Search results for "Tissue"

Amorphous polyphosphate, a smart bioinspired nano-/bio-material for bone and cartilage regeneration: towards a new paradigm in tissue engineering

2020

Recent developments in the field of biomaterials for tissue engineering open up new opportunities for regenerative therapy and prevention of progression of osteo-articular damage/impairment. A key advancement was the discovery of the regenerative activity of a group of physiologically occurring high-energy polymers, inorganic polyphosphates (polyP). These bio-polymers, in suitable bioinspired formulations, turned out to be capable of inducing proliferation and differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells into osteogenic or chondrogenic lineages through differential gene expression (morphogenetic activity). Unprecedented is the property of these biopolymers to deliver high-energy phosphate in t…

2021

Every organism has an intrinsic biological rhythm that orchestrates biological processes in adjusting to daily environmental changes. Circadian rhythms are maintained by networks of molecular clocks throughout the core and peripheral tissues, including immune cells, blood vessels, and perivascular adipose tissues. Recent findings have suggested strong correlations between the circadian clock and cardiovascular diseases. Desynchronization between the circadian rhythm and body metabolism contributes to the development of cardiovascular diseases including arteriosclerosis and thrombosis. Circadian rhythms are involved in controlling inflammatory processes and metabolisms, which can influence t…

Electroporation by concentric-type needle electrodes and arrays.

2017

Abstract The efficacy of genomic medicine depends on gene transfer efficiency. In this area, electroporation has been found to be a highly promising method for physical gene transfer. However, electroporation raises issues related to electrical safety, tissue damage, and the number of required wounds. Concentric-type needle electrodes seek to address these issues by using a lower bias (10 V), a single wound, fewer processing steps, and a smaller working area (≈ 10 mm 3 ), thus offering greater accuracy and precision. Moreover, the needle can be arrayed to simultaneously treat several target regions. This paper proposes a novel method using concentric-type needle electrodes to improve the ef…

Quantitatively characterizing drug-induced arrhythmic contractile motions of human stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes.

2018

Quantification of abnormal contractile motions of cardiac tissue has been a noteworthy challenge and significant limitation in assessing and classifying the drug-induced arrhythmias (i.e. Torsades de pointes). To overcome these challenges, researchers have taken advantage of computational image processing tools to measure contractile motion from cardiomyocytes derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC-CMs). However, the amplitude and frequency analysis of contractile motion waveforms doesn't produce sufficient information to objectively classify the degree of variations between two or more sets of cardiac contractile motions. In this paper, we generated contractile motion dat…

Harnessing mechanosensation in next generation cardiovascular tissue engineering

2020

The ability of the cells to sense mechanical cues is an integral component of ”social” cell behavior inside tissues with a complex architecture. Through ”mechanosensation” cells are in fact able to decrypt motion, geometries and physical information of surrounding cells and extracellular matrices by activating intracellular pathways converging onto gene expression circuitries controlling cell and tissue homeostasis. Additionally, only recently cell mechanosensation has been integrated systematically as a crucial element in tissue pathophysiology. In the present review, we highlight some of the current efforts to assess the relevance of mechanical sensing into pathology modeling and manufact…

Uptake of polyphosphate microparticles in vitro (SaOS-2 and HUVEC cells) followed by an increase of the intracellular ATP pool size

2017

Recently two approaches were reported that addressed a vitally important problem in regenerative medicine, i. e. the successful treatment of wounds even under diabetic conditions. Accordingly, these studies with diabetic rabbits [Sarojini et al. PLoS One 2017, 12(4):e0174899] and diabetic mice [Müller et al. Polymers 2017, 9, 300] identified a novel (potential) target for the acceleration of wound healing in diabetes. Both studies propose a raise of the intracellular metabolic energy status via exogenous administration either of ATP, encapsulated into lipid vesicles, or of polyphosphate (polyP) micro-/nanoparticles. Recently this physiological polymer, polyP, was found to release metabolic …

Analysis of Microstructure of the Cardiac Conduction System Based on Three-Dimensional Confocal Microscopy

2016

The specialised conducting tissues present in the ventricles are responsible for the fast distribution of the electrical impulse from the atrio-ventricular node to regions in the subendocardial myocardium. Characterisation of anatomical features of the specialised conducting tissues in the ventricles is highly challenging, in particular its most distal section, which is connected to the working myocardium via Purkinje-myocardial junctions. The goal of this work is to characterise the architecture of the distal section of the Purkinje network by differentiating Purkinje cells from surrounding tissue, performing a segmentation of Purkinje fibres at cellular scale, and mathematically describin…

The good and bad of targeting cancer-associated extracellular matrix

2017

The maintenance of tissue homeostasis requires extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling. Immune cells actively participate in regenerating damaged tissues contributing to ECM deposition and shaping. Dysregulated ECM deposition characterizes fibrotic diseases and cancer stromatogenesis, where a chronic inflammatory state sustains the ECM increase. In cancer, the ECM fosters several steps of tumor progression, providing pro-survival and proliferative signals, promoting tumor cell dissemination via collagen fibers or acting as a barrier to impede drug diffusion. Interfering with processes leading to chronic ECM deposition, as occurring in cancer, might allow the simultaneous targeting of both pri…

Changes in the spatial distribution of the Purkinje network after acute myocardial infarction in the pig

2018

Purkinje cells (PCs) are more resistant to ischemia than myocardial cells, and are suspected to participate in ventricular arrhythmias following myocardial infarction (MI). Histological studies afford little evidence on the behavior and adaptation of PCs in the different stages of MI, especially in the chronic stage, and no quantitative data have been reported to date beyond subjective qualitative depictions. The present study uses a porcine model to present the first quantitative analysis of the distal cardiac conduction system and the first reported change in the spatial distribution of PCs in three representative stages of MI: an acute model both with and without reperfusion; a subacute …

Advances in the treatment of cutaneous lupus erythematosus.

2016

Lupus erythematosus (LE) is a multifactorial autoimmune disease with clinical manifestations of differing severity which may present with skin manifestations as primary sign of the disease (cutaneous lupus erythematosus, CLE) or as part of a disease spectrum (systemic lupus erythematosus, SLE). To date, no drugs are approved specifically for the treatment of CLE and only single agents have been applied in randomized controlled trials. Therefore, topical and systemic agents are used “off-label”, primarily based on open-label studies, case series, retrospective analyses, and expert opinions. In contrast, several agents, such as hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine, cyclophosphamide, azathioprine,…