Sharif Digital Repository

Cancer is the second leading cause of death among humans as one of the major human concerns. More than 500,000 people die of cancer each year in the United States alone. Cancer mortality is mainly due to cancer metastasis. Metastasis is the escape of cancer cells from a primary tumor, the circulation of cells in the circulatory system (CTSs), the penetration of/from vessel wall, and the formation of a secondary tumor. It is still not clear how the cells survive in the circulatory system, along with the mechanical pressures and stresses that exist in the body's capillary channals. In this study, a microcirculation model for circulating cells with barriers was designed and constructed by the... 

Isolation and characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) found in blood samples of cancer patients have been considered as a reliable source for cancer prognosis and diagnosis. A new continuous microfluidic platform has been designed in this investigation for simultaneous capture and characterization of CTCs based on their deformability. The deformability-based chip (D-Chip) consists of two sections of separation and characterization where slanted weirs with a gap of 7 μm were considered. Although sometimes CTCs and leukocytes have the same size, the deformability differs in such a way that can be exploited for enrichment purposes. MCF7 and MDA-MB-231 cell lines were used for the... 

Using microbial electrolysis cells (MEC) for hydrogen production has been considered in recent years. So far, synthetic wastewaters containing substances such as glucose and acetate have been mainly used in MECs and industrial wastewaters have not been widely studied. Food industry wastewater is a suitable choice for application in microbial electrolysis cell due to its biodegradable materials. In present research, dairy wastewater and sludge collected from UASB reactor of Iran Dairy Industries company, Tehran were initially used in a dual chamber microbial fuel cell until a stable voltage was generated .Afterward, the system was converted to a MEC applying a predetermined voltage. The... 

The heart diseases and in particular coronary artery disease have been vastly increased in recent years. Bypass operation is the major recognized way of this disease treatment however, one third of patients don’t have the suitable autologous vein for this operation. It should be noted that for this operation a suitable conduit with diameter as narrow as possible is needed. On the other hand, usage of synthetic polymers won’t be suitable for this operation due to the coagulation forming. The only way to overcome this problem is the use of tissue engineering with the aid of scaffold and autologous cells with the natural tissue function, which reconstructed the desire tissue causing no... 

In recent years, it is expected that the fabrication of multilayer scaffolds and the use of different methodologies in one product can be a new progressing method in skin substitute production. Accordingly, this project aims to fabricate a bilayered composite scaffold with a combination of hydrogel and electrospinning method. We have tried to prepare a scaffold made of oxidized alginate (OAL), gelatin (G), and silk fibroin (SF) without using corrosive solvents and toxic crosslinking agents as a scaffold and drug delivery system. As different biological, chemical, physical, and mechanical factors play a vital role in the healing process, we have characterized the proposed scaffold via DSC,... 

Physical processes such as adsorption and membrane filtration are in progress and considered as efficient methods in separation and treatment of organic pollutants from petrochemical and colored wastewaters. The advantages of these methods include high energy efficiency, low cost, facile process, and regeneration and implementation ability for a wide range of contaminants. Nevertheless,requirement of suitable materials as adsorbents with high adsorption capacity, capability of preparing membranes based on these materials, optimization of process conditions and removal improvement have still remained as the main challenges; therefore, these topics have been mentioned as main aims of this... 

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is a process in which a special piece of a gene is amplified millions of times over a short period. This method has been of paramount importance in different fields of research and has been applied for different applications. PCR requires thermal cycling, or repeated temperature changes between two or three discrete temperatures to amplify specific nucleic acid target sequences. To achieve such thermal cycling, conventional bench-top thermal cyclers generally use a metal heating block powered by Peltier elements or benefit from forced convection heat transfer. Due to the fact that these methods are time consuming, it seems that design and fabrication of a fast... 

In recent years, advances in medical science and increasing the level of healthcare have increased the life expectancy index; But in the meantime, a phenomenon called “diseases related to life expectancy” has appeared. Bone and skeletal diseases have a significant share in this category because the passage of time reduces bone mineral density and this is the source of many diseases, including osteoporosis. Current bone therapies, which include autologous and allogeneic bone grafts, will not meet this high need. Bone tissue engineering has been proposed as a potential alternative to solve this challenge. In bone tissue engineering, the essential components required for bone formation and... 

Natural tissues of body consist of Extra Cellular Matrix (ECM) and cells. Scaffold produces a temporary matrix for cells and facilitates oxygen and nutrients transport which enhances tissue regeneration. Therefore, attempts in regeneration of tissues and organs by scaffolds attracted great interest in today’s researchs. Choosing scaffold fabrication method and its polymer type, play a key role in scaffold specifications as they determine scaffold properties. In this project electrospinning was chosen as the scaffold fabrication method which is because of the unique properties of scaffolds fabricated by this method and also its ability in producing micro and nano fibers. At first set of... 

Treatment of critical-size bone defects caused by sport injuries, accidents, trauma, infection, and osteoporosis remains a major clinical challenge. In order to repair or regenerate large bone defects, bioactive three-dimensional scaffolds play a key role due to their multilevel porous structure, high surface area, enhanced mass transport and diffusion. Many studies reported that macropore diameters greater than 500 µm can lead to vascularized bone tissue. In this study, a hierarchically porous composite scaffold was prepared. Hierarchically porous silk fibroin- bioactive glass composite and fibroin scaffold were fabricated with controlled architecture and interconnected structure with... 

Malaria is one of the most important infectious diseases in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world and is caused in humans by the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito of five species of Plasmodium. According to the World Health Organization, about 229 million people worldwide were infected in 2019 by the disease, and 409,000 people died from the disease. Resistance of the parasite against drugs and resistance of vectors to insecticides and larvicides, which prevents the elimination and eradication of malaria, shows the need for new strategies, such as having an effective vaccine against this disease. In the second generation of vaccines, to develop malaria vaccines, recombinant...