CULTURED HAIR FOLLICLE CELLS FOR THE TREATMENT OF VITILIGO

Objective: The objective of this study was to develop a method to isolate cells from hair follicles and cultured them in a hydrogel.Methods: Different cell types obtained from hair follicles were investigated and mixed with three formulations of Lutrol® F-127-based hydrogels. The percentages of the cell attachment and viability were observed within 48 h.Results: The results showed that three cell types, including keratinocyte, dermal papilla, and melanocyte cells, were obtained, as shown by the expression of their corresponding genes. All formulations of the hydrogels supported cell attachment and viability. Interestingly, more than 60% cell attachment and viability were found in lutrol hydrogels supplemented with either fetal bovine serum (FBS) or heat-activated human serum.Conclusion: Higher cell attachment and viability were observed when the hair follicle cells were cultured in the hydrogel with FBS than the hydrogel with human serum. However, the lutrol gel formulation with human serum was more appropriate to be used in the future clinical study, as this formulation contained no animal-derived component

Urbanization and non-communicable disease mortality in Thailand: an ecological correlation study.

This study provides strong evidence from an LMIC that urbanization is associated with mortality from three lifestyle-associated diseases at an ecological level. Furthermore, our data suggest that both average household income and number of doctors per population are important factors to consider in ecological analyses of mortality

Integrated Proteomic and Transcriptomic Investigation of the Acetaminophen Toxicity in Liver Microfluidic Biochip

Microfluidic bioartificial organs allow the reproduction of in vivo-like properties such as cell culture in a 3D dynamical micro environment. In this work, we established a method and a protocol for performing a toxicogenomic analysis of HepG2/C3A cultivated in a microfluidic biochip. Transcriptomic and proteomic analyses have shown the induction of the NRF2 pathway and the related drug metabolism pathways when the HepG2/C3A cells were cultivated in the biochip. The induction of those pathways in the biochip enhanced the metabolism of the N-acetyl-p-aminophenol drug (acetaminophen-APAP) when compared to Petri cultures. Thus, we observed 50% growth inhibition of cell proliferation at 1 mM in the biochip, which appeared similar to human plasmatic toxic concentrations reported at 2 mM. The metabolic signature of APAP toxicity in the biochip showed similar biomarkers as those reported in vivo, such as the calcium homeostasis, lipid metabolism and reorganization of the cytoskeleton, at the transcriptome and proteome levels (which was not the case in Petri dishes). These results demonstrate a specific molecular signature for acetaminophen at transcriptomic and proteomic levels closed to situations found in vivo. Interestingly, a common component of the signature of the APAP molecule was identified in Petri and biochip cultures via the perturbations of the DNA replication and cell cycle. These findings provide an important insight into the use of microfluidic biochips as new tools in biomarker research in pharmaceutical drug studies and predictive toxicity investigations

Elucidating mechanisms of diffusion-based calcium carbonate synthesis leads to controlled mesocrystal formation

Aggregation-based crystal growth often gives rise to crystals with complex morphologies which cannot be generated via classical growth processes. Despite this, understanding of the mechanism is rather poor, particularly when organic additives or amorphous precursor phases are present. In this work, advantage is taken of the observation that aggregation-based growth of calcium carbonate, and indeed many other minerals, is most often observed using diffusion-based synthetic methods. By fully characterizing the widely used ammonia diffusion method (ADM)which is currently used as a black boxthe solution and supersaturation conditions which accompany CaCO3 precipitation using this method are identified and insight is gained into the nucleation and growth processes which generate calcite mesocrystals. This reveals that the distinguishing feature of the ADM is that the initial nucleation burst consumes only a small quantity of the available ions, and the supersaturation then remains relatively constant, and well above the solubility of amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC), until the reaction is almost complete. New material is thus generated over the entire course of the precipitation, a feature which appears to be fundamental to the formation of complex, aggregation-based morphologies. Finally, the importance of this understanding is demonstrated using the identified carbonate and supersaturation profiles to perfectly replicate CaCO3 mesocrystals through slow addition of reagents to a bulk solution. This approach overcomes many of the inherent problems of the ADM by offering excellent reproducibility, enabling the synthesis of such CaCO3 structures in large-scale and continuous-flow systems, and ultimately facilitating in situ studies of assembly-based crystallization mechanisms

Bioreactor technologies to support liver function in vitro

Liver is a central nexus integrating metabolic and immunologic homeostasis in the human body, and the direct or indirect target of most molecular therapeutics. A wide spectrum of therapeutic and technological needs drives efforts to capture liver physiology and pathophysiology in vitro, ranging from prediction of metabolism and toxicity of small molecule drugs, to understanding off-target effects of proteins, nucleic acid therapies, and targeted therapeutics, to serving as disease models for drug development. Here we provide perspective on the evolving landscape of bioreactor-based models to meet old and new challenges in drug discovery and development, emphasizing design challenges in maintaining long-term liver-specific function and how emerging technologies in biomaterials and microdevices are providing new experimental models.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01 EB010246)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (P50-GM068762-08)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01-ES015241)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (P30-ES002109)5UH2TR000496-02National Science Foundation (U.S.). Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems (CBET-0939511)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Microphysiological Systems Program (W911NF-12-2-0039

Microtechnology-based organ systems and whole-body models for drug screening

After drug administration, the drugs are absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and excreted (ADME). Because ADME processes affect drug efficacy, various in vitro models have been developed based on the ADME processes. Although these models have been widely accepted as a tool for predicting the effects of drugs, the differences between in vivo and in vitro systems result in high attrition rates of drugs during the development process and remain a major limitation. Recent advances in microtechnology enable more accurate mimicking of the in vivo environment, where cellular behavior and physiological responses to drugs are more realistic; this has led to the development of novel in vitro systems, known as organ-on-a-chip systems. The development of organ-on-a-chip systems has progressed to include the reproduction of multiple organ interactions, which is an important step towards body-on-a-chip systems that will ultimately predict whole-body responses to drugs. In this review, we summarize the application of microtechnology for the development of in vitro systems that accurately mimic in vivo environments and reconstruct multiple organ models.OAIID:RECH_ACHV_DSTSH_NO:T201623717RECH_ACHV_FG:RR00200001ADJUST_YN:EMP_ID:A002014CITE_RATE:3.781FILENAME:3. (2016.06) Microtechnology-based organ systems and.pdfDEPT_NM:화학생물공학부EMAIL:[email protected]_YN:YFILEURL:https://srnd.snu.ac.kr/eXrepEIR/fws/file/ce1256c8-4084-4576-aa21-3470ab81611a/linkCONFIRM:

Controlled synthesis of bio-relevant inorganic nanomaterials using constrained reaction environments

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo