Development of a new HotBalloon ablation catheter equipped with a balloon surface temperature monitoring sensor for pulmonary vein isolation.

The balloon surface temperature (BST) should be monitored to ensure the success of the ablation procedure using the HotBalloon ablation catheter (HBC) in clinical settings. Therefore, we sought to develop a new HBC equipped with a surface temperature monitoring sensor. The BST was evaluated using a pseudo-tissue model and a thermocouple to imitate catheter insertion into the pulmonary vein.

Effect of unsaturated alkyl chains on transfection activity of poly(amidoamine) dendron-bearing lipids.

In an earlier study, we developed a new type of gene vector using poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendron-bearing lipids and reported that their transfection activity was affected by their structures, such as dendron generation and alkyl chain length. In this study, for improvement of their performance as gene vectors, we examined the effect of unsaturated chains of the dendron-bearing lipids using DL-G1-2C(18), which consists of PAMAM G1 dendron moiety and two octadecyl chains, and achieved the most efficient transfection activity among the dendron-bearing lipids having saturated alkyl chains, and DL-G1-2C(18)-U2, which consists of the same dendron-moiety and two octadecenyl chains. DL-G1-2C(18)-U2 showed a higher ability to form lipoplexes with plasmid DNA than DL-G1-2C(18).

Polyamidoamine dendron-bearing lipids as a nonviral vector: influence of dendron generation.

Recently, we demonstrated that octadecyl chains are important as alkyl chain moieties of polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendron-bearing lipids for their serum-resistant transfection activity [Bioconjugate Chem.2007, 18, 1349-1354]. Toward production of highly potent vectors, we examined the influence of the generation of dendron moiety on transfection activity of PAMAM dendron-bearing lipids having two octadecyl chains.