Developing functional hydrogels for treatment of oral diseases.

Oral disease is a severe healthcare challenge that diminishes people's quality of life. Functional hydrogels with suitable biodegradability, biocompatibility, and tunable mechanical properties have attracted remarkable interest and have been developed for treating oral diseases. In this review, we present up-to-date research on hydrogels for the management of dental caries, endodontics, periapical periodontitis, and periodontitis, depending on the progression of dental diseases.

Emerging platelet-based drug delivery systems.

Drug delivery systems are becoming increasingly utilized; however, a major challenge in this field is the insufficient target of tissues or cells. Although efforts with engineered nanoparticles have shown some success, issues with targeting, toxicity and immunogenicity persist. Conversely, living cells can be used as drug-delivery vehicles because they typically have innate targeting mechanisms and minimal adverse effects.

Cell-SELEX and application research of a DNA aptamer against esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) cell line TE-1.

Esophageal cancer is a common cancer with high morbidity and mortality that severely threatens the safety and quality of human life. The strong metastatic nature of esophageal cancer enables it to metastasize more quickly and covertly, making it difficult for current diagnostic and treatment methods to achieve efficient early screening, as well as timely and effective treatment. As a promising solution, nucleic acid aptamers, a kind of special single-stranded DNA or RNA oligonucleotide selected by the Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment (SELEX) technology, can specifically bind with different molecular targets.

Emerging mRNA Technology for Liver Disease Therapy.

Liver diseases have consistently posed substantial challenges to global health. It is crucial to find innovative methods to effectively prevent and treat these diseases. In recent times, there has been an increasing interest in the use of mRNA formulations that accumulate in liver tissue for the treatment of hepatic diseases.

Oxygenation imaging in deep tissue with X-Ray luminescence computed tomography (XLCT).

Oxygenation concentration of tissue is an important factor in culturing stem cells and in studying the therapy response of cancer cells. The hypoxia bone marrow is the site to harbor cancer cells. Thus, direct high-resolution measurements of molecular 𝑂 would provide powerful means of monitoring cultured stem cells and therapied cancer cells.

A New Hematocrit Measurement Method Using a Chemiluminescence Biosensor and Its Application in a Chemiluminescence Immunoassay Platform for Myocardial Markers Detection with Whole Blood Samples.

The accuracy and precision of analyte concentrations measured in whole blood by chemiluminescence immunoassay (CLIA) have been significantly affected by erythrocytes, which leads to poor application of whole blood CLIA in clinical practice. In this work, a chemiluminescence biosensing optical platform for blood hematocrit (HCT) analysis using MAGICL 6000 (Getein Biotechnology, Nanjing, China) was designed, implemented, and fully characterized. The developed method was successfully applied to determine various HCT levels of human blood from 0% to 65%, with a correlation coefficient of 0.

Superfast Scan of Focused X-Ray Luminescence Computed Tomography Imaging.

X-ray luminescence computed tomography (XLCT) is a hybrid molecular imaging modality having the high spatial resolution of x-ray imaging and high measurement sensitivity of optical imaging. Narrow x-ray beam based XLCT imaging has shown promise for high spatial resolution imaging of luminescent targets in deep tissues, but the slow acquisition speed limits its applications. In this work, we have introduced a superfast XLCT scan scheme based on the photon counter detector and a fly-scanning method.

A miniaturized and integrated dual-channel fluorescence module for multiplex real-time PCR in the portable nucleic acid detection system.

A portable nucleic acid detection (PNAD) system based on real-time polymerase chain reaction (real-time PCR) has been developed for point-of-care testing (POCT) of infectious disease pathogens. In order to achieve "sample-in, result-out" while keeping the system compact, the hardware system integrates optical, thermal and motion control modules in a limited space for nucleic acid extraction, purification, amplification and detection. Among these hardware modules, the fluorescence module is one of the most important modules, because its performance directly affects the accuracy and sensitivity of the testing results.

A Highly Integrated and Diminutive Fluorescence Detector for Point-of-Care Testing: Dual Negative Feedback Light-Emitting Diode (LED) Drive and Photoelectric Processing Circuits Design and Implementation.

As an important detection tool in biochemistry, fluorescence detection has wide applications. Quantitative detection can be achieved by detecting fluorescence signals excited by excitation light at a specific wavelength range. Therefore, the key to fluorescence detection is the stable control of the excitation light and the accurate acquisition of weak photoelectric signals.

A Detection-Service-Mobile Three-Terminal Software Platform for Point-of-Care Infectious Disease Detection System.

The traditional infectious disease detection process is cumbersome, and there is only a single application scenario. In recent years, with the development of the medical industry and the impact of the epidemic situation, the number of infectious disease detection instruments based on nursing point detection has been increasing. Due to this trend, many detection instruments and massive detection data urgently need to be managed.

Correlation between X-ray tube current exposure time and X-ray photon number in GATE.

Background: X-ray image quality relies heavily on the emitted X-ray photon number which depends on X-ray tube current and exposure time. To accurately estimate the absorbed dose in an imaging protocol, it is better to simulate the X-ray imaging with a Monte Carlo platform such as GATE (Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission). Although input of GATE is the X-ray photon number of the simulated X-ray tube, it lacks a good way to setup the photon number for a desired X-ray tube current setting.

Super-Fast Three-Dimensional Focused X-ray Luminescence Computed Tomography with a Gated Photon Counter.

X-ray luminescence computed tomography (XLCT) is a hybrid molecular imaging modality combining the merits of both x-ray imaging (high spatial resolution) and optical imaging (high sensitivity to tracer nanophosphors). Narrow x-ray beam based XLCT imaging has shown promise for high spatial resolution imaging, but the slow acquisition speed limits its applications for imaging. We introduced a continuous scanning scheme to replace the selective excitation scheme to improve imaging speed in a previous study.

Contrast agents for x-ray luminescence computed tomography.

Imaging probes are an important consideration for any type of contrast agent-based imaging method. X-ray luminescence imaging (XLI) and x-ray luminescence computed tomography (XLCT) are both contrast agent-based imaging methods that employ x-ray excitable scintillating imaging probes that emit light to be measured for optical imaging. In this work, we compared the performance of several select imaging probes, both commercial and self-synthesized, for application in XLI/XLCT imaging.

Fast and Accurate Control Strategy for Portable Nucleic Acid Detection (PNAD) System Based on Magnetic Nanoparticles.

Portable nucleic acid detection (PNAD) systems are performed for sample processing, amplification and detection automatically in an individual device realizing "sample in, answer out." For this goal, numerous function modules should be integrated in a diminutive device, in which temperature controller is one of the most important modules. In a nucleic acid detection process, both sample processing and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) require fast and accurate temperature control to increase concentration and purity of the extraction product and to improve amplification efficiency.

Improvement and Application of qPCR (Real-Time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction) Data Processing Method for Home-Made Integrated Nucleic Acid Detection System.

Because it has many advantages such as rapidity and accuracy, nucleic acid detection is applied to infectious disease diagnosis more and more. An automatic integrated nucleic acid detection system based on real-time PCR is developed by our research group to conduct point-of-care testing of infectious pathogens. The home-made detection system collects fluorescence data in each PCR cycle through an integrated dual-channel fluorescence detection module and then real-time fluorescence curves are drawn by the software, which can tell the results of the diagnostics after some processing and analysis.

QuickAnalysis: A Software Designed and Developed for a Portable On-Site Pathogen Detection System.

To develop a software program used for controlling the portable on-site pathogen detection system which is based on real-time PCR, this software is developed by C# over the Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 and used on local computers which are equipped with Windows systems. Taking the actual demand as the guidance, it constructs according to the framework design and unifies the barcode technology, the cloud service, and the Bluetooth technology. Based on the above methods, this software can meet the demands of the system such as free experiment design, auto-control of the hardware and efficient data management.

The Liquid Level Detection System Based on Pressure Sensor.

Micro-liquid distribution operation has been a core part of the fully automatic liquid handling platform in clinical testing. Accurate and fast automatic detection of liquid level with disposable tip is the precondition to ensure the stability of the whole operation of liquid handling platform. By further research on the liquid level sensing technology of pressure sensor, in this paper we designed a new type of accurate and stable micro-liquid level detection system and verified its stability, instantaneity and accuracy by setting up a small reagent distribution platform.

Performance Evaluation of a Novel Sample In-Answer Out (SIAO) System Based on Magnetic Nanoparticles.

In recent years, the prevention, control, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases has become a global focus for public health. Traditional methods for pathogen testing have some major disadvantages including the need for highly skilled staff and expensive instrumentation, while procedural aspects are complex and sensitive to the environment. These shortcomings have greatly limited the application of traditional testing in on site pathogen detection.

Mathematical modeling the pathway of human breast cancer.

In order to understand the mechanism of human breast cancer we use the growth rates of clonal expansion of intermediate cells and mutation rates as parameters and build two-six stage models to fit the age-specific incidence of breast cancers in the surveillance, epidemiology, and end results (SEER) registry. We propose four types of different mechanisms for the human breast cancer and test those mechanisms by Chi-square test. Our results suggest that loss of functions of instability genes is an early event in the tumorigenesis, which is useful for early diagnosis of breast cancer.