RESUMEN
Specialized cancer treatments have the potential to exploit glutamine dependence to increase patient survival rates. Glutamine diagnostics capable of tracking a patient's response to treatment would enable a personalized treatment dosage to optimize the tradeoff between treatment success and dangerous side effects. Current clinical glutamine testing requires sophisticated and expensive lab-based tests, which are not broadly available on a frequent, individualized basis. To address the need for a low-cost, portable glutamine diagnostic, this work engineers a cell-free glutamine biosensor to overcome assay background and signal-to-noise limitations evident in previously reported studies. The findings from this work culminate in the development of a shelf-stable, paper-based, colorimetric glutamine test with a high signal strength and a high signal-to-background ratio for dramatically improved signal resolution. While the engineered glutamine test is important progress towards improving the management of cancer and other health conditions, this work also expands the assay development field of the promising cell-free biosensing platform, which can facilitate the low-cost detection of a broad variety of target molecules with high clinical value.
Asunto(s)
Técnicas Biosensibles , Glutamina , Ingeniería Metabólica , Técnicas Biosensibles/métodos , Glutamina/metabolismo , Ingeniería Metabólica/métodos , Humanos , Ingeniería Genética/métodos , Papel , Colorimetría/métodos , Sistema Libre de CélulasRESUMEN
Backscatter-difference measurements may be used to detect changes in bone caused by osteoporosis. The backscatter-difference technique measures the power difference between two portions of an ultrasonic backscatter signal. The goal of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of using an ultrasonic imaging system to perform backscatter-difference measurements of bone. Ultrasonic images and backscatter signals were acquired from 24 specimens of human cancellous bone. The signals were analyzed in the frequency domain to determine the normalized mean backscatter-difference (nMBD) and in the time domain to determine the normalized backscatter amplitude ratio (nBAR). The images were analyzed to determine the normalized pixel value difference (nPVD), which measures the difference in average pixel brightness between regions of interest placed at two different depths in the image. All three parameters were found to increase with bone mineral density. The signal-based parameters, nMBD and nBAR, correlated well with bone mineral density, yielding linear correlation coefficients that ranged from 0.74 to 0.87. The image based parameter, nPVD, performed somewhat less well, yielding correlation coefficients that ranged from 0.42 to 0.81. These results suggest that ultrasonic imaging systems may be used to perform backscatter-difference measurements for the purpose of ultrasonic bone assessment.
Asunto(s)
Hueso Esponjoso/diagnóstico por imagen , Procesamiento de Imagen Asistido por Computador/métodos , Osteoporosis/diagnóstico por imagen , Procesamiento de Señales Asistido por Computador , Ultrasonografía/métodos , Adulto , Anciano , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Persona de Mediana Edad , Reproducibilidad de los Resultados , Dispersión de RadiaciónRESUMEN
A new bis(indenyl)zirconocene bearing a pendant Si-Cl anchor has been grafted onto MCM-41, SBA-15, MCM-48 and a disordered mesoporous silica for the polymerisation of ethylene and propylene, producing polymers with very high molecular weights, low polydispersities and, in the case of polypropylene, higher levels of isotacticity than obtainable with analogous homogeneous systems.