Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Local Modulation And Measurement Of Macrophage-Derived Bioactive Proteins From Implanted Biomaterials In Rat, Geetika Bajpai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fibrosis around the implanted medical devices is a severe problem that can plague long-term device reliability. Activation of macrophage phenotype (macrophage polarization) has emerged as a new and possible means for reducing fibrosis in the fields of biomaterials and regenerative medicine. Macrophages are phagocytic cells that respond to microenvironmental cues that direct their phenotype. Macrophage activation has been widely studied in mouse and human in the context of tumor biology, yet little information is available regarding how macrophage activation could be used in a biomaterials context. Further, rats rather than mice are the common subjects in biomaterials experiments. A significant …

Design, Development, And Characterization Of Novel Antimicrobial Peptides For Pharmaceutical Applications, Yazan H. Akkam

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Candida species are the fourth leading cause of nosocomial infection. The increased incidence of drug-resistant Candida species has emphasized the need for new antifungal drugs. Histatin 5 is a naturally occurring human salivary antifungal peptide and the first line of defense against infections of the oral cavity. This research has focused on understanding the activity of histatin 5, and subsequently designing novel peptides that may serve as models for the further development of therapeutics to treat fungal infection.

This objective has been achieved in three steps: studying the structural requirement of histatin 5 involved in antifungal activity, the identification of …