Mechanical Properties of Composite Hydrogels for Tissue Engineering.

Tissue engineering provides solutions that require medicine to restore damaged tissues or even complete organs. This discipline combines biologically active scaffolds, cells and molecules; being the addition of nanoparticles into the scaffolds, one of the techniques that is attracting more interest these days. In this work, Hydroxyapatite Nanorods (HA) were added to the network of Gelatin hydrogel (GE), and the particular properties resulting from their interaction were studied.

New insight into the environmental impact of two imidazolium ionic liquids. Effects on seed germination and soil microbial activity.

The next generation of ionic liquids must be synthetized taking into account structures that guarantee the suitable properties for a defined application as well as ecological data. Thus, searching of the right methodologies to know, quickly and efficiently, the ecological effects of these compounds is a preliminary task. The effects of two imidazolium based ionic liquids with different anions, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate, [CCIm][BF], and 1-propyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, [CCIm][NTf], on seedling emergence of six tree species and on the microbial behaviour of two soils were determined in this work.

Optimal reconstruction of dynamical systems: a noise amplification approach.

In this work we propose an objective function to guide the search for a state space reconstruction of a dynamical system from a time series of measurements. These statistics can be evaluated on any reconstructed attractor, thereby allowing a direct comparison among different approaches: (uniform or nonuniform) delay vectors, PCA, Legendre coordinates, etc. It can also be used to select the most appropriate parameters of a reconstruction strategy.

A panel of urinary biomarkers to monitor reversibility of renal injury and a serum marker with improved potential to assess renal function.

The Predictive Safety Testing Consortium's first regulatory submission to qualify kidney safety biomarkers revealed two deficiencies. To address the need for biomarkers that monitor recovery from agent-induced renal damage, we scored changes in the levels of urinary biomarkers in rats during recovery from renal injury induced by exposure to carbapenem A or gentamicin. All biomarkers responded to histologic tubular toxicities to varied degrees and with different kinetics.

Urinary clusterin, cystatin C, beta2-microglobulin and total protein as markers to detect drug-induced kidney injury.

Earlier and more reliable detection of drug-induced kidney injury would improve clinical care and help to streamline drug-development. As the current standards to monitor renal function, such as blood urea nitrogen (BUN) or serum creatinine (SCr), are late indicators of kidney injury, we conducted ten nonclinical studies to rigorously assess the potential of four previously described nephrotoxicity markers to detect drug-induced kidney and liver injury. Whereas urinary clusterin outperformed BUN and SCr for detecting proximal tubular injury, urinary total protein, cystatin C and beta2-microglobulin showed a better diagnostic performance than BUN and SCr for detecting glomerular injury.