A Biomechanical Approach to Investigate the Applicability of the Lake-Thomas Theory in Porcine Aorta

Robot-assisted surgeries are procedures where a physician performs surgical maneuvers by operating a robot. One of the main limitations is the difficulty in transferring the surgeon’s multiple skills onto the robotic system. Such skills include the ability to estimate the maximum applicable force before damaging the tissue. To implement this skill onto a robotic system, a mathematical model for tissue damage must be developed. The objective of this study is to measure the fracture characteristic in porcine aorta, to then investigate whether an existing fracture model can be applied onto biological tissues. Due to the similarity in the mechanical response between biological tissues and polymeric materials, the model chosen for this study was the Lake-Thomas model. This is the first paper with the aim of validating this model with biological tissues. Two main findings are reported in this investigation. We found that porcine thoracic aorta tears in a specific way which is directly correlated to the tensile direction. The second finding is that an anisotropic linear relationship exists between the critical tearing energy and the elastic modulus, and the elastic modulus to the -0.5th power. These results are discussed based on the elastin and collagen fibers, as well as established mathematical equations describing polymer mechanic

Ligand Installation to Polymeric Micelles for Pediatric Brain Tumor Targeting

Medulloblastoma is a life-threatening disease with poor therapeutic outcomes. In chemotherapy, low drug accumulation has been a cause of these outcomes. Such inadequate response to treatments has been associated with low drug accumulation, particularly with a limited cellular uptake of drugs. Recently, the conjugation of drugs to ligand molecules with high affinity to tumor cells has attracted much attention for enhancing drug internalization into target cells. Moreover, combining tumor-targeting ligands with nano-scaled drug carriers can potentially improve drug loading capacity and the versatility of the delivery. Herein, we focused on the possibility of targeting CD276/B7-H3, which is highly expressed on the medulloblastoma cell membrane, as a strategy for enhancing the cellular uptake of ligand-installed nanocarriers. Thus, anti-CD276 antibodies were conjugated on the surface of model nanocarriers based on polyion complex micelles (PIC/m) via click chemistry. The results showed that the anti-CD276 antibody-installed PIC/m improved intracellular delivery into CD276-expressing medulloblastoma cells in a CD276-dependent manner. Moreover, increasing the number of antibodies on the surface of micelles improved the cellular uptake efficiency. These observations indicate the potential of anti-CD276 antibody-installed nanocarriers for promoting drug delivery in medulloblastoma