Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Effects Of Localized Oxygen Production By Electrolysis On The First-Generation Glucose Sensor Response, Nandita Halder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Glucose sensors are very important for detecting blood glucose both in vitro and in vivo. First-generation glucose biosensors were based on the glucose oxidase (GOx) enzyme using molecular oxygen as the electron acceptor and therefore oxygen dependent. Unfortunately for in-vivo work, oxygen in the body is variable and limited. Alternative approaches to overcome the oxygen dependency came with their own limitations. The widely used and commercially available ex-vivo glucose test strip uses a mediator in place of oxygen to free it from oxygen dependency. The mediator-based technology, in most cases cannot be transferred to in vivo applications due to the …

Multifunctional Programmable Self-Assembled Nanoparticles In Nanomedicine, Yoshie Sakamaki

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Developing methodologies to control the architecture of nanoparticles (NPs) at the atomic level prevents their inhomogeneity and leads to a variety of expected functions. Rationally designed nanoparticles can either be programmed or crystallized structures into pre-determined structures achieving tunable particle pore size and physiochemistry. In this dissertation, two broad classes of multifunctional nanoparticles are developed, metal-organic frameworks and DNA-NP aggregates.

Metal-organic frameworks are a novel class of highly porous crystalline materials built from organic linkers and metal cluster-based secondary building units. However, applications in bioremediation have not been developed very well especially in applications regarding drug delivery systems (DDS). The …

Data-Driven Statin Initiation Evaluation And Optimization For Prediabetes Population, Muhenned A. Abdulsahib

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation develops quantitative models to support medical decision making of statininitiation considering the uncertainty in disease progression for prediabetes patients. A mathematical model is built to help medical decision-makers take action of statin initiation under uncertainty in future prediabetes progressions. The association between cholesterol drug use, such as statin, and elevating glucose level attracted considerable amounts of attention in the literature. Statin effects on glucose vary with respect to different levels of glucose. The first chapter of this dissertation introduces the problem and an overview of the tools that will be used to solve it. In the second chapter …

Biochemical Characterization Of Small Molecule Inhibitor Binding On A Ras Related Gtpase And Its Effector Interactions, Djamali Muhoza

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Ras superfamily of GTPases has 167 proteins that are involved in various cellular processes such as proliferation, transformation, migration, and inhibition of cell death. Mutations, abnormal expression, and function of these proteins are observed in many diseases, including several forms of cancer. Even though these GTPases were among the first discovered oncogenes, no successful Ras drug candidate has successfully passed clinical trials. Drugs targeting these proteins have failed mainly because of the complexity of their regulation, their high affinity to GTP, and their structure’s dynamic nature. Recently, novel promising targeting approaches have renewed interest in the Ras drug discovery …

Development Of Biomaterials For Drug Delivery, Raquel De Castro

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drug delivery systems (DDS) have highly evolved in the last decades with the development of hydrogels and nanoparticles. However, high systemic uptake, side effects, low bioavailability, and encapsulation efficiency continue to be a major hurdle faced by such DDSs.

Nanoparticles and hydrogels can be specifically designed for targeted DDSs to mitigate some of the problems. This dissertation aimed to design two DDSs for ocular drug delivery and one for cancer treatment. The first project sought to develop chitosan nanoparticles (Cs-NP) using PEGDA as a copolymer to encapsulate gentamicin (GtS) for ocular drug delivery. Cs-NPs contain positive charges that can interact …

Design And Control Of A Peristaltic Pump To Simulate Left Atrial Pressure In A Conductive Silicone Model, Jeremy Collins

Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

According to the CDC, atrial fibrillation is responsible for more than 454,000 hospitalizations and approximately 158,000 deaths per year. A common treatment for atrial fibrillation is catheter ablation, a process in which a long flexible tube is guided through the femoral artery and to the source of arrhythmia in the heart, where it measures the electrical potential at various locations and converts problematic heart tissue to scar tissue via ablation. This paper details the design and control of a low-cost ($400) peristaltic pump system using repetitive control to replicate blood pressure in the left atrium in a conductive silicone model …

Using Deep Learning To Analyze Materials In Medical Images, Carson Molder

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Modern deep learning architectures have become increasingly popular in medicine, especially for analyzing medical images. In some medical applications, deep learning image analysis models have been more accurate at predicting medical conditions than experts. Deep learning has also been effective for material analysis on photographs. We aim to leverage deep learning to perform material analysis on medical images. Because material datasets for medicine are scarce, we first introduce a texture dataset generation algorithm that automatically samples desired textures from annotated or unannotated medical images. Second, we use a novel Siamese neural network called D-CNN to predict patch similarity and build …

Developing A Microdialysis Sampling-Based Biofilm/Macrophage Co-Culture Model, Alda Diaz Perez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The host immune system and bacterial cells are known to interact during the human lifetime. Bacteria secrete a wide variety of signaling molecules, known as quorum sensing (QSC) molecules, that modulate the host immune system. While immune-biofilm interactions involve this chemical signaling network, the mechanisms through which this occurs are not well understood. This work aimed to develop a new method that can be used not only in vitro settings but also in vivo. The microdialysis sampling technique has widely been used in in vitro and in vivo settings in humans, mice, and rats for the collection of neuropeptides, cytokines, …

Journal Of The Arkansas Academy Of Science - Volume 75, 2021, Academy Editors

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

No abstract provided.

Business Meeting Report (Secretary's And Treasurer's Report), Academy Editors

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

No abstract provided.

An Automated Method To Enrich And Expand Consumer Health Vocabularies Using Glove Word Embeddings, Mohammed Ibrahim

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clear language makes communication easier between any two parties. However, a layman may have difficulty communicating with a professional due to not understanding the specialized terms common to the domain. In healthcare, it is rare to find a layman knowledgeable in medical jargon, which can lead to poor understanding of their condition and/or treatment. To bridge this gap, several professional vocabularies and ontologies have been created to map laymen medical terms to professional medical terms and vice versa. Many of the presented vocabularies are built manually or semi-automatically requiring large investments of time and human effort and consequently the slow …