In Vivo Partial Restoration of Neural Activity across Severed Mouse Spinal Cord Bridged with Ultralong Carbon Nanotubes.

Electrically bridging severed nerves in vivo has transformative healthcare implications, but current materials are inadequate. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are promising, with low impedance, high charge injection capacity, high flexibility, are chemically inert, and can electrically couple to neurons. Ultralong CNTs are unexplored for neural applications. Using only ultralong CNTs in saline, without neuroregeneration or rehabilitation, we partially restored neural activity across a severed mouse spinal cord, recovering 23.8% of the intact amplitude, while preserving signal shape. Neural signals are preferentially facilitated over artifact signals by a factor of ×5.2, suggesting ultralong CNTs are a promising material for neural-scaffolding and neural-electronics applications.

Evidence of a purely electronic two-dimensional lattice at the interface of TMD/Bi2Se3 heterostructures.

When 2D materials are vertically stacked, new physics emerges from interlayer orbital interactions and charge transfer modulated by the additional periodicity of interlayer atomic registry (moiré superlattice). Surprisingly, relatively little is known regarding the real-space distribution of the transferred charges within this framework. Here we provide the first experimental indications of a real-space, non-atomic lattice formed by interlayer coupling induced charge redistribution in vertically stacked Bi2Se3/transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) 2D heterostructures. Robust enough to scatter 200 keV electron beams, this non-atomic lattice generates selected area diffraction patterns that correspond excellently with simulated patterns from moiré superlattices of the parent crystals suggesting their location at sites of high interlayer atomic registry. Density functional theory (DFT) predicts concentrated charge pools reside in the interlayer region, located at sites of high nearest-neighbor atomic registry, suggesting the non-atomic lattices are standalone, reside in the interlayer region, and are purely electronic.

Nanoemulsion based concomitant delivery of curcumin and etoposide: impact on cross talk between prostate cancer cells and osteoblast during metastasis.

An attempt has been made to use curcumin (CUR) in combination with Etoposide (ETP) by encapsulating in nanoemulsion, as two tier approach i.e., to evaluate improvement in efficacy of ETP on prostate cancer cells (PC3 and DU145) and to assess their effect on cross-talk between osteoblast and tumor cells leading to metastatic cascade in bones. Nanoemulsion was developed and evaluated for size, charge, in-vitro drug release and anticancer activity, effect on cross talk between osteoblast and prostate cancer cells and pharmacokinetics in rats. The entrapment efficiency of both ETP and CUR in nanoemulsion was more than 98% while the globule size was less than 150 nm with zeta potential - 29.8 mV. The percent inhibition in case of ETP and ETP: CUR (1:3 w/w) was 55.92 ± 1.2 and 41.13 ± 2.4% (at 5 µM) respectively when tested in PC3 cells. DU-145 seemed to be less responsive in comparison to PC3 cells both in respect of ETP and their mixture (ETP+ CUR). Our data shows that CUR and ETP after encapsulation in nanoemulsion (F5) were effectively delivered intracellularly in PC3 cells and the cytotoxicity of F5 was enhanced by 1.5 fold as compared to ETP + CUR at 5 µM concentration. It has also been observed that mice calvarial osteoblasts cultured and incubated with PC-3 and DU-145 cells conditioned media induces inhibition of osteoblast differentiation event. While this inhibition was significantly reversed by F5 at 5 µM concentration over other treated groups, the pharmacokinetic profile of both ETP and CUR was also significantly improved when administered in nanoemulsion.

Fibrinolytic activity of kaempferol isolated from the fruits of Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standley.

This study was undertaken to isolate a flavonol, kaempferol, from the fruits of Lagenaria siceraria (bottle gourd) as a sole compound and to explore the fibrinolytic potential of the methanolic extract of the fruits of L. siceraria and the isolated compound using their in vitro activity. The fibrinolytic activity in terms of percentage of plasma clot liquefaction was determined by plasma clot lysis at 37°C in 24 h. The fibrinolytic activity of both substances was compared to the well-known thrombolytic agent streptokinase (30,000 IU). The percentage of fibrinolytic activity of the extract and isolated compound were found to be 54.72 ± 0.7210 and 77.37 ± 1.3010, respectively. Streptokinase was considered as the standard fibrinolytic enzyme for comparative purposes and had 91.46 ± 0.7625% fibrinolytic activity. The conclusion drawn in our study after testing the hypothesis by experimental procedures is that in vitro fibrinolytic activity on plasma clots is an inherent property of kaempferol isolated from the fruits of L. siceraria, and its comparison with streptokinase is a new aspect for further study.