A rare case of catatonia associated with COVID-19 infection.

COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has well-documented common symptoms such as cough and fever. There is also extensive documentation on the more severe outcomes, such as sepsis and death. However, there is minimal literature regarding the neuropsychiatric effects of COVID-19.

The Dangers of Fabric in MRI.

Thermal burns are the most common injury sustained during MRI. Textiles such as clothing and blankets, and most recently fabric face masks are emerging as key factors when considering such thermal injuries. Fabric can trap heat and sweat close to the body and fabric containing metallic fibers can interact with MRI's RF waves to induce burns, which represents the majority of reported fabric-related thermal injury cases.

Emerging Biofabrication Strategies for Engineering Complex Tissue Constructs.

The demand for organ transplantation and repair, coupled with a shortage of available donors, poses an urgent clinical need for the development of innovative treatment strategies for long-term repair and regeneration of injured or diseased tissues and organs. Bioengineering organs, by growing patient-derived cells in biomaterial scaffolds in the presence of pertinent physicochemical signals, provides a promising solution to meet this demand. However, recapitulating the structural and cytoarchitectural complexities of native tissues in vitro remains a significant challenge to be addressed.

Biomaterial Strategies for Delivering Stem Cells as a Treatment for Spinal Cord Injury.

Ongoing clinical trials are evaluating the use of stem cells as a way to treat traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). However, the inhibitory environment present in the injured spinal cord makes it challenging to achieve the survival of these cells along with desired differentiation into the appropriate phenotypes necessary to regain function. Transplanting stem cells along with an instructive biomaterial scaffold can increase cell survival and improve differentiation efficiency.

Functionalizing Ascl1 with Novel Intracellular Protein Delivery Technology for Promoting Neuronal Differentiation of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.

Pluripotent stem cells can become any cell type found in the body. Accordingly, one of the major challenges when working with pluripotent stem cells is producing a highly homogenous population of differentiated cells, which can then be used for downstream applications such as cell therapies or drug screening. The transcription factor Ascl1 plays a key role in neural development and previous work has shown that Ascl1 overexpression using viral vectors can reprogram fibroblasts directly into neurons.