Search results for "RFA"

Salmon fibrinogen and chitosan scaffold for tissue engineering: in vitro and in vivo evaluation

2018

3D fibrous scaffolds have received much recent attention in regenerative medicine. Use of fibrous scaffolds has shown promising results in tissue engineering and wound healing. Here we report the development and properties of a novel fibrous scaffold that is useful for promoting wound healing. A scaffold made of salmon fibrinogen and chitosan is produced by electrospinning, resulting in a biocompatible material mimicking the structure of the native extracellular matrix (ECM) with suitable biochemical and mechanical properties. The scaffold is produced without the need for enzymes, in particular thrombin, but is fully compatible with their addition if needed. Human dermal fibroblasts culture…

2020

Worldwide, tons of lignin is produced annually in pulping plants and it is mainly considered as a waste material. Usually lignin is burned to produce energy for the pulping reactors. The production of value-added materials from renewable materials like lignin, has proved to be challenging. In this study, the effects of addition of three different types of lignin in the production of tannin/furanic foams is investigated. The foams were matured, first at 373 K and finally carbonized at 1073 K and the properties of them including mechanical strength, specific surface area and pore development are investigated before and after thermal treatment. According to the results, higher mechanical stren…

A method for structure prediction of metal-ligand interfaces of hybrid nanoparticles

2019

Hybrid metal nanoparticles, consisting of a nano-crystalline metal core and a protecting shell of organic ligand molecules, have applications in diverse areas such as biolabeling, catalysis, nanomedicine, and solar energy. Despite a rapidly growing database of experimentally determined atom-precise nanoparticle structures and their properties, there has been no successful, systematic way to predict the atomistic structure of the metal-ligand interface. Here, we devise and validate a general method to predict the structure of the metal-ligand interface of ligand-stabilized gold and silver nanoparticles, based on information about local chemical environments of atoms in experimental data. In …

Bioprotection Can Be Tuned with Proper Protein/Saccharide Ratio: The Case of Solid Amorphous Matrices

2018

Saccharides, and in particular trehalose, are well known for their high efficiency in protecting biostructures against adverse environmental conditions. The protein dynamics is known to be highly inhibited in a low-water trehalose host medium, the inhibition being markedly dependent on the amount of residual water. Besides hydration, the protein/sugar ratio is expected to affect the properties of saccharide amorphous matrices. In this work, we report an infrared spectroscopy study in dry amorphous matrices of various sugars (the disaccharides trehalose, maltose, sucrose, and lactose, and the trisaccharide raffinose) containing myoglobin, at different protein/sugar ratios. We analyze the str…

Impact of Elastin-Derived Peptide VGVAPG on Matrix Metalloprotease-2 and -9 and the Tissue Inhibitor of Metalloproteinase-1, -2, -3 and -4 mRNA Expre…

2018

Degradation products of elastin, i.e. elastin-derived peptides (EDPs), are involved in various physiological and pathological processes. EDPs are detectable in cerebrospinal fluid in healthy people and in patients after ischemic stroke. However, to date, no studies concerning the role of EDP in the nervous system were conducted. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs) play important roles during the repair phases of cerebral ischemia, particularly during angiogenesis and reestablishment of cerebral blood flow. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the specific elastin-derived peptide VGVAPG on Mmp-2, -9 and Timp-1, -2,…

Accelerating metagenomic read classification on CUDA-enabled GPUs.

2016

Metagenomic sequencing studies are becoming increasingly popular with prominent examples including the sequencing of human microbiomes and diverse environments. A fundamental computational problem in this context is read classification; i.e. the assignment of each read to a taxonomic label. Due to the large number of reads produced by modern high-throughput sequencing technologies and the rapidly increasing number of available reference genomes software tools for fast and accurate metagenomic read classification are urgently needed. We present cuCLARK, a read-level classifier for CUDA-enabled GPUs, based on the fast and accurate classification of metagenomic sequences using reduced k-mers (…

Reorganization of platelet membrane sphingomyelins by adenosine diphosphate and ticagrelor

2018

IF 2.766 (2017); International audience; Platelets are major targets for the treatment of thrombo-embolic disorders. Their plasma membrane contains specialized microdomains enriched in sphingomyelins and free cholesterol including membrane receptors. P2Y12 receptors need to be situated in these domains to be able to conduct activation signaling by adenosine diphosphate (ADP). We studied the impact of ticagrelor, a P2Y12 antagonist, and ADP on the composition and distribution of sphingomyelins in detergent-resistant membrane (DRM) of platelet membranes. Platelets were obtained from healthy donors. DRMs of platelet membranes were isolated in 4 experimental groups: control; ADP, with platelets…

A simple method to estimate the isoelectric point of modified Tomato bushy stunt virus (TBSV) particles

2017

We present a simple method to estimate the isoelectric point (pI) of Tomato Bushy Stunt particles. We demonstrate that the combination of agarose gels with different pH buffers can be used to electrophorese the virus particles and their migration patterns can be compared. This method allows us to estimate the pI of the virus particles (wild type, wt, and genetically modified particles) and to monitor the effect of the pI of modified peptide side chains of the viral capsid subunit on the pI of the whole virus particle.

Vitamin K antagonism impairs the bone marrow microenvironment and hematopoiesis

2018

Abstract Vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) have been used in 1% of the world’s population for prophylaxis or treatment of thromboembolic events for 64 years. Impairment of osteoblast function and osteoporosis has been described in patients receiving VKAs. Given the involvement of cells of the bone marrow microenvironment (BMM), such as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and macrophages, as well as other factors such as the extracellular matrix for the maintenance of normal hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), we investigated a possible effect of VKAs on hematopoiesis via the BMM. Using various transplantation and in vitro assays, we show here that VKAs alter parameters of bone physiology and reduce funct…

VISMapper: ultra-fast exhaustive cartography of viral insertion sites for gene therapy

2017

The possibility of integrating viral vectors to become a persistent part of the host genome makes them a crucial element of clinical gene therapy. However, viral integration has associated risks, such as the unintentional activation of oncogenes that can result in cancer. Therefore, the analysis of integration sites of retroviral vectors is a crucial step in developing safer vectors for therapeutic use. Here we present VISMapper, a vector integration site analysis web server, to analyze next-generation sequencing data for retroviral vector integration sites. VISMapper can be found at: http://vismapper.babelomics.org . Because it uses novel mapping algorithms VISMapper is remarkably faster t…