Impacts of biomedical hashtag-based Twitter campaign: #DHPSP utilization for promotion of open innovation in digital health, patient safety, and personalized medicine

The open innovation hub Digital Health and Patient Safety Platform (DHPSP) was recently established with the purpose to invigorate collaborative scientific research and the development of new digital products and personalized solutions aiming to improve human health and patient safety. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of a Twitter-based campaign centered on using the hashtag #DHPSP to promote the visibility of the DHPSP initiative. Thus, tweets containing #DHPSP were monitored for five weeks for the period 20.10.2020–24.11.2020 and were analyzed with Symplur Signals (social media analytics tool). In the study period, a total of 11,005 tweets containing #DHPSP were posted by 3020 Twitter users, generating 151,984,378 impressions. Analysis of the healthcare stakeholder-identity of the Twitter users who used #DHPSP revealed that the most of participating user accounts belonged to individuals or doctors, with the top three user locations being the United States (501 users), the United Kingdom (155 users), and India (121 users). Analysis of co-occurring hashtags and the full text of the posted tweets further revealed that the major themes of attention in the #DHPSP Twitter-community were related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), medicine and health, digital health technologies, and science communication in general. Overall, these results indicate that the #DHPSP initiative achieved high visibility and engaged a large body of Twitter users interested in the DHPSP focus area. Moreover, the conducted campaign resulted in an increase of DHPSP member enrollments and website visitors, and new scientific collaborations were formed. Thus, Twitter campaigns centered on a dedicated hashtag prove to be a highly efficient tool for visibility-promotion, which could be successfully utilized by healthcare-related open innovation platforms or initiatives

The International Natural Product Sciences Taskforce (INPST) and the power of Twitter networking exemplified through #INPST hashtag analysis

Background: The development of digital technologies and the evolution of open innovation approaches have enabled the creation of diverse virtual organizations and enterprises coordinating their activities primarily online. The open innovation platform titled "International Natural Product Sciences Taskforce" (INPST) was established in 2018, to bring together in collaborative environment individuals and organizations interested in natural product scientific research, and to empower their interactions by using digital communication tools. Methods: In this work, we present a general overview of INPST activities and showcase the specific use of Twitter as a powerful networking tool that was used to host a one-week "2021 INPST Twitter Networking Event" (spanning from 31st May 2021 to 6th June 2021) based on the application of the Twitter hashtag #INPST. Results and Conclusion: The use of this hashtag during the networking event period was analyzed with Symplur Signals (https://www.symplur.com/), revealing a total of 6,036 tweets, shared by 686 users, which generated a total of 65,004,773 impressions (views of the respective tweets). This networking event's achieved high visibility and participation rate showcases a convincing example of how this social media platform can be used as a highly effective tool to host virtual Twitter-based international biomedical research events

<span style="font-size:15.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-weight: bold" lang="EN-GB">Submerged fermentation and characterization of <span style="font-size:15.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-IN" lang="EN-GB">carboxymethyl cellulase<span style="font-size:15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-weight:bold" lang="EN-GB"> from a rhizospheric isolate of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:15.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:EN-IN" lang="EN-GB">Trichoderma</span></i><span style="font-size:15.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-IN" lang="EN-GB"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">viride </i><span style="font-size:15.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold" lang="EN-GB">associated with <i>Azadirachta indica</i> </span></span></span></span></span>

225-230<span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: " times="" new="" roman""="" lang="EN-GB">Analysis of process parameters influencing the submerged fermentation <span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family: E-BZ;mso-bidi-font-family:" times="" new="" roman""="" lang="EN-GB">of carboxymethyl cellulase by Trichoderma viride <span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family: E-BZ;mso-bidi-font-family:" times="" new="" roman""="" lang="EN-GB">isolated from <span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: " times="" new="" roman";mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"="" lang="EN-GB">Azadirachta indica rhizosphere<span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:E-BZ;mso-bidi-font-family: " times="" new="" roman""="" lang="EN-GB"> <span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: " times="" new="" roman""="" lang="EN-GB">showed that the highest enzyme yield was obtained with <span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family: E-BZ;mso-bidi-font-family:" times="" new="" roman""="" lang="EN-GB">carboxymethyl cellulose and ammonium sulphate as nutritional supplements at an optimum pH, temperature, incubation period and <span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family: " ms="" mincho";mso-bidi-font-family:"times="" new="" roman";mso-ansi-language:en-my"="" lang="EN-MY">inoculum volume <span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: " times="" new="" roman""="" lang="EN-GB">of 5.0, 30°C, 72 h and 1% (v/v), respectively. Sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis revealed the apparent molecular weight of the purified enzyme to be 55 kDa. The enzyme exhibited a Vmax value of 83.7 µg/min and Km value of 0.53 mg/ml. Optimal activity of the enzyme at 50<span style="font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:" times="" new="" roman""="" lang="EN-GB">°C and pH 5.0 emphasizes its potential to be utilized in textile industry operations. </span

Biomechanical Restoration Potential of Pentagalloyl Glucose after Arterial Extracellular Matrix Degeneration

The objective of this study was to quantify pentagalloyl glucose (PGG) mediated biomechanical restoration of degenerated extracellular matrix (ECM). Planar biaxial tensile testing was performed for native (N), enzyme-treated (collagenase and elastase) (E), and PGG (P) treated porcine abdominal aorta specimens (n = 6 per group). An Ogden material model was fitted to the stress–strain data and finite element computational analyses of simulated native aorta and aneurysmal abdominal aorta were performed. The maximum tensile stress of the N group was higher than that in both E and P groups for both circumferential (43.78 ± 14.18 kPa vs. 10.03 ± 2.68 kPa vs. 13.85 ± 3.02 kPa; p = 0.0226) and longitudinal directions (33.89 ± 8.98 kPa vs. 9.04 ± 2.68 kPa vs. 14.69 ± 5.88 kPa; p = 0.0441). Tensile moduli in the circumferential direction was found to be in descending order as N &gt; P &gt; E (195.6 ± 58.72 kPa &gt; 81.8 ± 22.76 kPa &gt; 46.51 ± 15.04 kPa; p = 0.0314), whereas no significant differences were found in the longitudinal direction (p = 0.1607). PGG binds to the hydrophobic core of arterial tissues and the crosslinking of ECM fibers is one of the possible explanations for the recovery of biomechanical properties observed in this study. PGG is a beneficial polyphenol that can be potentially translated to clinical practice for preventing rupture of the aneurysmal arterial wall

Characterization of Active Electrode Yield for Intracortical Arrays: Awake versus Anesthesia

Intracortical microelectrode arrays are used for recording neural signals at single-unit resolution and are promising tools for studying brain function and developing neuroprosthetics. Research is being done to increase the chronic performance and reliability of these probes, which tend to decrease or fail within several months of implantation. Although recording paradigms vary, studies focused on assessing the reliability and performance of these devices often perform recordings under anesthesia. However, anesthetics—such as isoflurane—are known to alter neural activity and electrophysiologic function. Therefore, we compared the neural recording performance under anesthesia (2% isoflurane) followed by awake conditions for probes implanted in the motor cortex of both male and female Sprague-Dawley rats. While the single-unit spike rate was significantly higher by almost 600% under awake compared to anesthetized conditions, we found no difference in the active electrode yield between the two conditions two weeks after surgery. Additionally, the signal-to-noise ratio was greater under anesthesia due to the noise levels being nearly 50% greater in awake recordings, even though there was a 14% increase in the peak-to-peak voltage of distinguished single units when awake. We observe that these findings are similar for chronic time points as well. Our observations indicate that either anesthetized or awake recordings are acceptable for studies assessing the chronic reliability and performance of intracortical microelectrode arrays

Influence of Implantation Depth on the Performance of Intracortical Probe Recording Sites

Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) enable the recording of electrical activity from cortical neurons which has implications for basic neuroscience and neuroprosthetic applications. The design space for MEA technology is extremely wide where devices may vary with respect to the number of monolithic shanks as well as placement of microelectrode sites. In the present study, we examine the differences in recording ability between two different MEA configurations: single shank (SS) and multi-shank (MS), both of which consist of 16 recording sites implanted in the rat motor cortex. We observed a significant difference in the proportion of active microelectrode sites over the 8-week indwelling period, in which SS devices exhibited a consistent ability to record activity, in contrast to the MS arrays which showed a marked decrease in activity within 2 weeks post-implantation. Furthermore, this difference was revealed to be dependent on the depth at which the microelectrode sites were located and may be mediated by anatomical heterogeneity, as well as the distribution of inhibitory neurons within the cortical layers. Our results indicate that the implantation depth of microelectrodes within the cortex needs to be considered relative to the chronic performance characterization

Infarcted rat myocardium: Data from biaxial tensile and uniaxial compressive testing and analysis of collagen fibre orientation

Myocardial infarction was experimentally induced in rat hearts and harvested immediately, 7, 14 and 28 days after the infarction induction. Anterior wall infarct samples underwent biaxial tensile and uniaxial compressive testing. Orientation of collagen fibres was analysed following mechanical testing. In this paper, we present the tensile and compressive stress–strain raw data, the calculated tensile and compressive moduli and the measured angles of collagen orientation. The presented data is associated with the research article titled “Characterisation of the mechanical properties of infarcted myocardium in the rat under biaxial tension and uniaxial compression” (Sirry et al., 2016) [1]

Animal Model Dependent Response to Pentagalloyl Glucose in Murine Abdominal Aortic Injury

Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) are a local dilation of the aorta and are associated with significant mortality due to rupture and treatment complications. There is a need for less invasive treatments to prevent aneurysm growth and rupture. In this study, we used two experimental murine models to evaluate the potential of pentagalloyl glucose (PGG), which is a polyphenolic tannin that binds to and crosslinks elastin and collagen, to preserve aortic compliance. Animals underwent surgical aortic injury and received 0.3% PGG or saline treatment on the adventitial surface of the infrarenal aorta. Seventeen mice underwent topical elastase injury, and 14 mice underwent topical calcium chloride injury. We collected high-frequency ultrasound images before surgery and at 3&ndash;4 timepoints after. There was no difference in the in vivo effective maximum diameter due to PGG treatment for either model. However, the CaCl2 model had significantly higher Green&ndash;Lagrange circumferential cyclic strain in PGG-treated animals (p &lt; 0.05). While ex vivo pressure-inflation testing showed no difference between groups in either model, histology revealed reduced calcium deposits in the PGG treatment group with the CaCl2 model. These findings highlight the continued need for improved understanding of PGG&rsquo;s effects on the extracellular matrix and suggest that PGG may reduce arterial calcium accumulation