Smart medicine最新文献

Biological organisms play important roles in human health, either in a commensal or pathogenic manner. Harnessing inactivated organisms or living organisms is a promising way to treat diseases. As two types of freezing, cryoablation makes it simple to inactivate organisms that must be in a non-pathogenic state when needed, while cryopreservation is a facile way to address the problem of long-term storage challenged by living organism-based therapy. In this review, we present the latest studies of freezing biological organisms for biomedical applications. To begin with, the freezing strategies of cryoablation and cryopreservation, as well as their corresponding technical essentials, are illustrated. Besides, biomedical applications of freezing biological organisms are presented, including transplantation, tissue regeneration, anti-infection therapy, and anti-tumor therapy. The challenges and prospects of freezing living organisms for biomedical applications are well discussed. We believe that the freezing method will provide a potential direction for the standardization and commercialization of inactivated or living organism-based therapeutic systems, and promote the clinical application of organism-based therapy.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is still the most aggressive cancer in women. Combination chemotherapy holds great potential for cancer therapy; however, the off-target and side effects of free chemotherapy administration remain a major challenge. In this study, we developed a photo/thermo-responsive nanoplatform that can be used for TNBC treatment via photothermic therapy in combination with multidrug therapy. By conjugating the chemotherapy drug PTX prodrug on the surface of mesoporous silica-coated gold nanorod nanoparticles and then loading another chemotherapy drug, CPT, the Au@MSN-PTX@CPT nanoparticles exhibited great photothermal response, redox response drug release and cancer cell inhibition abilities. Otherwise, we further coated the Au@MSN-PTX@CPT nanoparticle with a temperature-sensitive polymer poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-methacrylic acid) (p(NIPAM-co-MAAc)), and the polymer-coated Au@MSN-PTX@TPT@polymer nanoparticles showed perfect near-infrared (NIR) light controlled drug release. Finally, the Au@MSN-PTX@CPT@polymer nanoparticles were injected into the 4T1 breast cancer mouse model. The Au@MSN-PTX@CPT@polymer nanoparticles preferably accumulated at the tumor site and had reduced chemotherapy injuries and great antitumor activity when combined with 650 nm laser treatment. In summary, our developed Au@MSN-PTX@CPT@polymer nanoparticles served as a good method for controlled chemodrug delivery and provided a good choice for TNBC combination therapy.

Regeneration of both anatomic and functional integrity of the skin tissues after injury represents a huge challenge considering the sophisticated healing process and variability of specific wounds. In the past decades, numerous efforts have been made to construct bioceramic-based wound dressing materials with ion-mediated multifunctionality for facilitating the healing process. In this review, the state-of-the-art progress on bioceramic materials with ion-mediated bioactivity for wound healing is summarized. Followed by a brief discussion on the bioceramic materials with ion-mediated biological activities, the emerging bioceramic-based materials are highlighted for wound healing applications owing to their ion-mediated bioactivities, including anti-infection function, angiogenic activity, improved skin appendage regeneration, antitumor effect, and so on. Finally, concluding remarks and future perspectives of bioceramic-based wound dressing materials for clinical practice are briefly discussed.

Responsive hydrogel microfibers can realize multiple controllable changes in shapes or properties under the stimulation of the surrounding environment, and are called as intelligent biomaterials. Recently, these responsive hydrogel microfibers have been proved to possess significant biomedical values, and remarkable progress has been achieved in biomedical engineering applications, including drug delivery, biosensors and clinical therapy, etc. In this review, the latest research progress and application prospects of responsive hydrogel microfibers in biomedical engineering are summarized. We first introduce the common preparation strategies of responsive hydrogel microfibers. Subsequently, the response characteristics and the biomedical applications of these materials are discussed. Finally, the present opportunities and challenges as well as the prospects for future development are critically analyzed.

Surgical robot is a revolutionary tool conceived in the progress of clinical medicine, computer science, microelectronics and biomechanics. It provides the surgeon with clearer views and more comfortable surgical postures. With the assistance of computer navigation during delicate operations, it can further shorten the patient recovery time via reducing intraoperative bleeding, the risk of infection and the amount of anesthesia needed. As a comprehensive surgical revolution, surgical robot technique has a wide range of applications in related fields. This paper reviews the development status and operation principles of these surgical robots. At the same time, we also describe their up-to-date applications in different specialties and discusses the prospects and challenges of surgical robots in the medical area.

Both traumatic and non-traumatic spinal cord injuries (SCIs) can be categorized as damages done to our central nervous system (CNS). The patients' physical and mental health may suffer greatly because of traumatic SCI. With the widespread use of motor vehicles and increasingly aged population, the occurrence of SCI is more frequent than before, creating a considerable burden to global public health. The regeneration process of the spinal cord is hampered by a series of events that occur following SCI like edema, hemorrhage, formation of cystic cavities, and ischemia. An effective strategy for the treatment of SCI and functional recovery still has not been discovered; however, recent advances have been made in bioengineering fields that therapies based on cells, biomaterials, and biomolecules have proved effective in the repair of the spinal cord. In the light of worldwide importance of treatments for SCI, this article aims to provide a review of recent advances by first introducing the physiology, etiology, epidemiology, and mechanisms of SCI. We then put emphasis on the widely used clinical treatments and bioengineering strategies (cell-based, biomaterial-based, and biomolecule-based) for the functional regeneration of the spinal cord as well as challenges faced by scientists currently. This article provides scientists and clinicians with a comprehensive outlook on the recent advances of preclinical and clinical treatments of SCI, hoping to help them find keys to the functional regeneration of SCI.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that are generated from adult somatic cells are induced to express genes that make them pluripotent through reprogramming techniques. With their unlimited proliferative capacity and multifaceted differentiation potential and circumventing the ethical problems encountered in the application of embryonic stem cells (ESC), iPSCs have a broad application in the fields of cell therapy, drug screening, and disease models and may open up new possibilities for regenerative medicine to treat diseases in the future. In this review, we begin with different reprogramming cell technologies to obtain iPSCs, including biotechnological, chemical, and physical modulation techniques, and present their respective strengths, and limitations, as well as the recent progress of research. Secondly, we review recent research advances in iPSC reprogramming-based regenerative therapies. iPSCs are now widely used to study various clinical diseases of hair follicle defects, myocardial infarction, neurological disorders, liver diseases, and spinal cord injuries. This review focuses on the translational clinical research around iPSCs as well as their potential for growth in the medical field. Finally, we summarize the overall review and look at the potential future of iPSCs in the field of cell therapy as well as tissue regeneration engineering and possible problems. We believe that the advancing iPSC research will help drive long-awaited breakthroughs in cellular therapy.

The adhesiveness of hydrogels is urgently required in various biomedical applications such as medical patches, tissue sealants, and flexible electronic devices. However, biological tissues are often wet, soft, movable, and easily damaged. These features pose difficulties for the construction of adhesive hydrogels for medical use. In nature, organisms adhere to unique strategies, such as reversible sucker adhesion in octopuses and nontoxic and firm catechol chemistry in mussels, which provide many inspirations for medical hydrogels to overcome the above challenges. In this review, we systematically classify bioadhesion strategies into structure-related and molecular-related ones, which cover almost all known bioadhesion paradigms. We outline the principles of these strategies and summarize the corresponding designs of medical adhesive hydrogels inspired by them. Finally, conclusions and perspectives concerning the development of this field are provided. For the booming bio-inspired adhesive hydrogels, this review aims to summarize and analyze the various existing theories and provide systematic guidance for future research from an innovative perspective.

The monitoring of mechanical indexes involved in body movement has attracted immense interest in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we present a hybrid flexible conductive structural color (SC) film with the capability of dual-signal mechanics screening. The film is constructed by oxidatively polymerizing pyrrole on the surface of an inverse opal polyurethane (IPU) membrane, which can be utilized to measure the mechanical indexes through resistance change. Owing to the inverse opal structure, the film shows visual structural color change when stretched and released according to the body movement. Additionally, the highly uniform ordered porous structure endows the conductive film with a lower coefficient of variance on relative resistance change. Benefiting from these features, we have demonstrated that such a flexible conductive SC film could monitor Parkinson's disease (PD) by detecting mechanical indexes simultaneously via dual signals. These features indicate the great value of the stretchable conductive SC films in mechanics sensing applications.