Massively Parallel Patterning of Complex 2D and 3D Functional Polymer Brushes by Polymer Pen Lithography

We report the first demonstration of centimeter-area serial patterning of complex 2D and 3D functional polymer brushes by high-throughput polymer pen lithography. Arbitrary 2D and 3D structures of poly­(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) brushes are fabricated over areas as large as 2 cm × 1 cm, with a remarkable throughput being 3 orders of magnitudes higher than the state-of-the-arts. Patterned PGMA brushes are further employed as resist for fabricating Au micro/nanostructures and hard molds for the subsequent replica molding of soft stamps. On the other hand, these 2D and 3D PGMA brushes are also utilized as robust and versatile platforms for the immobilization of bioactive molecules to form 2D and 3D patterned DNA oligonucleotide and protein chips. Therefore, this low-cost, yet high-throughput “bench-top” serial fabrication method can be readily applied to a wide range of fields including micro/nanofabrication, optics and electronics, smart surfaces, and biorelated studies

Chiral Packing of Cholesteryl Group as an Effective Strategy To Get Low Molecular Weight Supramolecular Hydrogels in the Absence of Intermolecular Hydrogen Bond

Although the most commonly reported low molecular weight hydrogelators (LMWG) are based on the strong and highly directional hydrogen bond between polar groups, the expansion of novel species of LMWG is quite necessary to fulfill different requirements of practical applications. Herein, we demonstrated that using an inherently chiral groupcholesterol as the hydrophobic part is a quite effective strategy to get phosphocholine-based LMWG, in which strong hydrogen bonds cannot be directly formed. A series of phospholipid hydrogelators, in which hydrophilic phosphocholine was connected to the chiral hydrophobic cholesteryl group through an alkyl chain, were designed and synthesized. Cholesteryl group greatly promoted the formation of one-dimensional supramolecular structures: helical nanofibril, twisted nanoribbon, helical nanotube, and spindle shaped vesicles were formed, and they showed drastic variation with just simple minor change on the molecular structures. All of them can further organize into cross-linked three-dimensional networks and form hydrogels. The hydrophobic interaction between cholesteryl groups also greatly improved the performance of hydrogel

Bibliometric and visual analysis of vaccination hesitancy research from 2013 to 2022

Although vaccination is regarded as one of the most significant achievements of public health, there also exists the phenomenon of vaccination hesitancy which refers to delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite availability of vaccination services. In this study, we conducted a bibliometric analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of vaccination hesitancy research from 2013 to 2022. All related publications were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection Database. Information on annual publications, countries, organizations, journals, authors, keywords, and documents was analyzed adopting the bibliometix R-package, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace software. A total of 4042 publications were enrolled. The annual publications increased slightly before 2020 but had an extremely dramatic increase from 2020 to 2022. The United States contributed the most articles and had the greatest collaboration with other countries and organizations. The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine was the most active institution. Vaccine was the most cited and influential journal while Vaccines was the most productive journal. It was Dube E who was the most productive authors with the highest h-index. The most frequent keywords were “vaccine hesitancy,” “COVID-19,” “SARS-CoV2,” “immunization,” “attitudes,” and “willingness.” Vaccination hesitancy to some extent hinders the achievement of global public health. The influencing factors vary across time, space, and vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic and the development of COVID-19 vaccines have made this issue the focus of interest. The complexity and specific contexts of influencing factors of vaccination hesitancy require further study and will potentially be the focus of future research direction.</p

Synthesis of Peptide-Functionalized Poly(bis-sulfone) Copolymers Regulating HIV‑1 Entry and Cancer Stem Cell Migration

Peptide–polymer conjugates have been regarded as primary stronghold in biohybrid nanomedicine, which has seen extensive development due to its intrinsic property to provide complementary functions of both the peptide material and the synthetic polymer platform. Here we present an advanced macromolecular therapeutic that targets two exclusive classes of important diseases (namely, the HIV and cancer) that are implicated by extremely different causative agents. Using a facile thiol-reactive monomer, the eventual polymer facilitates multivalent conjugation of an endogenous peptide WSC02 that targets the CXCR4 chemokine receptor. The biohybrid material demonstrated both potent antiviral effects against HIV-1 as well as inhibiting cancer stem cell migration thus establishing the foundation for multimodal nanotherapeutics that simultaneously target more than one class of disease implications