Publications by authors named "Sara C Santos"

This study proposes a tunable ink engineering methodology to allow 3D printing processability of highly bioactive but otherwise low-viscous and unprintable blood-derived materials. The hypothesis relies on improving the viscoelasticity and shear thinning behavior of platelet lysates (PL) and albumins (BSA) solutions by covalent coupling, enabling simultaneous extrusion and photocrosslinking upon filament deposition. The available amine groups on proteins (PL and BSA) are exploited for coupling with carboxyl groups present in methacrylated proteins (hPLMA and BSAMA), by leveraging carbodiimide chemistry.

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Unlabelled: The monkeypox virus (MPXV) outbreak, primarily endemic to Africa, has spread globally, with Brazil reporting the second-highest number of cases. The emergence of MPXV in non-endemic areas has raised concerns, particularly due to the co-circulation of other exanthematous viruses such as varicella-zoster virus (VZV) and molluscum contagiosum virus (MOCV). To perform an accurate differential diagnosis of MPXV during the ongoing outbreak in Minas Gerais, Brazil, a 5PLEX qPCR assay targeting orthopoxviruses (OPV), VZV, and MOCV was used to retrospectively analyze all clinical samples that tested negative for MPXV in the initial screening conducted at Funed.

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Cardiovascular diseases are a major global cause of morbidity and mortality, and they are often characterized by cardiomyocytes dead that ultimately leads to myocardial ischemia (MI). This condition replaces functional cardiac tissue with fibrotic scar tissue compromising heart function. Injectable systems for the delivery of cells or molecules to assist during tissue repair have emerged as promising approaches for tissue engineering, particularly for myocardial repair.

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BACKGROUND Schwannomas are benign tumors and their appearance in the pelvic region is rare and poses a major diagnostic problem. They can be sporadic or associated with genetical syndromes. They have a slow growth rate and may be asymptomatic for many years.

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In the past few years researchers have witnessed a paradigm shift in the development of biomaterials for drug discovery, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. After the great advances resulting from the transition of the 2D to the 3D, the new focus has been to increase the clinical relevance of such systems, as well as avoid the use of animals, by developing platforms that better replicate the human physiology in vitro. In this sense, we envisage the use of human matrices extracted from ethically sourced and readily available tissues as an optimal and promising alternative to currently used approaches.

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Extracellular matrix and protein-based biomaterials emerge as attractive sources to produce scaffolds due to their great properties regarding biocompatibility and bioactivity. In addition, there are concerns regarding the use of animal-derived supplements in cell culture not only due to the risk of transmission of xenogeneic contaminants and antigens but also due to ethical issues associated with collection methods. Herein, a novel human protein-derived porous scaffold produced from platelet lysates (PL) as platform for xeno-free 3D cell culture has been proposed.

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Fundamental physiologic and pathologic phenomena such as wound healing and cancer metastasis are typically associated with the migration of cells through adjacent extracellular matrix. In recent years, advances in biomimetic materials have supported the progress in 3D cell culture and provided biomedical tools for the development of models to study spheroid invasiveness. Despite this, the exceptional biochemical and biomechanical properties of human-derived materials are poorly explored.

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Background The biofield is a controversial concept among the scientific community. Some aspects of this phenomenon relate to measurable factors of mainstream science such as electromagnetics, while others, involving nonlocal interventions, intention, and consciousness, seem to produce physical changes through mechanisms that are still unknown, making the outcomes of many studies not fully explained by our current state of scientific understanding. This study explored the hypothetical effects of intention on the conditioning of a pH system with continuous data acquisition for real-time measurements.

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A major obstacle in infection biology is the limited ability to recapitulate human disease trajectories in traditional cell culture and animal models, which impedes the translation of basic research into clinics. Here, we introduce a three-dimensional (3D) intestinal tissue model to study human enteric infections at a level of detail that is not achieved by conventional two-dimensional monocultures. Our model comprises epithelial and endothelial layers, a primary intestinal collagen scaffold, and immune cells.

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Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) comprised 0,2% of all GI tumors. They are typically asymptomatic, but can manifest with nonspecific GI symptoms, GI bleeding, or intussusception. The authors report a case of a 55-year-old female patient with hematochezia and a palpable mass on the left lower quadrant.

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3D cell culture platforms have emerged as a setting that resembles in vivo environments replacing the traditional 2D platforms. Over the recent years, an extensive effort has been made on the development of more physiologically relevant 3D cell culture platforms. Extracellular matrix-based materials have been reported as a bioactive and biocompatible support for cell culture.

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The main goal of this work was the assessment of measurable interactions induced by focused intention, frequently used in biofield practices such as Healing Touch and Reiki. Water, as the main component of the human body, was chosen as a model. Intention experiments were performed over 4 different days at a scheduled interval, during which 286 trained biofield practitioners from several countries were instructed to meditate with the intention to change the molecular vibrational state of water samples selected by a blinded operator.

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Understanding how bacteria cause disease requires knowledge of which genes are expressed and how they are regulated during infection. While RNA-seq is now a routine method for gene expression analysis in bacterial pathogens, the past years have also witnessed a surge of novel RNA-seq based approaches going beyond standard mRNA profiling. These include variations of the technique to capture post-transcriptional networks controlled by small RNAs and to discover associated RNA-binding proteins in the pathogen itself.

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In this work, we studied the ecological interactions between grape berry microorganisms and Drosophila sp. flies involved in sour rot disease during grape ripening. After veráison the total microbial counts of grape berries affected by sour rot increased from about 2 log CFU/g of berries to more than 7 log CFU/g.

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