. The mechanism of dynamic exchange between quaternary anilinium salt and free aniline was assessed in small-molecule model experiments. The dynamic exchange was found to be dissociative in nature, due to the indirect S2 mechanism, where initially the bromide anion attacks the anilinium salt to generate an alkyl bromide which undergoes subsequent attack by a free aniline group.

Chemically fueled covalent crosslinking of polymer materials.

Transiently crosslinked dynamic polymer networks are developed, using carbodiimide hydration to link carboxylic acids as anhydrides. From aqueous polymer solutions, non-equilibrium hydrogels are transiently formed, which dissolve upon anhydride hydrolysis. The materials can be refueled using a subsequent injection of carbodiimide.

Correction to: A Comparison of Measurements of a Pediatric Supplement.

The original version of this article unfortunately contained mistakes.

A Comparison of Measurements of a Pediatric Supplement.

This study evaluated the flow properties of viscosity and flow rate for water and two common pediatric liquids. The flow properties of the test liquids are of interest to create a cup simulation model and "smart" prototype training cup. Two objective methods of determining flow properties were utilized: a rheometer to assess viscosity and a modified version of the International Dysphagia Diet Standardization Initiative (IDDSI) to assess flow rate.

Shear stress upregulates regeneration-related immediate early genes in liver progenitors in 3D ECM-like microenvironments.

The role of fluid stresses in activating the hepatic stem/progenitor cell regenerative response is not well understood. This study hypothesized that immediate early genes (IEGs) with known links to liver regeneration will be upregulated in liver progenitor cells (LPCs) exposed to in vitro shear stresses on the order of those produced from elevated interstitial flow after partial hepatectomy. The objectives were: (1) to develop a shear flow chamber for application of fluid stress to LPCs in 3D culture; and (2) to determine the effects of fluid stress on IEG expression in LPCs.

Association of a Surgical Task During Training With Team Skill Acquisition Among Surgical Residents: The Missing Piece in Multidisciplinary Team Training.

Importance: The human patient simulators that are currently used in multidisciplinary operating room team training scenarios cannot simulate surgical tasks because they lack a realistic surgical anatomy. Thus, they eliminate the surgeon's primary task in the operating room. The surgical trainee is presented with a significant barrier when he or she attempts to suspend disbelief and engage in the scenario.

Effect of Polymer Network Architecture, Enhancing Soft Materials Using Orthogonal Dynamic Bonds in an Interpenetrating Network.

Doubly dynamic polymer networks were synthesized with two distinct exchangeable cross-linkers. The first linker is highly dynamic and rapidly exchanging hydrogen bonded 2-ureido-4[1]-pyrimidinone (UPy) and the second is a thermoresponsive furan-maleimide Diels-Alder adduct (FMI). Two network architectures were considered: an interpenetrating network (IPN) where one network is cross-linked with the UPy linker and the other is cross-linked with the FMI linker, and a single network (SN) where both the UPy and FMI linkers are in the same single network.

Progress Towards Computational 3-D Multicellular Systems Biology.

Tumors cannot be understood in isolation from their microenvironment. Tumor and stromal cells change phenotype based upon biochemical and biophysical inputs from their surroundings, even as they interact with and remodel the microenvironment. Cancer should be investigated as an adaptive, multicellular system in a dynamical microenvironment.