The Clinical Course of Early and Late Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Introduction: Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can be classified as either early MCI (EMCI) or late MCI (LMCI) according to the severity of memory impairment. The aim of this study was to compare the prognosis and clinical course between EMCI and LMCI.

Methods: Between January 2009 and December 2017, a total of 418 patients with MCI and 146 subjects with normal cognition were recruited from a memory clinic.

Altered mismatch response precedes gray matter atrophy in subjective cognitive decline.

The cross-sectional identification of subjective cognitive decline (SCD) in cognitively normal adults is particularly important for the early effective prevention or intervention of the future development of mild cognitive impairments (MCI) or Alzheimer's disease (AD). A pre-attentive neurophysiological signal that reflects the brain's ability to detect the changes of the environment is called mismatch negativity (MMN) or its magnetic counterpart (MMNm). It has been shown that patients with MCI or AD demonstrate reduced MMN/MMNm responses, while the exact profile of MMN/MMNm in SCD is substantially unknown.

Magnetic nanoparticle-enhanced SPR on gold nanoslits for ultra-sensitive, label-free detection of nucleic acid biomarkers.

We have demonstrated a detection method for the ultra-sensitive detection of an mRNA biomarker. The method utilizes functionalized magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) for signal enhancement in conjunction with surface plasmon resonance (SPR) on gold nanoslits. The approach for detection includes double hybridization at two different specific locations in two steps.

Electrotaxis of lung cancer cells in ordered three-dimensional scaffolds.

In this paper, we report a new method to incorporate 3D scaffold with electrotaxis measurement in the microfluidic device. The electrotactic response of lung cancer cells in the 3D foam scaffolds which resemble the in vivo pulmonary alveoli may give more insight on cellular behaviors in vivo. The 3D scaffold consists of ordered arrays of uniform spherical pores in gelatin.

In vitro electrical-stimulated wound-healing chip for studying electric field-assisted wound-healing process.

The wound-healing assay is an easy and economical way to quantify cell migration under diverse stimuli. Traditional assays such as scratch assays and barrier assays are widely and commonly used, but neither of them can represent the complicated condition when a wound occurs. It has been suggested that wound-healing is related to electric fields, which were found to regulate wound re-epithelialization.

Electrotaxis of oral squamous cell carcinoma cells in a multiple-electric-field chip with uniform flow field.

We report a new design of microfluidic chip (Multiple electric Field with Uniform Flow chip, MFUF chip) to create multiple electric field strengths (EFSs) while providing a uniform flow field simultaneously. MFUF chip was fabricated from poly-methyl methacrylates (PMMA) substrates by using CO2 laser micromachining. A microfluidic network with interconnecting segments was utilized to de-couple the flow field and the electric field (EF).