CircPUM1 Knockdown Confers Radiosensitivity in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma by Regulating the miR-580/STAT3 Pathway.

CircPUM1 acts as an oncogene in a variety of tumors, and there is no related research on oral squamous cell carcinoma. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical significance of CircPUM1 in oral squamous cell carcinoma radiotherapy. Radio-resistant cell lines were established by increasing the X-ray dose.

The pursuit of a scalable nanofabrication platform for use in material and life science applications.

In this Account, we describe the use of perfluoropolyether (PFPE)-based materials that are able to accurately mold and replicate micro- and nanosized features using traditional techniques such as embossing as well as new techniques that we developed to exploit the exceptional surface characteristics of fluorinated substrates. Because of the unique partial wetting and nonwetting characteristics of PFPEs, we were able to go beyond the usual molding and imprint lithography approaches and have created a technique called PRINT (Particle [or Pattern] Replication In Nonwetting Templates). PRINT is a distinctive "top-down" fabrication technique capable of generating isolated particles, arrays of particles, and arrays of patterned features for a plethora of applications in both nanomedicine and materials science.

The Patterning of Sub-500 nm Inorganic Oxide Structures.

Elastomeric perfluoropolyether molds are applied to pattern arrays of sub-500 nm inorganic oxide features. This versatile soft-lithography technique can be used to pattern a wide range of materials; in this work inorganic oxides including TiO2 , SnO2 , ZnO, ITO, and BaTiO3 are patterned on a variety of substrates with different aspect ratios. An example of TiO2 posts is shown in the figure.

Molded, high surface area polymer electrolyte membranes from cured liquid precursors.

Polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) for fuel cells have been synthesized from easily processable, 100% curable, low molecular weight reactive liquid precursors that are photochemically cured into highly proton conductive solid membranes. The liquid precursors were directly cured into membranes of desired dimensions without the need for further processing steps such as melt extrusion or solvent casting. By employing chemical cross-linking, high proton conductivities can be achieved through the incorporation of significant levels of acidic groups without rendering the material water-soluble, which plagues commonly used non-cross-linked polymers.

Superhydrophobic behavior of a perfluoropolyether lotus-leaf-like topography.

We demonstrate the fabrication of 2-D arrays of nanopillars made from perfluoropolyether derivatives using a porous anodic aluminum oxide membrane as a template. Pretexturing the aluminum prior to anodization enables one to engineer multiple morphological length scales and thereby synthesize a lotus-leaf-like topography. Both nanopillars on a flat surface and on a lotus-leaf-like topology exhibit superhydrophobicity, low contact angle hysteresis, and self-cleaning.

Micellar shape change and internal segregation induced by chemical modification of a tryptych block copolymer surfactant.

We report the detailed characterization of micelles formed by two nonionic, amphiphilic ABC triblock copolymers. Poly(ethylene oxide)-b-poly(styrene)-b-1,2-poly(butadiene) (PEO-b-PS-b-PB) triblock copolymer "OSB" forms core-corona spherical micelles in aqueous solution, and the two hydrophobic blocks S and B are mixed homogeneously within the micelle core. PEO-b-PS-b-PB:C6F13I triblock copolymer "OSF" was prepared by selective fluorination of the B block in OSB with n-perfluorohexyl iodide.