Targeted CRISPR/Cas9 Lipid Nanoparticles Elicits Therapeutic Genome Editing in Head and Neck Cancer.

Squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck (HNSCC) originate in the upper aerodigestive tract, including the oral cavity, pharynx, and larynx. Current treatments of locally advanced HNSCC often lead to high treatment failure, and disease recurrence, resulting in poor survival rates. Advances in mRNA technologies and lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery systems led to several clinical trials involving LNP-CRISPR-Cas9 mRNA-based therapeutics.

Lipid Nanoparticles With Fine-Tuned Composition Show Enhanced Colon Targeting as a Platform for mRNA Therapeutics.

Lipid Nanoparticles (LNPs) recently emerged as an invaluable RNA delivery platform. With many LNP-based therapeutics in the pre-clinical and clinical pipelines, there is extensive research dedicated to improving LNPs. These efforts focus mainly on the tolerability and transfectability of new ionizable lipids and RNAs, or modulating LNPs biodistribution with active targeting strategies.

Indian Rheumatology Association guidelines for the management of ANCA associated vasculitis.

Background: The ACR in 2021 and the EULAR in 2022 published recommendations for management of ANCA-associated vasculitis. Given the differences in the demographic, clinical profiles, and the socio-economic realities between various countries, there is a need for development of guidelines for the management of AAV for less economically developed regions of the world.

Methods: These guidelines were made following the GRADE methodology.

Anaerobic digestion of poultry manure to power a poultry farm in Ba: Pilot and techno-economic study.

Although poultry is the largest meat by volume produced in Fiji, there has not been any established study, nor application of the anaerobic digestion (AD) of poultry manure (PM) in the country. This paper aims to determine the techno-economic feasibility of the AD of PM to power a poultry farm in Fiji. A pilot scale study was first conducted with mono-digestion batches of poultry manure, and co-digestions with kitchen waste (KW) and newspaper waste (NPW).

Rare earth europium recovery using selective metal-organic framework incorporated mixed-matrix membrane.

Rare-earth elements (REEs) play a crucial role in state-of-the-art technologies and sustainable energy generation. However, conventional production methods of REE often instigate detrimental impacts on environment. Hence, the development of efficient and sustainable hydrometallurgical methods for REE recovery from complex solution has become a crucial research focus.

Outcome of Retinoblastoma After Implementation of National Retinoblastoma Treatment Guidelines in South Africa.

Purpose: Retinoblastoma, a curable childhood cancer, has been identified as a tracer cancer in the WHO Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer. To document the outcomes of children with retinoblastoma in South Africa, treated as per the first prospective standard national treatment guidelines for childhood cancer in South Africa.

Patients And Methods: All children diagnosed with retinoblastoma between 2012 and 2016 in five South African pediatric oncology units were treated with a standard treatment on the basis of the International Society of Pediatric Oncology-Pediatric Oncology in Developing Countries guidelines for high-income settings.

Implemented nutritional intervention algorithm in pediatric oncology compared to standard nutritional supportive care outcomes.

Aim: To implement a childhood cancer-specific nutritional algorithm adapted for the South African context for interventions at time-set intervals to evaluate differences in the nutritional status of newly diagnosed children with cancer.

Method: Children with newly diagnosed cancer were assessed for stunting, underweight, wasting, and moderate to severe malnutrition (MUAC < -2SD and < - 3 SD) between October 2018 and December 2020 in a longitudinal nutritional assessment study with monthly assessments. Two pediatric oncology units (POUs) served as the intervention group that implemented the nutritional algorithm-directed intervention and three other POUs formed the control group that implemented standard supportive nutritional care.

Maternal effects, reciprocal differences and combining ability study for yield and its component traits in maize ( L.) through modified diallel analysis.

Combining ability status of the inbred lines is crucial information for hybrid breeding program. Diallel or line × tester mating designs are frequently used to evaluate the combining ability. In the current study a modified diallel model was used, wherein the Griffing's combining ability effects were further partitioned to understand the effects due to maternal and reciprocal.

Unlocking the therapeutic potential of locked nucleic acids through lipid nanoparticle delivery.

Locked nucleic acids (LNAs) are a subtype of antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) that are characterized by a bridge within the sugar moiety. LNAs owe their robustness to this chemical modification, which as the name suggests, locks it in one conformation. This perspective includes two components: a general overview on ASOs from one side and on delivery issues focusing on lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) on the other side.

Comparative optimization of polysaccharide-based nanoformulations for cardiac RNAi therapy.

Ionotropic gelation is widely used to fabricate targeting nanoparticles (NPs) with polysaccharides, leveraging their recognition by specific lectins. Despite the fabrication scheme simply involves self-assembly of differently charged components in a straightforward manner, the identification of a potent combinatory formulation is usually limited by structural diversity in compound collections and trivial screen process, imposing crucial challenges for efficient formulation design and optimization. Herein, we report a diversity-oriented combinatory formulation screen scheme to identify potent gene delivery cargo in the context of precision cardiac therapy.

Reduced-Dimensionality Al Nanocrystals: Nanowires, Nanobars, and Nanomoustaches.

Aluminum nanocrystals created by catalyst-driven colloidal synthesis support excellent plasmonic properties, due to their high level of elemental purity, monocrystallinity, and controlled size and shape. Reduction in the rate of nanocrystal growth enables the synthesis of highly anisotropic Al nanowires, nanobars, and singly twinned "nanomoustaches". Electron energy loss spectroscopy was used to study the plasmonic properties of these nanocrystals, spanning the broad energy range needed to map their plasmonic modes.

Elucidating the role of chemokines in inflammaging associated atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases.

Age-related inflammation or inflammaging is a critical deciding factor of physiological homeostasis during aging. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are exquisitely associated with aging and inflammation and are one of the leading causes of high mortality in the elderly population. Inflammaging comprises dysregulation of crosstalk between the vascular and cardiac tissues that deteriorates the vasculature network leading to development of atherosclerosis and atherosclerotic-associated CVDs in elderly populations.

Rheumatoid arthritis synovial fluid shows enrichment of T-cells producing GMCSF which are polyfunctional for TNFα and IFNγ.

Objectives: GMCSF+T-cells may be involved in pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and polyfunctionality may be a marker of pathogenicity. Although, higher frequencies of CD4+GMCSF+ T-cells have been reported, there are no data on CD8+GMCSF+ T-cells or polyfunctionality.Our objective was to enumerate frequencies of CD8+GMCSF+ T cells in RA blood and synovial fluid (SF), and assess their polyfunctionality, memory phenotype and cytotoxic ability.

Cerebrospinal Fluid Viral Escape on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy: Analysis from Single Tertiary Care Centre.

HIV-infected individuals receiving regular antiretroviral therapy (ART) can present with a high viral load in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) at times when it is suppressed in blood. This study presents data of HIV-infected patients who had undetectable or low plasma viral load in blood but presented with neurological signs and symptoms and were diagnosed to have CSF HIV viral escape. Records were reviewed for clinical manifestations, details of opportunistic or coinfection, and HIV viral copies in plasma and CSF at time of diagnosis of CSF escape.

Targeting chemokine-receptor mediated molecular signaling by ethnopharmacological approaches.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Infection and inflammation are critical to global human health status and the goal of current pharmacological interventions intends formulating medications/preventives as a measure to deal with this situation. Chemokines and their cognate receptors are major regulatory molecules in many of these ailments. Natural products have been a keen source to the drug development industry, every year contributing significantly to the growing list of FDA approved drugs.

A review on multifaceted biomedical applications of heparin nanocomposites: Progress and prospects.

Advances in polymer-based nanocomposites have revolutionized biomedical applications over the last two decades. Heparin (HP), being a highly bioactive polymer of biological origin, provides strong biotic competence to the nanocomposites, broadening the horizon of their applicability. The efficiency, biocompatibility, and biodegradability properties of nanomaterials significantly improve upon the incorporation of heparin.

Frequency of heterotic hybrids in relation to general combining ability of parents in sweet corn.

The success of developing prominent hybrids directly depends on the selection of parents with good combining ability which can transfer desirable genes with additive effects to their progeny. The data of 42 hybrids generated using 7 × 7 full diallel design; their seven parents along with three check hybrids were subjected to combining ability analysis from the experiment that was carried out during rainy season 2019. The analysis of variance showed significant general combining ability, and specific combining ability mean sum of squares for all the thirteen characters studied.

Prevalence of groundnut dry root rot ( (Tassi) Goid.) and its pathogenic variability in Southern India.

is the most devastating and emerging threat to groundnut production in India. An increase in average temperature and inconsistent rainfalls resulting from changing climatic conditions are strongly believed to aggravate the disease and cause severe yield losses. The present study aims to conduct a holistic survey to assess the prevalence and incidence of dry root rot of groundnut in major groundnut growing regions of Southern India, .

Importance of mega-environments in evaluation and identification of climate resilient maize hybrids (Zea mays L.).

Multi-location experiments on maize were conducted from 2016 to 2019 at ten locations distributed across two agro-climatic zones (ACZ) i.e., ACZ-3 and ACZ-8 of Karnataka, India.

Extracranial germ cell tumours: Mature and immature (1990-2015). First report by the South African Association of Paediatric Haematology Oncology (SAAPHO).

Background And Objectives: Outcomes of rare paediatric teratomas have not previously been reported nor treatment regimens standardised in low- and middle-income settings. We sought to evaluate treatment outcomes of children and adolescents with histologically confirmed extracranial germ cell tumours, both mature teratomas (MT) and immature teratomas (IT) in preparation for the development of the South African national treatment guideline.

Methods: Retrospective data by folder review were collated from nine South African paediatric oncology units.

Mechanistic Insights into Cellular and Molecular Basis of Protein-Nanoplastic Interactions.

Plastic waste is ubiquitously present across the world, and its nano/sub-micron analogues (plastic nanoparticles, PNPs), raise severe environmental concerns affecting organisms' health. Considering the direct and indirect toxic implications of PNPs, their biological impacts are actively being studied; lately, with special emphasis on cellular and molecular mechanistic intricacies. Combinatorial OMICS studies identified proteins as major regulators of PNP mediated cellular toxicity via activation of oxidative enzymes and generation of ROS.

Protein-Based Nanocarriers and Nanotherapeutics for Infection and Inflammation.

Infectious and inflammatory diseases are one of the leading causes of death globally. The status quo has become more prominent with the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To combat these potential crises, proteins have been proven as highly efficacious drugs, drug targets, and biomarkers.

Overlap syndrome of anti-aquaporin 4 positive neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder and primary Sjögren's syndrome: a systematic review of individual patient data.

Central nervous system (CNS) involvement can occur in primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS) due to co-existing neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) which has a highly relapsing course requiring indefinite immunosuppression, and if not diagnosed early, damage accrual occurs over time leading to permanent disability and morbidity. In this review, we describe and outline the clinical course and outcomes of anti-aquaporin 4 (AQP4) antibody seropositive NMOSD with pSS overlap cases. To investigate the co-existence of AQP4 + NMOSD with pSS, we conducted a review of individual patient data from case reports and case series found in major databases.