1,721,131 research outputs found
Biodegradation of Graphene Nanocarbons
No full textAmong the various carbon-based nanomaterials, carbon nanotubes and graphene have in the last few years emerged as two materials with the potential to move forward the field of nanomedicine. Indeed, modifying and engineering their basic graphitic structures in order to improve their biocompatibility have led to the demonstration of their possible use as delivery systems, biosensors or composites for tissue engineering. But while functionalised carbon nanomaterials present reduced toxicity and great biomedical promise, they are still viewed with scepticism owing to the paradigm that their physico-chemical characteristics make them non-biodegradable. Recently, different studies have however uncovered that peroxidase enzyme-based processes could lead to their oxidation and biodegradation. This chapter provides the current knowledge on this topic including the proposed mechanism for enzymatic-catalysed biodegradation. In the context of biomedical use, these new findings offer novel perspectives for carbon nanomaterials and also stress the need for future investigations that could reveal how to promote or inhibit their biodegradation – depending on the biomedical application desired. Directions for prospective researches that aim to make carbon nanomaterials more degradable and allow their translation into the clinic are proposed
Biodegradation of Graphene Nanocarbons
No full textAmong the various carbon-based nanomaterials, carbon nanotubes and graphene have in the last few years emerged as two materials with the potential to move forward the field of nanomedicine. Indeed, modifying and engineering their basic graphitic structures in order to improve their biocompatibility have led to the demonstration of their possible use as delivery systems, biosensors or composites for tissue engineering. But while functionalised carbon nanomaterials present reduced toxicity and great biomedical promise, they are still viewed with scepticism owing to the paradigm that their physico-chemical characteristics make them non-biodegradable. Recently, different studies have however uncovered that peroxidase enzyme-based processes could lead to their oxidation and biodegradation. This chapter provides the current knowledge on this topic including the proposed mechanism for enzymatic-catalysed biodegradation. In the context of biomedical use, these new findings offer novel perspectives for carbon nanomaterials and also stress the need for future investigations that could reveal how to promote or inhibit their biodegradation – depending on the biomedical application desired. Directions for prospective researches that aim to make carbon nanomaterials more degradable and allow their translation into the clinic are proposed
Safety Assessment of Graphene‐Based Materials
Full text linkGraphene is the first 2D atomic crystal, and its isolation heralded a new era in materials science with the emergence of several other atomically thin materials displaying multifunctional properties. The safety assessment of new materials is often something of an afterthought, but in the case of graphene, the initial isolation and characterization of the material was soon followed by the assessment of its potential impact on living systems. The Graphene Flagship project addressed the health and environmental aspects of graphene and other 2D materials, providing an instructive lesson in interdisciplinarity – from materials science to biology. Here, the outcomes of the toxicological and ecotoxicological studies performed on graphene and its derivatives, and the key lessons learned from this decade-long journey, are highlighted
Therapeutic applications
No full textNanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology in medicine and is one of the most extensive and promising subdisciplines of research and development efforts at the nanoscale. Innovative engineered nanomaterials (ENM) constitute an essential component of this emerging field. Well-designed ENM have indeed the potential to overcome the limitations of current medicines (e.g. efficiency, specificity) and, thus, advance disease diagnosis and treatment.In this chapter, we do not aim to offer an extensive survey of all the ENM developed for therapeutic applications so far, but hope to provide some pertinent examples of nanomaterials that are currently in use in the clinic or are in clinical trials, and others that have demonstrated promise for various biomedical applications but are still under preclinical development. The therapeutic potential and challenges offered by different types of nanomaterials, including nanoparticles, polymer-conjugates, polymerosomes, dendrimers and carbon nanotubes are therefore presented in the following sections. One of the main and transversal applications of the selected ENM is their use as drug nanovectors in cancer intervention, with the aim to provide a more efficient and controllable delivery of chemotherapeutics compared to more common drug formulations. As knowledge and control of the different physical, chemical and biological properties of these nanoscale materials becomes more advanced, their promise as future therapeutic and diagnostic opportunities to fight cancer or other diseases becomes increasingly more realistic
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
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