Contemporary therapies following heart failure center on regenerative approaches to account for the loss of cardiomyocytes and limited regenerative capacity of the adult heart. While the delivery of cardiac progenitor cells has been shown to improve cardiac function and repair following injury, recent evidence has suggested that their paracrine effects (or secretome) provides a significant contribution towards modulating regeneration, rather than the progenitor cells intrinsically. The direct delivery of secretory biomolecules, however, remains a challenge due to their lack of stability and tissue retention, limiting their prolonged therapeutic efficacy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The biodegradation of methacrylate (MA)-based dental restoratives has been suggested to contribute to a loss of adhesion and subsequent detachment, or secondary caries, both major causes of restoration failure. Previous studies have demonstrated that intermolecular interactions between resin monomers may affect the hydrolytic-susceptibility of composites. Altering the intermolecular interactions by shielding or masking the hydrolytically-susceptible ester groups found in MA monomers could be an effective strategy to mitigate the biodegradation of resin composites.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The objective of this review article is to summarize the current literature on dental resin-based restorative (RBR) materials specifically from the perspective of emerging resin technologies, and to provide researchers with structured design criteria enabling the effective screening of new RBR developments.
Methods: The continued failure of newly introduced RBRs to address biostability without compromising function, over the last decade, are presented as a rationale to support different resin-based concepts. Several developments in the field, aimed at addressing the issues facing modern resin-based systems are summarized and their limitations discussed.