Development of Thermo- and pH-Sensitive Liposomal Magnetic Carriers for New Potential Antitumor Thienopyridine Derivatives.

The development of stimuli-sensitive drug delivery systems is a very attractive area of current research in cancer therapy. The deep knowledge on the microenvironment of tumors has supported the progress of nanosystems' ability for controlled and local fusion as well as drug release. Temperature and pH are two of the most promising triggers in the development of sensitive formulations to improve the efficacy of anticancer agents.

Functionalized Liposome and Albumin-Based Systems as Carriers for Poorly Water-Soluble Anticancer Drugs: An Updated Review.

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. In the available treatments, chemotherapy is one of the most used, but has several associated problems, namely the high toxicity to normal cells and the resistance acquired by cancer cells to the therapeutic agents. The scientific community has been battling against this disease, developing new strategies and new potential chemotherapeutic agents.

Properties and Applications of PDMS for Biomedical Engineering: A Review.

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is an elastomer with excellent optical, electrical and mechanical properties, which makes it well-suited for several engineering applications. Due to its biocompatibility, PDMS is widely used for biomedical purposes. This widespread use has also led to the massification of the soft-lithography technique, introduced for facilitating the rapid prototyping of micro and nanostructures using elastomeric materials, most notably PDMS.

Effect of Polymer Dissolution Temperature and Conditioning Time on the Morphological and Physicochemical Characteristics of Poly(Vinylidene Fluoride) Membranes Prepared by Non-Solvent Induced Phase Separation.

This work reports on the production of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) membranes by non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) using ,-dimethylformamide (DMF) as solvent and water as non-solvent. The influence of the processing conditions in the morphology, surface characteristics, structure, thermal and mechanical properties were evaluated for polymer dissolution temperatures between 25 and 150 °C and conditioning time between 0 and 10 min. Finger-like pore morphology was obtained for all membranes and increasing the polymer dissolution temperature led to an increase in the average pore size (≈0.

Magnetoliposomes Based on Magnetic/Plasmonic Nanoparticles Loaded with Tricyclic Lactones for Combined Cancer Therapy.

Liposome-like nanoarchitectures containing manganese ferrite nanoparticles covered or decorated with gold were developed for application in dual cancer therapy, combining chemotherapy and photothermia. The magnetic/plasmonic nanoparticles were characterized using XRD, UV/Visible absorption, HR-TEM, and SQUID, exhibiting superparamagnetic behavior at room temperature. The average size of the gold-decorated nanoparticles was 26.

Amino Alcohols from Eugenol as Potential Semisynthetic Insecticides: Chemical, Biological, and Computational Insights.

A series of β-amino alcohols were prepared by the reaction of eugenol epoxide with aliphatic and aromatic amine nucleophiles. The synthesized compounds were fully characterized and evaluated as potential insecticides through the assessment of their biological activity against insect cells, compared with a commercial synthetic pesticide (chlorpyrifos, CHPY). Three derivatives bearing a terminal benzene ring, either substituted or unsubstituted, were identified as the most potent molecules, two of them displaying higher toxicity to insect cells than CHPY.

Differentiation between normal and tumor mammary glands with depth-resolved attenuation coefficient from optical coherence tomography.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a well-established imaging technology for high-resolution, cross-sectional imaging of biological tissues. Imaging processing and light attenuation coefficient estimation allows to further improve the OCT diagnostic capability. In this paper we use a commercial OCT system, Telesto II-1325LR from Thorlabs, and demonstrate its ability to differentiate normal and tumor mammary mouse glands with the OCT attenuation coefficient.

Wake-up Free Ferroelectric Rhombohedral Phase in Epitaxially Strained ZrO Thin Films.

Zirconia- and hafnia-based thin films have attracted tremendous attention in the past decade because of their unexpected ferroelectric behavior at the nanoscale, which enables the downscaling of ferroelectric devices. The present work reports an unprecedented ferroelectric rhombohedral phase of ZrO that can be achieved in thin films grown directly on (111)-Nb:SrTiO substrates by ion-beam sputtering. Structural and ferroelectric characterizations reveal (111)-oriented ZrO films under epitaxial compressive strain exhibiting switchable ferroelectric polarization of about 20.

Squaraine dyes as serum albumins probes: Synthesis, photophysical experiments and molecular docking studies.

Three barbiturate squaraine dyes derived from indolenine or benzothiazole, with different barbituric acid derivatives were prepared, characterized and photophysically evaluated by standard spectroscopic methods. As expectable for squaraines, these dyes showed narrow and intense absorption and emission bands in the Vis/NIR region. The interaction of synthesized dyes with bovine and human serum albumins (BSA and HSA) was also evaluated in phosphate buffer (PB).

A Fast and Precise Tool for Multi-Layer Planar Coil Self-Inductance Calculation.

An open-source tool that allows for a fast and precise analytical calculation of multi-layer planar coils self-inductance, without any geometry limitation is proposed here. The process of designing and simulating planar coils to achieve reliable results is commonly limited on accuracy and or geometry, or are too time-consuming and expensive, thus a tool to speed up this design process is desired. The model is based on Grover equations, valid for any geometry.

Is Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) a Suitable Substrate for ALD?: A Review.

Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is a thermoplastic synthetic polymer, which displays superior characteristics such as transparency, good tensile strength, and processability. Its performance can be improved by surface engineering via the use of functionalized thin film coatings, resulting in its versatility across a host of applications including, energy harvesting, dielectric layers and water purification. Modification of the PMMA surface can be achieved by atomic layer deposition (ALD), a vapor-phase, chemical deposition technique, which permits atomic-level control.