Increasing Angiogenesis Factors in Hypoxic Diabetic Wound Conditions by siRNA Delivery: Additive Effect of LbL-Gold Nanocarriers and Desloratadine-Induced Lysosomal Escape

Impaired wound healing in people with diabetes has multifactorial causes, with insufficient neovascularization being one of the most important. Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) plays a central role in the hypoxia-induced response by activating angiogenesis factors. As its activity is under precise regulatory control of prolyl-hydroxylase domain 2 (PHD-2), downregulation of PHD-2 by small interfering RNA (siRNA) could stabilize HIF-1α and, therefore, upregulate the expression of pro-angiogenic factors as well. Intracellular delivery of siRNA can be achieved with nanocarriers that must fulfill several requirements, including high stability, low toxicity, and high transfection efficiency. Here, we designed and compared the performance of layer-by-layer self-assembled siRNA-loaded gold nanoparticles with two different outer layers—Chitosan (AuNP@CS) and Poly L-arginine (AuNP@PLA). Although both formulations have exactly the same core, we find that a PLA outer layer improves the endosomal escape of siRNA, and therefore, transfection efficiency, after endocytic uptake in NIH-3T3 cells. Furthermore, we found that endosomal escape of AuNP@PLA could be improved further when cells were additionally treated with desloratadine, thus outperforming commercial reagents such as Lipofectamine^® and jetPRIME^®. AuNP@PLA in combination with desloratadine was proven to induce PHD-2 silencing in fibroblasts, allowing upregulation of pro-angiogenic pathways. This finding in an in vitro context constitutes a first step towards improving diabetic wound healing with siRNA therapy.     

Rapid synthesis of new block copolyurethanes derived from L‐leucine‐PEG in ionic liquids under microwave irradiation

This study concerns the synthesis of novel multi block polyurethane (PU) copolymers containing eco‐friendly segments, taking the advantage of ionic liquids (IL)s under microwave irradiation. For this, L ‐leucine anhydride cyclodipeptide (LAC) was prepared and then a new class of poly(ether‐urethane‐urea)s (PEUUs) was synthesized with two types of ILs, including room temperature imidazolium (RTIL)s and molten ammonium type ILs. ILs were used as reaction media and PUs were prepared via two‐step polymerization method. Polymerization reaction was also conducted under conventional heating method in N‐methyl pyrrolidone (NMP) as reaction solvent. In the first step, 4,4′‐methylene‐bis(4‐phenylisocyanate) (MDI) was reacted with LAC to produce isocyanate‐terminated poly(imide‐urea) oligomers as hard segment. Chain extension of the resulting prepolymer with polyethyleneglycol (PEG) of molecular weights of 400 (PEG‐400) was the second step to furnish a series of new PEUUs. These multiblock copolymers are optically active, thermally stable and soluble in amide‐type solvents. PEUUs prepared in ILs under microwave irradiation showed more phase separation and crystallinity than PEUU prepared under conventional method. Some structural characterization and physical properties of these PEUUs, prepared under different methods, are reported and compared. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011     

Synthesis of Janus/non-Janus hollow graphene oxide micro- and nanoparticles and the effects of their localization on the thermal conductivity of blend-based polymer composites

Journal of Materials Science - In this study, the effects of Janus, hydrophilic and hydrophobic hollow graphene oxide (HO) particles on the thermal conductivity of binary polymer blends were...     

Computer graphics generated from the iteration of algebraic transformations in the complex plane

Algorithms for the generation of intricate shapes resulting from the iteration of algebraic transformations are presented. A special convergence test makes possible the production of a visually striking class of displayable objects. Several illustrations are chosen as examples of the diversity of forms which result from this technique.     

Introducing erasures in decision-feedback equalization to reduceerror propagation

A simple modification of the decision feedback equalizer (DFE) slicer is proposed to reduce the effect of error propagation. A comparison of the performance of the modified DFE and conventional DFE is made for specific channels. On these channels, the modified DFE performs only marginally better than the conventional DFE in terms of average error probability, but may offer some advantages in terms of error probability conditioned on specific input sequences and in terms of the distribution of error burst lengths. Some examples are given, concerning binary PAM and multilevel quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) systems     

On the capacity of spatially correlated MIMO Rayleigh-fading channels

In this paper, we investigate the capacity distribution of spatially correlated, multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) channels. In particular, we derive a concise closed-form expression for the characteristic function (c.f.) of MIMO system capacity with arbitrary correlation among the transmitting antennas or among the receiving antennas in frequency-flat Rayleigh-fading environments. Using the exact expression of the c.f., the probability density function (pdf) and the cumulative distribution function (CDF) can be easily obtained, thus enabling the exact evaluation of the outage and mean capacity of spatially correlated MIMO channels. Our results are valid for scenarios with the number of transmitting antennas greater than or equal to that of receiving antennas with arbitrary correlation among them. Moreover, the results are valid for an arbitrary number of transmitting and receiving antennas in uncorrelated MIMO channels. It is shown that the capacity loss is negligible even with a correlation coefficient between two adjacent antennas as large as 0.5 for exponential correlation model. Finally, we derive an exact expression for the mean value of the capacity for arbitrary correlation matrices.     

A computationally scalable fast intra coding scheme for HEVC video encoder

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) adopts 35 intra prediction modes to provide a more precise intra prediction. As a result, HEVC intra coding is much more...     

Decision‐tree‐based methods for differential diagnosis of β‐thalassemia trait from iron deficiency anemia

Several discrimination indices have been proposed to distinct between β‐thalassemia trait (βTT) and iron deficiency anemia (IDA). This study is the first application of tree‐based methods for differential diagnosis of βTT from IDA. One hundred forty‐four patients with hypochromic microcytic anemia aged 18–40 years old from Ayat Hospital of Tehran were recruited. Classification and Regression tree, CHi‐squared Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID), Exhaustive CHi‐squared Automatic Interaction Detector (E‐CHAID), Quick, Unbiased, Efficient Statistical Tree (QUEST), Classification Rule with Unbiased Interaction Selection and Estimation (CRUISE), and Generalized, Unbiased, Interaction Detection and Estimation (GUIDE) have been used to discriminate the diagnosis. Mean corpuscular volume (MCV) was found as the main predictor in discrimination. All the mentioned tree‐based methods showed acceptable sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, Youden's index, false positive and negative rate, positive and negative predictive values and AUC in differential diagnosis of βTT from IDA. However, Classification Rule with Unbiased Interaction Selection and Estimation revealed more precise classification with an area under the curve value of 0.99. Decision‐tree‐based methods can be used to develop sensitive and accurate diagnostic methods for differentiating βTT from IDA.     

Generating test as a web service (TaaWS) through a method-based attribute grammar

International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer - Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a technology for designing software systems. By using this architecture, new challenges...