Reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide scavenging nanoparticles alleviating rheumatoid arthritis through adjusting the seeds and growing soils.

Normalizing inflamed soils including reactive oxygen species (ROS), nitric oxide (NO), cell-free DNA, and regulating inflammation-related seeds such as macrophages, neutrophils, fibroblasts, represent a promising strategy to maintain synovial tissue homeostasis for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treatment. Herein, ROS scavenging amphiphilic block copolymer PEGylated bilirubin and NO-scavenging PEGylated -phenylenediamine were fabricated to self-assemble into a dually responsive nanoparticle loaded with JAK inhibitor notopterol (Not@BR/oPDA-PEG, NBOP NPs). The simultaneous ROS and NO depletion combined with JAK-STAT pathway inhibition could not only promote M2 polarization to reduce further ROS and NO generation, but also decrease cytokines and chemokines to prevent immune cell recruitment.

Sub-5-Minute Ultrafast PCR using Digital Microfluidics.

The development of a rapid and reliable polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method for point-of-care (POC) diagnosis is crucial for the timely identification of pathogens. Microfluidics, which involves the manipulation of small volumes of fluidic samples, has been shown to be an ideal approach for POC analysis. Among the various microfluidic platforms available, digital microfluidics (DMF) offers high degree of configurability in manipulating μL/nL-scale liquid and achieving automation.

Ni-doped BiOCO nanosheet with H/Zn co-insertion for "rocking chair" zinc-ion battery.

Developing insertion-type anode is key to advancing "rocking chair" zinc-ion batteries, though there are few reported insertion-type anodes. Herein, the BiOCO is a high-potential anode, with a special layered structure. A one-step hydrothermal method was used to prepare Ni-doped BiOCO nanosheet, and also a free-standing electrode consisting of Ni-BiOCO and CNTs was designed.

Functionalized PAMAM constructed nanosystems for biomacromolecule delivery.

Polyamidoamines (PAMAMs) are a class of dendrimer with monodispersity and controlled topology, which can deliver biologically active macromolecules (, genes and proteins) to specific regions with high efficiency and minimum side effects. In detail, PAMAMs can be functionalized easily by core modification or surface amendment to encapsulate a wide range of biomacromolecules. Besides, self-assembled, cross-linked and hybrid PAMAMs with customized therapeutic purposes are developed as delivery vehicles, which makes PAMAMs promising for biomacromolecule therapy.

A multifunctional oxidative stress nanoamplifier with ROS amplification and GSH exhaustion for enhanced chemodynamic therapy.

Chemodynamic therapy (CDT) eradicates tumors by intratumoral catalytic chemical reaction and subsequently disrupts redox homeostasis, which shows tumor specific reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated therapy. However, insufficient ROS generation and high levels of glutathione (GSH) in cancer cells have limited the therapeutic efficacy of CDT. Herein, we constructed a multifunctional oxidative stress nanoamplifier with ROS amplification and GSH exhaustion for enhanced CDT.

One-shot high-resolution melting curve analysis for point-mutation discrimination on a digital microfluidics platform.

Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) plays a critical role in personalized medicine, forensics, pharmacogenetics, and disease diagnostics. Among different existing SNP genotyping techniques, melting curve analysis (MCA) becomes increasingly popular due to its high accuracy and straightforward procedures in extracting the melting temperature (). Yet, its study on existing digital microfluidic (DMF) platforms has intrinsic limitations due to the temperature inhomogeneity within a thickened droplet during the on-chip rapid heating process.

Self-Powered Implantable Medical Devices: Photovoltaic Energy Harvesting Review.

Implantable technologies are becoming more widespread for biomedical applications that include physical identification, health diagnosis, monitoring, recording, and treatment of human physiological traits. However, energy harvesting and power generation beneath the human tissue are still a major challenge. In this regard, self-powered implantable devices that scavenge energy from the human body are attractive for long-term monitoring of human physiological traits.

Suppression of coffee-ring effect via periodic oscillation of substrate for ultra-sensitive enrichment towards surface-enhanced Raman scattering.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has attracted extensive interest due to excellent molecule recognition and sensitive concentration detection. Nevertheless, the coffee ring effect (CR) during the analyte evaporation always causes an uneven distribution of the assembled hot-spots, and hence the unreliable SERS signal is produced. In this study, for the first time, we present a suppressed coffee ring (SCR) system via a combination of a magnetically functionalized membrane and reciprocating magnetic field to dynamically suppress the CR for highly reliable and ultra-sensitive SERS detection.

CMOS biosensors for in vitro diagnosis - transducing mechanisms and applications.

Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology enables low-cost and large-scale integration of transistors and physical sensing materials on tiny chips (e.g., <1 cm), seamlessly combining the two key functions of biosensors: transducing and signal processing.

A Single-Chip Solar Energy Harvesting IC Using Integrated Photodiodes for Biomedical Implant Applications.

In this paper, an ultra-compact single-chip solar energy harvesting IC using on-chip solar cell for biomedical implant applications is presented. By employing an on-chip charge pump with parallel connected photodiodes, a 3.5 × efficiency improvement can be achieved when compared with the conventional stacked photodiode approach to boost the harvested voltage while preserving a single-chip solution.

A palm-size μNMR relaxometer using a digital microfluidic device and a semiconductor transceiver for chemical/biological diagnosis.

Herein, we describe a micro-nuclear magnetic resonance (μNMR) relaxometer miniaturized to palm-size and electronically automated for multi-step and multi-sample chemical/biological diagnosis. The co-integration of microfluidic and microelectronic technologies enables an association between the droplet managements and μNMR assays inside a portable sub-Tesla magnet (1.2 kg, 0.

Low-Power CMOS Laser Doppler Imaging Using Non-CDS Pixel Readout and 13.6-bit SAR ADC.

Laser Doppler imaging (LDI) measures particle flows such as blood perfusion by sensing their Doppler shift. This paper is the first of its kind in analyzing the effect of circuit noise on LDI precision which is distinctively different from conventional imaging. Based on this result, it presents a non-correlated-double-sampling (non-CDS) pixel readout scheme along with a high-resolution successive-approximation-register (SAR) analog-to-digital-converter (ADC) with 13.

NMR-DMF: a modular nuclear magnetic resonance-digital microfluidics system for biological assays.

We present a modular nuclear magnetic resonance-digital microfluidics (NMR-DMF) system as a portable diagnostic platform for miniaturized biological assays. With increasing number of combinations between designed probes and a specific target, NMR has become an accurate and rapid assay tool, which is capable of detecting particular kinds of proteins, DNAs, bacteria and cells with a customized probe quantitatively. Traditional sample operation (e.

15-nW Biopotential LPFs in 0.35- μm CMOS using subthreshold-source-follower Biquads with and without gain compensation.

Most biopotential readout front-ends rely on the g m- C lowpass filter (LPF) for forefront signal conditioning. A small g m realizes a large time constant ( τ = C / g m) suitable for ultra-low-cutoff filtering, saving both power and area. Yet, the noise and linearity can be compromised, given that each g m cell can involve one or several noisy and nonlinear V- I conversions originated from the active devices.

Sub-threshold standard cell library design for ultra-low power biomedical applications.

Portable/Implantable biomedical applications usually exhibit stringent power budgets for prolonging battery life time, but loose operating frequency requirements due to small bio-signal bandwidths, typically below a few kHz. The use of sub-threshold digital circuits is ideal in such scenario to achieve optimized power/speed tradeoffs. This paper discusses the design of a sub-threshold standard cell library using a standard 0.