1,721,081 research outputs found
Bioengineering of the heart
Full text linkThe cardiovascular system is an extremely complex organ system made up of the heart and blood vessels, representing many connected, constantly moving tissue components that give rise to a multitude of cellular and tissue level dysfunctions and diseases—more people die of cardiovascular disease (CVD) than any other disease globally. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) represents a broad range of interrelated disorders, including hypertension, heart attack and failure, valve failure, arrhythmia, stroke, and cardiomyopathies. While there are many drivers of CVD, age-related hardening of (arteriosclerosis) and plaque buildup within (atherosclerosis) the arteries are recognized as the underlying causes. Strategies for diagnosis, follow up, and care associated with CVD are unfortunately largely inadequate. Despite the paradigmatic shift from an experienced-based approach to an evidence-based approach in clinical care, the field remains hampered by the substantial amount of data needed for more effective prevention, risk stratification or care, and the complex interrelationships of multifarious different factors determining the ultimate fate of a given pathology. Given the substantial biological and physiological complexity and the range of comorbidities that contribute to the etiology and progression of CVD, it is vital that we continue to develop better understanding and novel technologies to address what is one of the fastest growing causes of death worldwide
Development of an in-process UV-crosslinked, electrospun PCL/aPLA-co-TMC composite polymer for tubular tissue engineering applications
No full textCardiovascular diseases remain the largest cause of death worldwide, and half of these deaths are the result of failure of the vascular system. Tissue engineering promises to provide new, and potentially more effective therapeutic strategies to replace damaged or degenerated vessels with functional vessels. However, these engineered vessels have substantial performance criteria, including vessel-like tubular shape, structure and mechanical property slate. Further, whether implanted without or with prior in vitro culture, such tubular scaffolds must provide a suitable environment for cell adhesion and growth and be of sufficient porosity to permit cell colonization. This study investigates the fabrication of slowly degradable, composite tubular polymer scaffolds made from polycaprolactone (PCL) and acrylated l-lactide-co-trimethylene carbonate (aPLA-co-TMC). The addition of acrylate groups permits the 'in-process' formation of crosslinks between aPLA-co-TMC chains during electrospinning of the composite system, exemplifying a novel process to produce multicomponent, elastomeric electrospun polymer scaffolds. Although PCL and aPLA-co-TMC were miscible in a co-solvent, a criteria for electrospinning, due to thermodynamic incompatibility of the two polymers as melts, solvent evaporation during electrospinning drove phase separation of these two systems, producing 'core-shell' fibres, with the core being composed of PCL, and the shell of crosslinked elastomeric aPLA-co-TMC. The resulting elastic fibrous scaffolds displayed burst pressures and suture retention strengths comparable with human arteries. Cytocompatibility testing with human mesenchymal stem cells confirmed adhesion to, and proliferation on the three-dimensional fibrous network, as well as alignment with highly-organized fibres. This new processing methodology and resulting mechanically-robust composite scaffolds hold significant promise for tubular tissue engineering applications. Statement of Significance Autologous small diameter blood vessel grafts are unsuitable solutions for vessel repair. Engineered solutions such as tubular biomaterial scaffolds however have substantial performance criteria to meet, including vessel-like tubular shape, structure and mechanical property slate. We detail herein an innovative methodology to co-electrospin and 'in-process' crosslink composite mixtures of Poly(caprolactone) and a newly synthesised acrylated-Poly(lactide-co-trimethylene-carbonate) to create elastomeric, core-shell nanofibrous porous scaffolds in a one-step process. This novel composite system can be used to make aligned scaffolds that encourage stem cell adhesion, growth and morphological control, and produce robust tubular scaffolds of tunable internal diameter and wall thickness that possess mechanical properties approaching those of native vessels, ideal for future applications in the field of vessel tissue engineering
Stoichiometric control of live cell mixing to enable fluidically-encoded co-culture models in perfused microbioreactor arrays
No full textIn vivo, tissues are maintained and repaired through interactions between the present (different) cell types, which communicate with each other through both the secretion of paracrine factors and direct cell-cell contacts. In order to investigate and better understand this dynamic, complex interplay among diverse cell populations, we must develop new in vitro co-culture strategies that enable us to recapitulate such native tissue complexity. In this work, a microfluidic mixer based on a staggered herringbone design was computationally designed and experimentally validated that features the ability to mix large, non-diffusive particles (i.e. live cells) in a programmed manner. This is the first time that the herringbone mixer concept has been shown to effectively mix particles of the size range applicable to live cells. The cell mixer allowed for sequentially mixing of two cell types to generate reverse linear concentration co-culture patterns. Once validated, the mixer was integrated into a perfused microbioreactor array as an upstream module to deliver mixed cells to five downstream culture units, each consisting of ten serially-connected circular microculture chambers. This novel cell mixer microbioreactor array (CM-MBA) platform was validated through the establishment of spatio-temporally tunable osteogenic co-culture models, investigating the role of pre-osteoblastic cells (SAOS2) on human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) commitment to an osteogenic endpoint. An increase on expression of alkaline phosphatase in sequential (downstream) chambers, consistent with the initial linear distribution of SAOS2, suggests not only osteoblastic cell-driven hMSCs induction towards the osteogenic phenotype, but also the importance of paracrine signaling. In conclusion, the cell mixer microbioreactor array combines the ability to rapidly establish cell co-culture models in a high-throughput, programmable fashion, with the additional advantage of maintaining cells in culture under perfused medium to explore paracrine factor impacts, representing a promising new tool for directing multi-cellular tissue formation for tissue engineering applications
A double chamber rotating bioreactor for enhanced tubular tissue generation from human mesenchymal stem cells: a promising tool for vascular tissue regeneration
Full text linkCardiovascular diseases represent a major global health burden, with high rates of mortality and morbidity. Autologous grafts are commonly used to replace damaged or failing blood vessels; however, such approaches are hampered by the scarcity of suitable graft tissue, donor site morbidity and poor long-term stability. Tissue engineering has been investigated as a means by which exogenous vessel grafts can be produced, with varying levels of success to date, a result of mismatched mechanical properties of these vessel substitutes and inadequate ex vivo vessel tissue genesis. In this work, we describe the development of a novel multifunctional dual-phase (air/aqueous) bioreactor, designed to both rotate and perfuse small-diameter tubular scaffolds and encourage enhanced tissue genesis throughout such scaffolds. Within this novel dynamic culture system, an elastomeric nanofibrous, microporous composite tubular scaffold, composed of poly(caprolactone) and acrylated poly(lactide-co-trimethylene-carbonate) and with mechanical properties approaching those of native vessels, was seeded with human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and cultured for up to 14 days in inductive (smooth muscle) media. This scaffold/bioreactor combination provided a dynamic culture environment that enhanced (compared with static controls) scaffold colonization, cell growth, extracellular matrix deposition and in situ differentiation of the hMSCs into mature smooth muscle cells, representing a concrete step towards our goal of creating a mature ex vivo vascular tissue for implantation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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