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Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
Mimicking The Arterial Microenvironment With Peg-Pc To Investigate The Roles Of Physicochemical Stimuli In Smc Phenotype And Behavior, William G. Herrick
Mimicking The Arterial Microenvironment With Peg-Pc To Investigate The Roles Of Physicochemical Stimuli In Smc Phenotype And Behavior, William G. Herrick
Doctoral Dissertations
The goal of this dissertation was to parse the roles of physical, mechanical and chemical cues in the phenotype plasticity of smooth muscle cells (SMCs) in atherosclerosis. We first developed and characterized a novel synthetic hydrogel with desirable traits for studying mechanotransduction in vitro. This hydrogel, PEG-PC, is a co-polymer of poly(ethylene glycol) and phosphorylcholine with an incredible range of Young’s moduli (~1 kPa - 9 MPa) that enables reproduction of nearly any tissue stiffness, exceptional optical and anti-fouling properties, and support for covalent attachment of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. To our knowledge, this combination of mechanical range, low …
Nanoformulation For Anticancer Drug Delivery: Enhanced Pharmacokinetics And Circulation, Gaurav Parekh
Nanoformulation For Anticancer Drug Delivery: Enhanced Pharmacokinetics And Circulation, Gaurav Parekh
Doctoral Dissertations
In this study, we have explored the application of the Layer-by-Layer (LbL) assembly technique for improving injectable drug delivery systems of low soluble anticancer drugs (e.g. Camptothecin (CPT), Paclitaxel (PTX) or Doxorubicin (DOX)). For this study, a polyelectrolyte shell encapsulates different types of drug nanocores (e.g. soft core, nanomicelle or solid lipid nanocores).The low soluble drugs tend to crystallize and precipitate in an aqueous medium. This is the reason they cannot be injected and may have low concentrations and low circulation time in the blood. Even though these drugs when present in the cancer microenvironment have high anti-tumor inhibition, the …