Immunosensors For Quantifying Cyclooxygenase 2 Pain Biomarkers

A journal article by Dr. Naumih M. Noah a lecturer at United States International University - Africa.Background: Cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) is a key enzyme in pain biomarkers, in"ammation and cancer cell proliferation. Thus biosensors that can quantify pain mediators based on biochemicalmechanismare imperative. Methods: Biomolecular recognition and af!nity of antigenic COX-2 with the antibody were investigated using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and ultra-sensitive portable capillary (UPAC) "uorescence sensors. Polyclonal goat anti-COX-2 (human) antibodies were covalently immobilized on gold SPR surface and direct recognition for the COX-2 antigen assessed. The UPAC sensor utilized an indirect sandwich design involving covalently attached goat anti-COX-2 as the capture antibody and rabbit anti-COX-2 (human) antibody as the secondary antibody. Results: UPAC "uorescence signals were directly proportional to COX-2 at a linear range of 7.46×10−4–7.46×101 ng/ml with detection limit of 1.02×10−4 ng/ml. With SPR a linear range was 3.64×10−4–3.64×102 ng/ml was recorded and a detection limit of 1.35×10−4 ng/ml. Validation was achieved in simulated blood samples with percent recoveries of 81.39% and 87.23% for SPR and UPAC respectively. Conclusion: The developed sensors have the potential to provide objective characterization of pain biomarkers for clinical diagnoses

Reduction of Hexavalent Chromium Using Naturally-Derived Flavonoids

Quercetin is a naturally occurring flavonoid that is known to form complexes with metals; a process that reduces the environmental availability of toxic metals such as chromium. We hereby report the first evidence of the removal of Cr­(VI) from environmental samples using quercetin (QCR) and two synthetic derivatives: namely quercetin pentaphosphate (QPP) and quercetin sulfonic acid (QSA). We successfully synthesized both QPP and QSA using simple procedures while characterizing them with UV-vis spectroscopy, H¹-NMR, ¹³C NMR, ³¹P-NMR, and LC-MS techniques. The solubility of QPP was found to be 840 mg/mL and aqueous solutions of both QPP and QSA were stable for over a period of 1 year. Quercetin and these derivatives were subsequently utilized for the reduction of Cr­(VI) and QCR was found to have a higher reduction efficiency of 99.8% (30 min), followed by QPP/palladium nanoparticles mixture (PdNPs) at 96.5% (60 min), and finally QSA/PdNPs mixtures at 91.7% (60 min). PdNPs catalyst increased the efficiency by ∼36.5% while a change in operating temperature from 25 to 45 °C improved the efficiency by ∼46.8%. Electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to confirm the presence of Cr (III) in the reaction products. This reduction approach was validated in environmental (Binghamton University) BU and standard reference material (BRS) soil samples. Results showed that the analysis could be completed within one hour and the efficiency was higher in BU soil than in BRS soil by 16.1%. QPP registered the highest % atom economy of 94.6%. This indicates enhanced performance compared to bioremediation approach that requires several months to achieve about 90% reduction efficiency

Design science research for the humanities. The case of prosopography

International audienceThe humanities focus on understanding human beings and cultures. They include such disciplines as history, literature, and the arts. Digital humanities, defined as the application of IT to research and teaching in the humanities, is well established as a field in its own right. More particularly, research in the humanities is in demand of innovative and useful IT artifacts. This makes it a relevant application area for design science research (DSR). This also raises specific challenges to DSR researchers, due to the specific stakeholders and knowledge domains that come into play in the digital humanities. This paper focuses on prosopography, a branch of digital humanities that represents and interprets historical data, sourced from texts describing historical person's life. Starting from typical issues addressed by prosopographical researchers, we identify relevant IT artifacts to address these issues, making DSR relevant for prosopographical research. We adapt and instantiate Hevner's DSR framework to the specific case of prosopography, as a first step towards defining a DSR framework for the humanities more generally. Based on this adapted and instantiated DSR framework, we propose two artifacts: requirements and a methodology for prosopography. We demonstrate the methodology on a prosopography scenario