Functional non-glutaraldehyde treated porcine pericardium for anti-coagulation, anti-calcification, and endothelial proliferation bioprosthetic heart valves

Abstract In the last decade, the number of transcatheter heart valve replacement for severe heart valve disease has increased exponentially. Although the bioprosthetic artificial heart valve (BHV) has similar fluid dynamics performance to the original heart valve compared with mechanical heart valve so that there is no need to take long-term anticoagulant drugs to prevent thromboembolism, transcatheter BHV replacement are still at risk for thrombosis during the first few months according to the clinical data. However, the use of antithrombotic drugs can also increase the risk of bleeding. Therefore, it is particularly important to improve the anticoagulant properties for the BHV itself. In this work, a kind of non-glutaraldehyde cross-linked BHV material with excellent antithrombotic ability has been prepared from carboxylated oxazolidine treated porcine pericardium (consisting of collagen, elastin and glycoprotein) with the further graft of the anticoagulant heparin sodium via hydrophilic modified chitosan. Along with the similar mechanical properties and collagen stability comparable to the glutaraldehyde cross-linked porcine pericardium (PP), these functional non-glutaraldehyde cross-linked PPs exhibit better biocompatibility, promoted endothelial proliferation and superior anti-calcification ability. More importantly, excellent anticoagulant activity can be observed in the hematological experiments in vivo and in vitro. In summary, these excellent performances make these functional non-glutaraldehyde cross-linked PPs great potentialities in the BHV applications. Graphical abstrac

Unparalleled Ease of Access to a Library of Biheteroaryl Fluorophores via Oxidative Cross-Coupling Reactions: Discovery of Photostable NIR Probe for Mitochondria

The development of straightforward accesses to organic functional materials through C–H activation is a revolutionary trend in organic synthesis. In this article, we propose a concise strategy to construct a large library of donor–acceptor-type biheteroaryl fluorophores via the palladium-catalyzed oxidative C–H/C–H cross-coupling of electron-deficient 2<i>H</i>-indazoles with electron-rich heteroarenes. The directly coupled biheteroaryl fluorophores, named Indazo-Fluors, exhibit continuously tunable full-color emissions with quantum yields up to 93% and large Stokes shifts up to 8705 cm^–1 in CH₂Cl₂. By further fine-tuning of the substituent on the core skeleton, Indazo-Fluor <b>3l</b> (FW = 274; λ_em = 725 nm) is obtained as the lowest molecular weight near-infrared (NIR) fluorophore with emission wavelength over 720 nm in the solid state. The NIR dye <b>5h</b> specifically lights up mitochondria in living cells with bright red luminescence. Typically, commercially available mitochondria trackers suffer from poor photostability. Indazo-Fluor <b>5h</b> exhibits superior photostability and very low cytotoxicity, which would be a prominent reagent for <i>in vivo</i> mitochondria imaging

Redox-Responsive Biomimetic Polymeric Micelle for Simultaneous Anticancer Drug Delivery and Aggregation-Induced Emission Active Imaging

Intelligent polymeric micelles have been developed as potential nanoplatforms for efficient drug delivery and diagnosis. Herein, we successfully prepared redox-sensitive polymeric micelles combined aggregation-induced emission (AIE) imaging as an outstanding anticancer drug carrier system for simultaneous chemotherapy and bioimaging. The amphiphilic copolymer TPE-SS-PLAsp-<i>b</i>-PMPC could self-assemble into spherical micelles, and these biomimetic micelles exhibited great biocompatibility and remarkable ability in antiprotein adsorption, showing great potential for biomedical application. Anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) could be encapsulated during the self-assembly process, and these drug-loaded micelles showed intelligent drug release and improved antitumor efficacy due to the quick disassembly in response to high levels of glutathione (GSH) in the environment. Moreover, the intracellular DOX release could be traced through the fluorescent imaging of these AIE micelles. As expected, the <i>in vivo</i> antitumor study exhibited that these DOX-carried micelles showed better antitumor efficacy and less adverse effects than that of free DOX. These results strongly indicated that this smart biomimetic micelle system would be a prominent candidate for chemotherapy and bioimaging

Unparalleled Ease of Access to a Library of Biheteroaryl Fluorophores via Oxidative Cross-Coupling Reactions: Discovery of Photostable NIR Probe for Mitochondria

The development of straightforward accesses to organic functional materials through C–H activation is a revolutionary trend in organic synthesis. In this article, we propose a concise strategy to construct a large library of donor–acceptor-type biheteroaryl fluorophores via the palladium-catalyzed oxidative C–H/C–H cross-coupling of electron-deficient 2<i>H</i>-indazoles with electron-rich heteroarenes. The directly coupled biheteroaryl fluorophores, named Indazo-Fluors, exhibit continuously tunable full-color emissions with quantum yields up to 93% and large Stokes shifts up to 8705 cm^–1 in CH₂Cl₂. By further fine-tuning of the substituent on the core skeleton, Indazo-Fluor <b>3l</b> (FW = 274; λ_em = 725 nm) is obtained as the lowest molecular weight near-infrared (NIR) fluorophore with emission wavelength over 720 nm in the solid state. The NIR dye <b>5h</b> specifically lights up mitochondria in living cells with bright red luminescence. Typically, commercially available mitochondria trackers suffer from poor photostability. Indazo-Fluor <b>5h</b> exhibits superior photostability and very low cytotoxicity, which would be a prominent reagent for <i>in vivo</i> mitochondria imaging