Sharif Digital Repository

Reduced graphene oxide nanoribbons functionalized by amphiphilic polyethylene glycol (rGONR-PEG) were applied to attach arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD)-based peptide and cyanine dye 3 (cy3) for targeting ανβ3 integrin receptors on human glioblastoma cell line U87MG and its selective fluorescence imaging, respectively. The rGONR-PEG suspension with a concentration of 100 μg mL -1 showed ∼14 and 2.4-fold higher near infrared (NIR) absorption at 808 nm than GONR (with dimensions of ∼80 nm × 1 μm) and rGO-PEG sheets (with lateral dimensions of ∼2 μm), respectively. The rGONR-PEG-cy3-RGD exhibited highly efficient NIR photothermal therapy performance (concentrations ≥1.0 μg mL-1 resulted in... 

Bayesian regularised genetic neural network (BRGNN) has been used for modelling the inhibition activity of 141 biphenylalanine derivatives as integrin antagonists. Three local pattern search (PS) methods, simulated annealing and threshold acceptance were combined with BRGNN in the form of a hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA). The results obtained revealed that PS is a suitable method for improving the ability of BRGNN to break out from the local minima. The proposed HGA technique is able to retrieve important variables from complex systems and nonlinear search spaces for optimisation. Two models with 8-3-1 artificial neural network (ANN) architectures were developed for describingα 4β 7 and α 4β... 

Scar tissue size following myocardial infarction is an independent predictor of cardiovascular outcomes, yet little is known about factors regulating scar size. We demonstrate that collagen V, a minor constituent of heart scars, regulates the size of heart scars after ischemic injury. Depletion of collagen V led to a paradoxical increase in post-infarction scar size with worsening of heart function. A systems genetics approach across 100 in-bred strains of mice demonstrated that collagen V is a critical driver of postinjury heart function. We show that collagen V deficiency alters the mechanical properties of scar tissue, and altered reciprocal feedback between matrix and cells induces... 

Cancer has long been a leading cause of death. The primary tumor, however, is not the main cause of death in more than 90% of cases. It is the complex process of metastasis that makes cancer deadly. The invasion metastasis cascade is the multi-step biological process of cancer cell dissemination to distant organ sites and adaptation to the new microenvironment site. Unraveling the metastasis process can provide great insight into cancer death prevention or even treatment. Microfluidics is a promising platform, that provides a wide range of applications in metastasis-related investigations. Cell culture microfluidic technologies for in vitro modeling of cancer tissues with fluid flow and the...