Dengue is among the most rapidly spreading arboviral disease in the world. A low-cost, easy to use point-of-care diagnostic tool for the detection and differentiation of dengue virus serotypes could improve clinical management, disease prevention, epidemiological surveillance, and outbreak monitoring, particularly in regions where multiple serotypes co-circulate. Despite widespread deployment, no commercial dengue antigen diagnostic test has proven effective in differentiating among dengue virus serotypes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFucoidan/trimethylchitosan nanoparticles (FUC-TMC-NPs) have the potential to improve the immunostimulating efficiency of anthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA). FUC-TMC-NPs with positive (+) or negative (-) surface charges were prepared via polyelectrolyte complexation, both charged NP types permitted high viability and presented no cytotoxicity on L929, A549 and JAWS II dendritic cells. Flow cytometry measurements indicated lower (+)-FUC-TMC-NPs internalization levels than (-)-FUC-TMC-NPs, yet produced high levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines IFN-γ, IL12p40, and IL-4.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examined the efficacy of fucoidan-N-(2-hydroxy-3-trimethylammonium)propylchitosan nanoparticles (FUC-HTCC NPs) as adjuvants for anthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA). Positively and negatively surface-charged FUC-HTCC NPs were prepared via polyelectrolyte complexation by varying the mass ratio of FUC and HTCC. When cultured with L929 cells or JAWS II dendritic cells, both charged NPs showed high cell viability and low cytotoxicity, observed via MTT assay and lactate dehydrogenase release assay, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDengue fever, caused by infections with the dengue virus (DENV), affects nearly 400 million people globally every year. Early diagnosis and management can reduce the morbidity and mortality rates of severe forms of dengue disease as well as decrease the risk of wider outbreaks. Although the early diagnosis of dengue can be achieved using a number of commercial NS1 detection kits, none of these can differentiate among the four dengue virus serotypes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) is widely used in various fields, including the semiconductor, biomaterial and microelectronic fields. Obtaining the correct depth profiles of PMMA is essential, especially when it is used as a thin-film. There have been many studies that have used earlier generation of cluster ion (SF5(+)) as the sputtering source to profile PMMA films, but few reports have discussed the use of the more recently developed C60(+) in the PMMA sputtering process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the past decade, buckminsterfullerene (C(60))-based ion beams have been utilized in surface analysis instruments to expand their application to profiling organic materials. Although it had excellent performance for many organic and biological materials, its drawbacks, including carbon deposition, carbon penetration, continuous decay of the sputtering rate, and a rough sputtered surface, hindered its application. Cosputtering with C(60)(+) and auxiliary Ar(+) simultaneously and sample rotation during sputtering were proposed as methods to reduce the above-mentioned phenomena.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo explore C(60)(+) sputtering beyond low-damage depth profiling of organic materials, X-ray photoelectron spectrometry (XPS) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) were used to examine metallic surfaces during and after C(60)(+) sputtering. During C(60)(+) sputtering, XPS spectra indicated that the degrees of carbon deposition were different for different metallic surfaces. Moreover, for some metals (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTime-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) using pulsed C(60)(+) primary ions is a promising technique for analyzing biological specimens with high surface sensitivities. With molecular secondary ions of high masses, multiple molecules can be identified simultaneously without prior separation or isotope labeling. Previous reports using the C(60)(+) primary ion have been based on static-SIMS, which makes depth profiling complicated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study demonstrated that the work function (Φ) of Au substrates can be fine-tuned by using series ratios of binary self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). By using pure amine- and carboxylic acid-bearing alkanethiol SAM on gold substrates, Φ of Au changed from 5.10 to 5.
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