Personalized anti-tumor drug efficacy prediction based on clinical data.

Anti-tumor drug efficacy prediction poses an unprecedented challenge to realizing personalized medicine. This paper proposes to predict personalized anti-tumor drug efficacy based on clinical data. Specifically, we encode the clinical text as numeric vectors featured with hidden topics for patients using Latent Dirichlet Allocation model. Then, to classify patients into two classes, responsive or non-responsive to a drug, drug efficacy predictors are established by machine learning based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic representation. To evaluate the proposed method, we collected and collated clinical records of lung and bowel cancer patients treated with platinum. Experimental results on the data sets show the efficacy and effectiveness of the proposed method, suggesting the potential value of clinical data in cancer precision medicine. We hope that it will promote the research of drug efficacy prediction based on clinical data.

Gradiently Foaming Ultrasoft Hydrogel with Stop Holes for Highly Deformable, Crack-Resistant and Sensitive Conformal Human-Machine Interfaces.

Hydrogels are considered as promising materials for human-machine interfaces (HMIs) owing to their merits of tailorable mechanical and electrical properties; nevertheless, it remains challenging to simultaneously achieve ultrasoftness, good mechanical robustness and high sensitivity, which are the pre-requisite requirements for wearable sensing applications. Herein, for the first time, this work proposes a universal phase-transition-induced bubbling strategy to fabricate ultrasoft gradient foam-shaped hydrogels (FSHs) with stop holes for high deformability, crack-resistance and sensitive conformal HMIs. As a typical system, the FSH based on polyacrylamide/sodium alginate system shows an ultralow Young's modulus (1.68 kPa), increased sustainable strain (1411%), enhanced fracture toughness (915.6 J m-2), improved tensile sensitivity (21.77), and compressive sensitivity (65.23 kPa-1). The FSHs are used for precisely acquiring and identifying gesture commands of the operator to remotely control a surgical robot for endoscopy and an electric ship in a first-person perspective for cruising, feeding crabs and monitoring the environmental change in real-time.

Ti3 C2 TX MXene Ink Direct Writing Flexible Sensors for Disposable Paper Toys.

Flexible electronics have gained great attention in recent years owing to their promising applications in biomedicine, sustainable energy, human-machine interaction, and toys for children. Paper mainly produced from cellulose fibers is attractive substrate for flexible electronics because it is biodegradable, foldable, tailorable, and light-weight. Inspired by daily handwriting, the rapid prototyping of sensing devices with arbitrary patterns can be achieved by directly drawing conductive inks on flat or curved paper surfaces; this provides huge freedom for children to design and integrate "do-it-yourself (DIY)" electronic toys. Herein, viscous and additive-free ink made from Ti3 C2 TX MXene sediment is employed to prepare disposable paper electronics through a simple ball pen drawing. The as-drawn paper sensors possess hierarchical microstructures with interweaving nanosheets, nanoflakes, and nanoparticles, therefore exhibiting superior mechanosensing performances to those based on single/fewer-layer MXene nanosheets. As proof-of-concept applications, several popular children's games are implemented by the MXene-based paper sensors, including "You say, I guess," "Emotional expression," "Rock-Paper-Scissors," "Arm wrestling," "Throwing game," "Carrot squat," and "Grab the cup," as well as a DIY smart whisker for a cartoon mouse. Moreover, MXene-based paper sensors are safe and disposable, free from producing any e-waste and hazard to the environment.

Ti3C2TX MXene for Sensing Applications: Recent Progress, Design Principles, and Future Perspectives.

Sensors are becoming increasingly significant in our daily life because of the rapid development in electronic and information technologies, including Internet of Things, wearable electronics, home automation, intelligent industry, etc. There is no doubt that their performances are primarily determined by the sensing materials. Among all potential candidates, layered nanomaterials with two-dimensional (2D) planar structure have numerous superior properties to their bulk counterparts which are suitable for building various high-performance sensors. As an emerging 2D material, MXenes possess several advantageous features of adjustable surface properties, tunable bandgap, and excellent mechanical strength, making them attractive in various applications. Herein, we particularly focus on the recent research progress in MXene-based sensors, discuss the merits of MXenes and their derivatives as sensing materials for collecting various signals, and try to elucidate the design principles and working mechanisms of the corresponding MXene-based sensors, including strain/stress sensors, gas sensors, electrochemical sensors, optical sensors, and humidity sensors. In the end, we analyze the main challenges and future outlook of MXene-based materials in sensor applications.

Mussel-Inspired, Surface-Attachable Initiator for Grafting of Antimicrobial and Antifouling Hydrogels.

In this work, a novel biomimetic surface-attachable initiator is successfully synthesized by the conjugation of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid and thermal 2,2'-azobis(2-methylpropionamide) dihydrochloride (V-50). The synthesized initiator (DOPV) can adhere to various material surfaces in a mussel-inspired way and initiate the surface grafting polymerization. Hydrogel coatings are facilely prepared by the thermal-initiated radical copolymerization of antimicrobial polyhexamethylene guanidine and antifouling polyethylene glycol oligomers. The developed hydrogel coatings not only show antimicrobial activity toward gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria but also demonstrate protein resistance, antibiofilm efficacy, hemocompatibility, and low cytotoxicity in vitro. Most importantly, the hydrogel coatings reveal excellent antimicrobial efficacy with a log reduction above 5 in a rodent subcutaneous infection model. These results demonstrate the potential fabrication of bio-functional coatings for biomedical devices or implants through an inexpensive, facile, and environmentally friendly mussel-inspired technique.