Fetal rat neural progenitor cell transplantation after spinal cord injury improves motor recovery following optogenetic stimulation.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) disrupts communication between the brain and the spinal circuits, resulting in severe motor, sensory, and autonomic dysfunctions. Transplantation of neural progenitor cells (NPCs) has been demonstrated to provide multiple benefits; however, limited graft survival and neuronal differentiation must be overcome to achieve improved results. Here, we explore the optogenetic modulation of rat spinal cord-derived NPC expressing channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) through adeno-associated virus serotype 9-mediated transduction, transplanted into the sub-acute stage after SCI.

Optogenetic Stimulation Array for Confocal Microscopy Fast Transient Monitoring.

Optogenetics is an emerging discipline with multiple applications in neuroscience, allowing to study neuronal pathways or serving for therapeutic applications such as in the treatment of anxiety disorder, autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), or Parkinson's disease. More recently optogenetics is opening its way also to stem cell-based therapeutic applications for neuronal regeneration after stroke or spinal cord injury. The results of optogenetic stimulation are usually evaluated by immunofluorescence or flow cytometry, and the observation of transient responses after stimulation, as in cardiac electrophysiology studies, by optical microscopy.

Finite Element Models of Gold Nanoparticles and Their Suspensions for Photothermal Effect Calculation.

(1) Background: The ability of metal nanoparticles to carry other molecules and their electromagnetic interactions can be used for localized drug release or to heat malignant tissue, as in the case of photothermal treatments. Plasmonics can be used to calculate their absorption and electric field enhancement, which can be further used to predict the outcome of photothermal experiments. In this study, we model the nanoparticle geometry in a Finite Element Model calculus environment to calculate the effects that occur as a response to placing it in an optical, electromagnetic field, and also a model of the experimental procedure to measure the temperature rise while irradiating a suspension of nanoparticles.

New bladder cancer non-invasive surveillance method based on voltammetric electronic tongue measurement of urine.

Bladder cancer (BC) is the sixth leading cause of death by cancer. Depending on the invasiveness of tumors, patients with BC will undergo surgery and surveillance lifelong, owing the high rate of recurrence and progression. In this context, the development of strategies to support non-invasive BC diagnosis is focusing attention.

Electro-responsive films containing voltage responsive gated mesoporous silica nanoparticles grafted onto PEDOT-based conducting polymer.

The characteristics and electromechanical properties of conductive polymers together to their biocompatibility have boosted their application as a suitable tool in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. However, conducting polymers as drug release materials are far from being ideal. A possibility to overcome this drawback is to combine conducting polymers with on-command delivery particles with inherent high-loading capacity.