Gold Nanoparticles in Molecular Diagnostics and Therapeutic

Multifunctional nanoparticles, which incorporate diagnostic (quantum dots, magnetic, metallic, polymeric and silica nanoparticles) and/or therapeutic (magnetic and metallic nanoparticles) properties, are in the process of development. They have been used in vivo to protect the drug entity in the systemic circulation, restrict access of the drug to the chosen sites and to deliver the drug at a controlled and sustained rate to the site of action. The surface of gold nanoparticles can be tailored by ligand functionalization to selectively bind biomarkers. Thiol-linking of DNA and chemical functionalization of gold nanoparticles for specific protein/antibody binding are the most common approaches. Several methods have been utilized for detecting AuNPs such as scanometric, fluorescence, colorimetric, surface-enhanced Raman scattering and electrochemical techniques. These unique aspects have allowed the development of novel AuNP-based assays for clinical diagnostics which promise increased sensitivity and specificity, multiplexing capability, and short turnaround times. This article focuses on nanoparticle, application in clinical diagnosis and therapeutics especially with reference with gold nanoparticle

Unsupervised machine learning framework for discriminating major variants of concern during COVID-19

Due to high mutation rates, COVID-19 evolved rapidly, and several variants such as Alpha, Gamma, Delta, Beta, and Omicron emerged with altered viral properties like the severity of the disease caused, transmission rates, etc. These variants burdened the medical systems worldwide and created a massive impact on the world economy as each had to be studied and dealt with in its specific ways. Unsupervised machine learning methods have the ability to compress, characterize, and visualize unlabelled data. In this paper, we present a framework that utilizes unsupervised machine learning methods to discriminate and visualize the associations between major COVID-19 variants based on their genome sequences. These methods comprise a combination of selected dimensionality reduction and clustering techniques. The framework processes the RNA sequences by performing a k-mer analysis on the data and then compares the results from different dimensionality reduction methods including: Principal Component Analysis (PCA), t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding (t-SNE), and Uniform Manifold Approximation Projection (UMAP). Our framework also employs agglomerative hierarchical clustering to visualize the mutational differences among major variants of concern and country-wise mutational differences for a particular variant (Delta and Omicron) using dendrograms. We also provide country-wise mutational differences for selected variants via dendrograms. We conclude that the proposed framework can effectively distinguish between the major variants and hence can be used for the identification of emerging variants in the future

Production of He-4 and (4) in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S=2.76 TeV at the LHC

Results on the production of He-4 and (4) nuclei in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S = 2.76 TeV in the rapidity range vertical bar y vertical bar <1, using the ALICE detector, are presented in this paper. The rapidity densities corresponding to 0-10% central events are found to be dN/dy4(He) = (0.8 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.3 (syst)) x 10(-6) and dN/dy4 = (1.1 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.2 (syst)) x 10(-6), respectively. This is in agreement with the statistical thermal model expectation assuming the same chemical freeze-out temperature (T-chem = 156 MeV) as for light hadrons. The measured ratio of (4)/He-4 is 1.4 +/- 0.8 (stat) +/- 0.5 (syst). (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe

Nanobiosensors for personalized and onsite biomedical diagnosis

This book covers the latest advances in the field of biosensors and biosensing applications. The book also includes an assessment of some current and emerging technologies for detecting protein biomarkers and other potential cancer biomarkers and is essential reading for researchers and graduate students in the field

Design and Engineering of a Palm-Sized Optical Immunosensing Device for the Detection of a Kidney Dysfunction Biomarker

Creatinine is one of the most common and specific biomarkers for renal diseases, usually found in the serum and urine of humans. Its level is extremely important and critical to know, not only in the case of renal diseases, but also for various other pathological conditions. Hence, detecting creatinine in clinically relevant ranges in a simplistic and personalized manner is interesting and important. In this direction, an optical sensing device has been developed for the simple, point-of-care detection of creatinine. The developed biosensor was able to detect creatinine quantitatively based on optical signals measured through a change in color. The sensor has been integrated with a smartphone to develop a palm-sized device for creatinine analysis in personalized settings. The sensor has been developed following facile chemical modification steps to anchor the creatinine-selective antibody to generate a sensing probe. The fabricated sensor has been thoroughly characterized by FTIR, AFM, and controlled optical analyses. The quantitative analysis is mediated through the reaction between picric acid and creatinine which was detected by the antibody-functionalized sensor probe. The differences in color intensity and creatinine concentrations show an excellent dose-dependent correlation in two different dynamic ranges from 5 to 20 &mu;M and 35 to 400 &mu;M, with a detection limit of 15.37 (&plusmn;0.79) nM. Several interfering molecules, such as albumin, glucose, ascorbic acid, citric acid, glycine, uric acid, Na+, K+, and Cl&minus;, were tested using the biosensor, in which no cross-reactivity was observed. The utility of the developed system to quantify creatinine in spiked serum samples was validated and the obtained percentage recoveries were found within the range of 89.71&ndash;97.30%. The fabricated biosensor was found to be highly reproducible and stable, and it retains its original signal for up to 28 days

Chemically engineered unzipped multiwalled carbon nanotube and rGO nanohybrid for ultrasensitive picloram detection in rice water and soil samples

Abstract Picloram (4-Amino-3,5,6-trichloro pyridine-2-carboxylic acid) is a chlorinated herbicide that has been discovered to be tenacious and relatively durable in both soil and water. It is known to have adverse and unpleasant effects on humans causing several health complications. Therefore, the determination of picloram is profoundly effective because of its bio-accumulative and persistent nature. Because of this, a sensitive, rapid, and robust detection system is essential to detect traces of this molecule. In this study, we have constructed a novel nanohybrid system comprising of an UZMWCNT and rGO decorated on AuNPs modified glassy carbon electrode (UZMWCNT + rGO/AuNPs/GCE). The synthesized nanomaterials and the developed system were characterized using techniques such as SEM, XRD, SWV, LSV, EIS, and chronoamperometry. The engineered sensor surface showed a broad linear range of 5 × 10–2 nM to 6 × 105 nM , a low limit of detection (LOD) of 2.31 ± 0.02 (RSD < 4.1%) pM and a limit of quantification (LOQ) of 7.63 ± 0.03 pM. The response time was recorded to be 0.2 s, and the efficacy of the proposed sensor system was studied using rice water and soil samples collected from the agricultural field post filtration. The calculated recovery % for picloram in rice water was found to be 88.58%—96.70% (RSD < 3.5%, n = 3) and for soil it was found to be 89.57%—93.24% (RSD < 3.5%, n = 3). In addition, the SWV responses of both the real samples have been performed and a linear plot have been obtained with a correlation coefficient of 0.97 and 0.96 for rice and soil samples, respectively. The interference studies due to the coexisting molecules that may be present in the samples have been found to be negligible. Also, the designed sensor has been evaluated for stability and found to be highly reproducible and stable towards picloram detection

Engineered Liposomes in Interventional Theranostics of Solid Tumors

Funding Information: R.P. thanks the director of IIT-BHU, Varanasi, U.P., for encouraging and providing the necessary facility and support and would also like to thank the school of biochemical engineering, IIT-BHU. N.K. would like to thank CBR, Population Council, for providing the Sheldon J. Segal Post-Doctoral Fellowship. P.C. acknowledges the support from the DST-funded I-DAPT Hub Foundation, IIT BHU [DST/NMICPS/TIH11/IIT(BHU)2020/02]. The authors thank Leander Corrie, Arun Butreddy, Sachin Kumar, and Qing He for reading this manuscript. J.C. acknowledges the European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC-StG-2019-848325). The author dedicates this article to Prof. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, a molecular imaging scientist. All reproduced images and figures have been cited in this review. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 American Chemical Society.Engineered liposomal nanoparticles have unique characteristics as cargo carriers in cancer care and therapeutics. Liposomal theranostics have shown significant progress in preclinical and clinical cancer models in the past few years. Liposomal hybrid systems have not only been approved by the FDA but have also reached the market level. Nanosized liposomes are clinically proven systems for delivering multiple therapeutic as well as imaging agents to the target sites in (i) cancer theranostics of solid tumors, (ii) image-guided therapeutics, and (iii) combination therapeutic applications. The choice of diagnostics and therapeutics can intervene in the theranostics property of the engineered system. However, integrating imaging and therapeutics probes within lipid self-assembly “liposome” may compromise their overall theranostics performance. On the other hand, liposomal systems suffer from their fragile nature, site-selective tumor targeting, specific biodistribution and premature leakage of loaded cargo molecules before reaching the target site. Various engineering approaches, viz., grafting, conjugation, encapsulations, etc., have been investigated to overcome the aforementioned issues. It has been studied that surface-engineered liposomes demonstrate better tumor selectivity and improved therapeutic activity and retention in cells/or solid tumors. It should be noted that several other parameters like reproducibility, stability, smooth circulation, toxicity of vital organs, patient compliance, etc. must be addressed before using liposomal theranostics agents in solid tumors or clinical models. Herein, we have reviewed the importance and challenges of liposomal medicines in targeted cancer theranostics with their preclinical and clinical progress and a translational overview.publishersversionepub_ahead_of_prin

Continuous Glucose Monitoring for Diabetes Management Based on Miniaturized Biosensors

Diabetes is a major global health concern, with 422 million people affected worldwide and more than one million deaths annually. The continuous monitoring of blood glucose levels is one of the most effective ways to treat and manage diabetes and reduce the complications due to this. Nowadays, various laboratorybased technologies are replaced with advanced biosensors to accurately monitor glucose levels in blood samples. The biosensor technology has been continuously developed over the last 50 years to be a frontline diagnostic method, and its further development requires it to perform even more complicated task of monitoring particular analytes in complex biological fluids. For the commercial success of such sensing systems, use of nanomaterials and miniaturization of sensing systems can be two viable options. Selection of proper nanomaterial can enhance the selectivity and sensitivity of the biosensor, and its nonenzymatic behavior can increase its efficiency. Miniaturization of the sensing system makes it affordable and mass producible to use by a wider population. In addition, the development of such miniaturized systems is easy to fabricate and can produce portable systems with ease of operations. In this chapter, various miniaturized optical, electrochemical, and wearable continuous glucose biosensors are discussed with the basic mechanism of glucose sensing

Commercial Aspects and Market Pull of Biosensors in Diagnostic Industries

The extensive advancements in the micro-manufacturing process have led to the development of enormous miniaturized technologies for personalized care and health management. Several technologies have been reported for saving the environment and food from getting spoiled based on miniaturized devices across the globe. Moreover, the growth of the biosensor industry has tremendously affected the market pull of sensing devices around the world. In this chapter, we have discussed various such aspects of the biosensor development process in context to their mass manufacturing feasibilities and their commercial aspects. Herein, we have also discussed limitations and various challenges associated with the miniaturized biosensors in terms of commercial acceptance. Apart from this, we also provide the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of the various types of contemporary biosensors