Sharif Digital Repository

At present, nanoparticles are used for various biomedical applications where they facilitate laboratory diagnostics and therapeutics. More specifically for drug delivery purposes, the use of nanoparticles is attracting increasing attention due to their unique capabilities and their negligible side effects not only in cancer therapy but also in the treatment of other ailments. Among all types of nanoparticles, biocompatible superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) with proper surface architecture and conjugated targeting ligands/proteins have attracted a great deal of attention for drug delivery applications. This review covers recent advances in the development of SPIONs together... 

Due to their ultra-small size, nanoparticles (NPs) have distinct properties compared with the bulk form of the same materials. These properties are rapidly revolutionizing many areas of medicine and technology. NPs are recognized as promising and powerful tools to fight against the human brain diseases such as multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's disease. In this review, after an introductory part on the nature of protein fibrillation and the existing approaches for its investigations, the effects of NPs on the fibrillation process have been considered. More specifically, the role of biophysicochemical properties of NPs, which define their affinity for protein monomers, unfolded monomers,... 

Let LL be a reversible Markovian generator on a finite set View the MathML sourceV. Relations between the spectral decomposition of LL and subpartitions of the state space View the MathML sourceV into a given number of components which are optimal with respect to min–max or max–min Dirichlet connectivity criteria are investigated. Links are made with higher-order Cheeger inequalities and with a generic characterization of subpartitions given by the nodal domains of an eigenfunction. These considerations are applied to generators whose positive rates are supported by the edges of a discrete cycle ZNZN, to obtain a full description of their spectra and of the shapes of their eigenfunctions, as... 

Superparamagnetic zinc ferrite spinel-graphene nanostructures were synthesized as potential therapeutic agents in the magnetic targeted photothermal therapy of cancer and/or drug delivery. The global temperature of the solution and the local temperature at the nanoparticle (NP) surface determine the protein corona composition/content, which in turn affects the biological effects of NPs and the corresponding physiological responses. Therefore, it is rational to hypothesize that spinel-graphene nanostructures may have distinct protein corona compositions and contents, and therapeutic and toxic effects under laser irradiation. To assess this hypothesis, the effects of laser irradiation on the... 

Fetal stem cells, which can be isolated from the organs of fetuses, differentiate along multiple lineages. Their advantages over their adult counterparts include better intrinsic homing and engraftment and lower immunogenicity, and they are less ethically contentious. It is noteworthy that Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSC) can be activated and mobilized at the site of damaged tissue. Since vascular delivery suffers from a pulmonary first pass effect, direct or systemic injection of MSCs into the damaged tissue is preferred, particularly in the case of versatile tissue ischemia. Ultrasound applies acoustic energy with a frequency above human hearing (20 kHz). Ultrasound imaging or sonography... 

The significant role of protein nanoparticle interactions in nanomedicine and nanotoxicity is emerging recently through the identification of the nanoparticles (NP) protein (biomolecule) corona. The dynamic layer of proteins and/or other biomolecules adsorbed to the nanoparticle surface determines how a NP interacts with living systems and thereby modifies the cellular responses to the NP. Ehrenberg and co-workers used cultured endothelium cells as a model for vascular transport of polystyrene NP with various functional groups, which showed that the capacity of the various NP surfaces to adsorb proteins was indicative of their tendency to associate with cells. The quantification of the... 

The hard corona, the protein shell that is strongly attached to the surface of nano-objects in biological fluids, is recognized as the first layer that interacts with biological objects (e.g., cells and tissues). The decoration of the hard corona (i.e., the type, amount, and conformation of the attached proteins) can define the biological fate of the nanomaterial. Recent developments have revealed that corona decoration strongly depends on the type of disease in human patients from which the plasma is obtained as a protein source for corona formation (referred to as the 'personalized protein corona'). In this study, we demonstrate that graphene oxide (GO) sheets can trigger different... 

The creation of novel engineered multimodal nanoparticles (NPs) is a key focus in bionanotechnology and can lead to deep understanding of biological processes at the molecular level. Here, we present a multi-component system made of gold-coupled core-shell SPIONs, as a new nanoprobe with signal enhancement in surface Raman spectroscopy, due to its jagged-shaped gold shell coating  

Engineered nanoparticles are increasingly being considered for use as biosensors, imaging agents and drug delivery vehicles. Their versatility in design and applications make them an attractive proposition for new biological and biomedical approaches. Despite the remarkable speed of development in nanoscience, relatively little is known about the interaction of nanoscale objects with living systems. In a biological fluid, proteins associate with nanoparticles, and the amount and the presentation of the proteins on their surface could lead to a different in vivo response than an uncoated particle. Here, in addition to protein adsorption, we are going to introduce concept of cell "vision",... 

During the last decade, reports show that the incidence and prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other dementias have significantly increased. AD poses an enormous escalating threat to health services and resources. Early diagnosis of AD is recognized as one of the major challenges and primary aims in scientific communities. With the arrival of nanoscience and nanotechnology to medicine, hopes for early diagnosis and treatment of AD have considerably increased. To this end, nanobioresearchers are focused on three major areas consisting of early detection and recognition, biological markers and diagnosis, and pharmacotherapy. Several efforts are in progress for the discovery of new... 

Learning a foreign language encompasses a process of trial and error that can lead to the progression of the learner's interlanguage, meaning that the learners make use of their language knowledge that receives feedback and brings about progress through diagnosis of the problems and being corrected by the teacher. Therefore, there exists a need to analyze the underlying reasons causing the students to remain taciturn with a low willingness to communicate (WTC) during a language class. There has been much work done investigating the role of the learner's stable personal characteristics (traits) along with their situational changes at a specific time (states) that influence the student's... 

Using 3-D scanned data to analyze and extract pore network plays a vital role in investigation of porous media's characteristics. In this paper, a new simple method is developed to detect pores and throats for analyzing the connectivity and permeability of the network. This automated method utilizes some of the common and well-known image processing functions which are widely accessible by researchers and this has led to an easy algorithm implementation. In this method, after polishing and quality control of images, using city-block distance function and watershed segmentation algorithm, pores and throats are detected and 3-D network is produced. This method can also be applied on 2-D images... 

In this paper, we try to recognize and distinguish different groups of arrhythmia using novel features which have been obtained from the heart rate's phase space in recent years. For this purpose, we used Triangular Phase Space Mapping (TPSM) and Parabolic Phase Space Mapping (PPSM). For recognition, we used three groups of 15 subjects using the Physionet database (Arrhythmia, Congestive Heart Failure (CHF), and Atrial Fibrillation (AF)) with Normal Sinus Rhythm (NSR). The obtained features discriminate arrhythmia from NSR by p