Cationic Star Polymers Obtained by the Arm-First Approach─Influence of Arm Number and Positioning of Cationic Units on Antimicrobial Activity.

Recently, we published a study demonstrating the promising structure-activity relationship of 4-arm star polymers toward bacterial cells and biofilms. The aim of this study was to increase the number of arms to determine if this could further enhance activity via the arm-first approach, which enables access to star structures with a higher number of arms. A library of amphiphilic diblock and miktoarm star polymers was successfully synthesized, and their biological properties were assessed.

Cancer Prevention and Cultural Continuity for Métis Peoples in Canada: A Scoping Review.

The purpose of this scoping review was to map the literature on the relationship between cultural continuity and health among Métis people as well as how this knowledge could be translated into cancer prevention initiatives. We included any Métis-specific literature evaluating connections between culture, health, and well-being. We conducted electronic searches of Medline, PubMed, Embase, PsychInfo, I-Portal, and hand-searched journals, and reviewed the grey literature.

Synthetic Star Nanoengineered Antimicrobial Polymers as Antibiofilm Agents: Bacterial Membrane Disruption and Cell Aggregation.

Antimicrobial resistance has become a worldwide issue, with multiresistant bacterial strains emerging at an alarming rate. Multivalent antimicrobial polymer architectures such as bottle brush or star polymers have shown great potential, as they could lead to enhanced binding and interaction with the bacterial cell membrane. In this study, a library of amphiphilic star copolymers and their linear copolymer equivalents, based on acrylamide monomers, were synthesized via RAFT polymerization.

Antimicrobial Polymers of Linear and Bottlebrush Architecture: Probing the Membrane Interaction and Physicochemical Properties.

Polymeric antimicrobial peptide mimics are a promising alternative for the future management of the daunting problems associated with antimicrobial resistance. However, the development of successful antimicrobial polymers (APs) requires careful control of factors such as amphiphilic balance, molecular weight, dispersity, sequence, and architecture. While most of the earlier developed APs focus on random linear copolymers, the development of APs with advanced architectures proves to be more potent.

Bottlebrush copolymers for gene delivery: influence of architecture, charge density, and backbone length on transfection efficiency.

The influence of polymer architecture of polycations on their ability to transfect mammalian cells is probed. Polymer bottle brushes with grafts made from partially hydrolysed poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) are used while varying the length of the polymer backbone as well as the degree of hydrolysis (cationic charge content). Polyplex formation is investigated gel electrophoresis, dye-displacement and dynamic light scattering.

Impact of Multivalence and Self-Assembly in the Design of Polymeric Antimicrobial Peptide Mimics.

Antimicrobial resistance is an increasingly serious challenge for public health and could result in dramatic negative consequences for the health care sector during the next decades. To solve this problem, antibacterial materials that are unsusceptible toward the development of bacterial resistance are a promising branch of research. In this work, a new type of polymeric antimicrobial peptide mimic featuring a bottlebrush architecture is developed, using a combination of reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization and ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP).

[Predictive value of postural and dynamic walking parameters after high-volume lumbar puncture in normal pressure hydrocephalus].

Introduction: Normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) was described by Adams et al. (1965). The common clinical presentation is the triad: gait disturbance, cognitive decline and urinary incontinence.

Accurate image reconstruction from few-view and limited-angle data in diffraction tomography.

We present a method for obtaining accurate image reconstruction from highly sparse data in diffraction tomography (DT). A practical need exists for reconstruction from few-view and limited-angle data, as this can greatly reduce required scan times in DT. Our method does this by minimizing the total variation (TV) of the estimated image, subject to the constraint that the Fourier transform of the estimated image matches the measured Fourier data samples.