ABSTRACT
Background With the ongoing crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic in China and the increasing online teaching platforms, the blended teaching model for international medical students is necessary. Our study aims at assessing the effectiveness of the combination of online and classroom teaching in surgical laboratory course among international medical students in a Chinese university.Methods This was a cross-sectional study conducted in a Chinese university. All international medical students enrolled in 2016–2019 were included in our study and were all third year undergraduate students majoring in Clinical Medicine for a 5-year program. At the final stage of the surgical laboratory course learning, the scores of OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) and the performance of usual learning and the skills practice from 2019 to 2022 were used as measures to assess the effectiveness. STATA 14 software was applied to conduct the relevant descriptive and statistical analysis. The statistical significance was set at P < 0.05.Results A total of 29 international medical students from 14 developing countries were included in our study. The mean age of them was 25.5 ± 2.2 years. The mean scores of OSCE was 76.55 ± 21.91, and it was 76.80 ± 22.05 for the usual learning and skill practice among all the international medical students. The mean scores of OSCE was 75.69 ± 21.40 for the international medical students in the blended teaching model, close to that (77.47 ± 23.21) in the traditional teaching model. Besides, the mean scores of usual learning and skill practice for the international medical students in the blended teaching model was 74.40 ± 20.92, lower than that (77.43 ± 23.18) in the traditional teaching model (P > 0.0.05).Conclusions Our study as a preliminary study confirmed that a blended teaching model was effective like the traditional teaching model, which can reduce the disruption for the international medical students’ study during the COVID-19 pandemic. Online interactions between international medical students and instructors positively contribute to global health education. Better coordination of online and face-to-face blended teaching models is an important direction for global medical education.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
mRNA vaccines have emerged as a most promising and potent platform in the fight against various diseases including the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the intrinsic instability, varying side effects associated with the delivery systems, and continuous emergence of virus variants highlight the urgent need for the development of stable, safe and efficacious mRNA vaccines. In this study, by screening a panel of proprietary biodegradable ionizable lipidoids, we reported on a novel mRNA vaccine (cmRNA-1130) formed from a biodegradable lipidoid with eight ester bonds in the branched tail (AX4) and synthetic circular mRNA (cmRNA) encoding the trimeric Delta receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein for the induction of robust immune activation. The AX4-based lipid nanoparticles (AX4-LNP) revealed much faster elimination rate from liver and spleen in comparison with commercialized MC3-based LNP (MC3-LNP) and afforded normal level of alanine transferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and creatinine (CRE) in BALB/c mice. Following intramuscular (IM) administration in BALB/c mice, cmRNA-1130 elicited potent and sustained neutralizing antibodies, RBD-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T effector memory cells (Tem), and Th1-biased T cell activations. cmRNA-1130 vaccine showed excellent stability against 6-month storage at 4 {degrees}C and freezing-thawing cycles. In brief, our study highlights mRNA vaccines based on cmRNA and biodegradable AX4 lipids hold great potential as superb therapeutic platforms for the treatment of varying diseases.