Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Comparison Of Electrically Mediated And Liposome-Complexed Plasmid Dna Delivery To The Skin, Loree C. Heller, Mark J. Jaroszeski, Domenico Coppola, Richard Heller

Bioelectrics Publications

BACKGROUND: Electroporation is an established technique for enhancing plasmid delivery to many tissues in vivo, including the skin. We have previously demonstrated efficient delivery of plasmid DNA to the skin utilizing a custom-built four-plate electrode. The experiments described here further evaluate cutaneous plasmid delivery using in vivo electroporation. Plasmid expression levels are compared to those after liposome mediated delivery.

METHODS: Enhanced electrically-mediated delivery, and less extensively, liposome complexed delivery, of a plasmid encoding the reporter luciferase was tested in rodent skin. Expression kinetics and tissue damage were explored as well as testing in a second rodent model.

RESULTS: Experiments …

Parameter Estimation Of The Arterial System, James Charles Carter Ii

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

There are a number of disorders that originate from or involve faulty operation of the cardiovascular system. Diseases such as atherosclerosis, diabetes and hypertension can have a debilitating effect on blood flow. This makes the tools for simulating the effects of such diseases on blood flow important. Measures, such as pulse wave velocity, that are generated by models of the cardiovascular system can be important indicators of cardiac health. Although physically measurable, obtaining some parameters comes with a high cost and discomfort to the patient. Models can provide an assessment of many important parameters. The purpose of this project was …

The Application Of Innovative High-Throughput Techniques To Serum Biomarker Discovery, Izabela Debkiewicz Karbassi

Theses and Dissertations in Biomedical Sciences

Time-of-flight mass spectrometry continues to evolve as a promising technique for serum protein expression profiling and biomarker discovery. As seen in our initial SELDI-TOF MS and MALDI-TOF MS profiling study of serum for the assessment of breast cancer risk, many profiling strategies typically employ single chemical affinity beads or surfaces to decrease sample complexity of dynamic fluids like serum. However, most proteins, captured on a particular surface or bead, are not resolved in the lower mass range where mass spectrometers are most effective. To this end we have designed an expression profiling workflow that utilizes immobilized trypsin paramagnetic beads in …

Real-Time Ultrasound Simulation For Medical Training And Standardized Patient Assessment, Bo Sun

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

With the increasing role played by ultrasound in clinical diagnostics, ultrasound training in medical education has become more and more important. The clinical routine for ultrasound training is on real patients; therefore monitored and guided examinations involving medical students are quite time-constrained. Furthermore, standardized patients (SPs), who are increasingly used in medical school for teaching and assessing medical students, need to be augmented. These SPs are typically healthy individuals who can not accurately portray the variety of abnormalities that are needed for training especially when medical examinations involve instrument interactions. To augment SPs in a realistically effective way and also …

Caffeine Model Identification For Vigilance Performance Prediction, Chun-Hui Huang

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of caffeine have been well characterized. In this study, a caffeine dynamic model is developed to describe its pharmacodynamic effects on vigilance performance. Validated biomathematical models developed to address both individual and group fatigue and alertness in a non-laboratory setting represent a tremendous commercial opportunity. First, a test data set with caffeine effects isolated from circadian and homeostatic effects is created. Then a modeling approach for input and output effects is developed and different model structures for the caffeine effects are considered. Observer/Kalman filter Identification (OKID) algorithm is proposed and developed to identify the caffeine model …