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Advances in Preparations and Applications of Polymeric Microsphers
Published in Kunio Esumi, Polymer Interfaces and Emulsions, 2020
Ugelstad et al. [80] prepared the magnetic polymer composite microspheres by in situ formation method in polymeric microspheres. First, they introduced a -N02 group throughout the whole volume of the polymeric microspheres by covalent coupling, then they dispersed the polymeric microspheres in an aqueous solution of Fe2+ salt. Under proper conditions, Fe2+ was continuously transported from the outer phase into the polymeric microspheres, where it was oxidized and precipitated as a magnetic hydrated iron compound. By subsequent heating, small grains of magnetite Fe3O4 and/or maghemite γ-Fe2O3 were formed evenly throughout the volume of polymeric microspheres. These uniform magnetic polymer composite microspheres can be applied in immunology, cancer research, transplantation, gene technology, clinical chemistry, virology, microbiology, clinical pathology, and so forth.
Chemical Terrorist Agents
Published in Robert A. Burke, Counter-Terrorism for Emergency Responders, 2017
Human serum butyrylcholinesterase (Hu BChE) is currently under advanced development as a bioscavenger for the prophylaxis of OP nerve agent toxicity in humans. It is estimated that a dose of 200 mg will be required to protect a human against 2 × LD50 of soman. To provide data for initiating an investigational new drug application for the use of this enzyme as a bioscavenger in humans, we purified enzyme from Cohn fraction IV-4 paste and initiated safety and efficacy evaluations in mice, guinea pigs, and nonhuman primates. In mice, we demonstrated that a single dose of enzyme that is 30 times the therapeutic dose circulated in blood for at least 4 days and did not cause any clinical pathology in these animals. In this study, we report the results of safety and efficacy evaluations conducted in guinea pigs. Various doses of Hu BChE delivered by i.m. injections peaked at ∼24 hours and had a mean residence time of 78–103 hours. Hu BChE did not exhibit any toxicity in guinea pigs as measured by general observation, serum chemistry, hematology, and gross and histological tissue changes. Efficacy evaluations showed that Hu BChE protected guinea pigs from an exposure of 5.5 × LD50 of soman or 8 × LD50 of VX. These results provide convincing data for the development of Hu BChE as a bioscavenger that can protect humans against all OP nerve agents.
TM—A sirolimus eluting bioresorbable vascular scaffold system
Published in Yoshinobu Onuma, Patrick W.J.C. Serruys, Bioresorbable Scaffolds, 2017
Ashok Seth, Babu Ezhumalai, Sanjeev Bhatt, Pratik Vasani
Test devices MeRes100 and control devices (Absorb EE BRS, XIENCE V EES, and BioMime SES) were implanted in Yucatan mini-swines in LCx, LAD, and RCA. All implanted arterial sites were imaged with angiography and OCT. There was no animal mortality or any serious adverse event (such as device thrombosis, MI, hypersensitivity, or acute/chronic mechanical device failure). No clinically relevant abnormalities were observed in the health status of animals nor in the clinical pathology (hematology and serum chemistry). Acute operational performance, acute and chronic biomechanics, and chronic patency were found satisfactory. MeRes100 BRSs demonstrated appropriate acute operational performance, adequate acute and chronic biomechanics, and favorable patency and neointimal growth when compared to benchmark Absorb BRSs, mDES XIENCE V, and BioMime [8].
Serum ferritin and vitamin D evaluation in response to high altitude comparing Italians trekkers vs Nepalese porters
Published in European Journal of Sport Science, 2021
Laura Magliulo, Danilo Bondi, Tiziana Pietrangelo, Stefania Fulle, Raffaela Piccinelli, Tereza Jandova, Gaetano Di Blasio, Mattia Taraborrelli, Vittore Verratti
The study protocol involved the execution of blood samples for later assessment of serum ferritin (sFER) and 25-hydroxyvitamin D (Vit D) at Kathmandu, before and after the trek. Blood samples were collected from the antecubital vein collected in tubes and immediately centrifuged (3000 rpm × 10 min). The serum was frozen and during the transport to Italy it was stored at a slightly cold temperature (−5 °C) for later analyses (transport time of two days). Italian participants were assessed twice for CBC: (1) two weeks before the start of the trip, and (2) ten days after the end of the trek (follow-up for sFER and Vit D assessment). In the latest two analyses, whole blood samples were taken from the antecubital vein and immediately analyzed for the following CBC parameters: RBC, HGB, HCT, MCV, MCH, RDW. Counts of WBC and sub-populations of leucocytes were also assessed from these samples. All the blood analyses were carried out in the Laboratory of Clinical Pathology (Teramo Hospital). sFER levels were determined using the immunochemiluminescence assay on the ADVIA Centaur® XP Immunoassay System (Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Germany) (Munasinghe et al., 2019). Vit D levels were determined using the immunochemiluminescence assay on the LIAISON® XL analyzer with the LIAISON® 25 OH Vitamin D TOTAL Assay (DiaSorin S.p.A., Italy) (Bianchi, Maffei, Prontera, Battaglia, & Vassalle, 2012; Munasinghe et al., 2019).
Microscopy cell counting and detection with fully convolutional regression networks
Published in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging & Visualization, 2018
Weidi Xie, J. Alison Noble, Andrew Zisserman
Counting and detecting objects in crowded images or videos is an extremely tedious and time-consuming task encountered in many real-world applications, including biology (Arteta et al. 2012, 2014, 2015; Fiaschi et al. 2012), surveillance (Chan et al. 2008; Lempitsky & Zisserman 2010) and other applications (Barinova et al. 2012). In this paper, we focus on cell counting and detection in microscopy, but the developed methodology could equally be used in other counting or detection applications. Numerous procedures in biology and medicine require cell counting and detection, for instance: a patient’s health can be inferred from the number of red blood cells and white blood cells; in clinical pathology, cell counts from images can be used for investigating hypotheses about developmental or pathological processes; and cell concentration is important in molecular biology, where it can be used to adjust the amount of chemicals to be applied in an experiment. While detection on its own, is able to determine the presence (and quantity) of an object of interest, such as cancer cells in a pathology image, furthermore, detection can be used as seeds for further segmentation or tracking.
Toxicity and occupational exposure assessment for Fischer-Tropsch synthetic paraffinic kerosene
Published in Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, 2018
David R. Mattie, Teresa R. Sterner, Gunda Reddy, David R. Steup, Errol Zeiger, Dean J. Wagner, Katherine Kurtz, Wayne C. Daughtrey, Brian A. Wong, Darol E. Dodd, James T. Edwards, John P. Hinz
Following the final exposure, rats were euthanized in accordance with AVMA guidelines (AVMA 2007). During necropsy, blood was collected for hematology and clinical pathology. A standard list of tissues was collected for histopathology (U.S. EPA 1998c). A sample of the right and/or left kidney of all male rats, and from female rats in the control and high concentration groups, were taken and frozen in liquid nitrogen for α2u-globulin analysis using a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) assay (Integrated Laboratory Systems, Durham, NC; Mattie et al. 2011b).