Silver Atomic Quantum Clusters of Three Atoms for Cancer Therapy: Targeting Chromatin Compaction to Increase the Therapeutic Index of Chemotherapy

Nanomaterials with very low atomicity deserve consideration as potential pharmacological agents owing to their very small size and to their properties that can be precisely tuned with minor modifications to their size. Here, it is shown that silver clusters of three atoms (Ag₃‐AQCs)—developed by an ad hoc method—augment chromatin accessibility. This effect only occurs during DNA replication. Coadministration of Ag₃‐AQCs increases the cytotoxic effect of DNA‐acting drugs on human lung carcinoma cells. In mice with orthotopic lung tumors, the coadministration of Ag₃‐AQCs increases the amount of cisplatin (CDDP) bound to the tumor DNA by fivefold without modifying CDDP levels in normal tissues. As a result, CDDP coadministered with Ag₃‐AQCs more strongly reduces the tumor burden. Evidence of the significance of targeting chromatin compaction to increase the therapeutic index of chemotherapy is now provided.     

Delivery of mGluR5 siRNAs by Iron Oxide Nanocages by Alternating Magnetic Fields for Blocking Proliferation of Metastatic Osteosarcoma Cells

Although osteosarcoma is the most common primary malignant bone tumor, chemotherapeutic drugs and treatment have failed to increase the five-year survival rate over the last three decades. We previously demonstrated that type 5 metabotropic glutamate receptor, mGluR5, is required to proliferate metastatic osteosarcoma cells. In this work, we delivered mGluR5 siRNAs in vitro using superparamagnetic iron oxide nanocages (IO-nanocages) as delivery vehicles and applied alternating magnetic fields (AMFs) to improve mGluR5 siRNAs release. We observed functional outcomes when mGluR5 expression is silenced in human and mouse osteosarcoma cell lines. The results elucidated that the mGluR5 siRNAs were successfully delivered by IO-nanocages and their release was enhanced by AMFs, leading to mGluR5 silencing. Moreover, we observed that the proliferation of both human and mouse osteosarcoma cells decreased significantly when mGluR5 expression was silenced in the cells. This novel magnetic siRNA delivery methodology was capable of silencing mGluR5 expression significantly in osteosarcoma cell lines under the AMFs, and our data suggested that this method can be further used in future clinical applications in cancer therapy.     

Novel Fuzzy Based Crow Search Optimization Algorithm for Secure Node-to-Node Data Transmission in WSN

Wireless Personal Communications - This paper studies the performance of device-to-device (D2D)-enabled cellular network with D2D users reusing downlink resources of cellular links. The cellular...     

Hydrogels in regenerative medicine

Hydrogels, due to their unique biocompatibility, flexible methods of synthesis, range of constituents, and desirable physical characteristics, have been the material of choice for many applications in regenerative medicine. They can serve as scaffolds that provide structural integrity to tissue constructs, control drug and protein delivery to tissues and cultures, and serve as adhesives or barriers between tissue and material surfaces. In this work, the properties of hydrogels that are important for tissue engineering applications and the inherent material design constraints and challenges are discussed. Recent research involving several different hydrogels polymerized from a variety of synthetic and natural monomers using typical and novel synthetic methods are highlighted. Finally, special attention is given to the microfabrication techniques that are currently resulting in important advances in the field.     

A novel Sigma–Delta based parallel analogue-to-residue converter

An important step in the residue number system (RNS) based signal processing is the conversion of signal into residue domain. Many implementations of this conversion have been proposed for various goals, and one of the implementations is by a direct conversion from an analogue input. A novel approach for analogue-to-residue conversion is proposed in this research using the most popular Sigma–Delta analogue-to-digital converter (SD-ADC). In this approach, the front end is the same as in traditional SD-ADC that uses Sigma–Delta (ΣΔ) modulator with appropriate dynamic range, but the filtering is done by a filter implemented using RNS arithmetic. Hence, the natural output of the filter is an RNS representation of the input signal. The resolution, conversion speed, hardware complexity and cost of implementation of the proposed ΣΔ based analogue-to-residue converter are compared with the existing analogue-to-residue converters based on Nyquist rate ADCs.     

A re-configurable MASH 2-2 bandpass DQEFM for multi-standard applications

The design, analysis and implementation of a multi-stage noise shaping (MASH) bandpass modulator that employs a differentially quantized error feedback modulator (DQEFM) structure is described. The re-configurability, reduction of power-hungry active blocks and reduced sensitivity to circuit non-idealities makes this proposed bandpass modulator a suitable candidate for a digital intermediate frequency receiver system. The mathematical analysis and simulation results indicate the resemblance of the proposed modulator with the conventional sigma-delta modulator. The circuit level simulations indicate the better performance of the proposed modulator in terms of hardware complexity and power. The proposed cascaded modulator when implemented using 45nm CMOS process attains a signal-to-noise plus distortion ratio of 81.4 dB for a bandwidth of 200 kHz (GSM) and 61 dB for a bandwidth of 5 MHz (WCDMA). The circuit level simulation of the proposed bandpass architecture indicates a power consumption of 3.7 mW and 6.9 mW for GSM and WCDMA modes with 1V supply.     

Double-walled boron nitride nanotubes grown by floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition

One-dimensional nanostructures exhibit quantum confinement which leads to unique electronic properties, making them attractive as the active elements for nanoscale electronic devices. Boron nitride nanotubes are of particular interest since, unlike carbon nanotubes, all chiralities are semiconducting. Here, we report a synthesis based on the use of low pressures of the molecular precursor borazine in conjunction with a floating nickelocene catalyst that resulted in the formation of double-walled boron nitride nanotubes. As has been shown for carbon nanotube production, the floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition method has the potential for creating high quality boron nitride nanostructures with high production volumes.