Plasma processing of PDMS based spinal implants for covalent protein immobilization,cell attachment and spreading

PDMS is widely used for prosthetic device manufacture. Conventional ion implantation is not a suitable treatment to enhance the biocompatibility of poly dimethyl siloxane (PDMS) due to its propensity to generate a brittle silicon oxide surface layer which cracks and delaminates. To overcome this limitation, we have developed new plasma based processes to balance the etching of carbon with implantation of carbon from the plasma source. When this carbon was implanted from the plasma phase it resulted in a surface that was structurally similar and intermixed with the underlying PDMS material and not susceptible to delamination. The enrichment in surface carbon allowed the formation of carbon based radicals that are not present in conventional plasma ion immersion implantation (PIII) treated PDMS. This imparts the PDMS surfaces with covalent protein binding capacity that is not observed on PIII treated PDMS. The change in surface energy preserved the function of bound biomolecules and enhanced the attachment of MG63 osteosarcoma cells compared to the native surface. The attached cells, an osteoblast interaction model, showed increased spreading on the treated over untreated surfaces. The carbon-dependency for these beneficial covalent protein and cell linkage properties was tested by incorporating carbon from a different source. To this end, a second surface was produced where carbon etching was balanced against implantation from a thin carbon-based polymer coating. This had similar protein and cell-binding properties to the surfaces generated with carbon inclusion in the plasma phase, thus highlighting the importance of balancing carbon etching and deposition. Additionally, the two effects of protein linkage and bioactivity could be combined where the cell response was further enhanced by covalently tethering a biomolecule coating, as exemplified here with the cell adhesive protein tropoelastin. Providing a balanced carbon source in the plasma phase is applicable to prosthetic device fabrication as illustrated using a 3-dimensional PDMS balloon prosthesis for spinal implant applications. Consequently, this study lays the groundwork for effective treatments of PDMS to selectively recruit cells to implantable PDMS fabricated biodevices.

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Breast Cancer: Targeting of Steroid Hormones in Cancerogenesis and Diagnostics

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women with high mortality. Sensitive and specific methods for the detection, characterization and quantification of endogenous steroids in body fluids or tissues are needed for the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of breast cancer and many other diseases. At present, non-invasive diagnostic methods are gaining more and more prominence, which enable a relatively fast and painless way of detecting many diseases. Metabolomics is a promising analytical method, the principle of which is the study and analysis of metabolites in biological material. It represents a comprehensive non-invasive diagnosis, which has a high potential for use in the diagnosis and prognosis of cancers, including breast cancer. This short review focuses on the targeted metabolomics of steroid hormones, which play an important role in the development and classification of breast cancer. The most commonly used diagnostic tool is the chromatographic method with mass spectrometry detection, which can simultaneously determine several steroid hormones and metabolites in one sample. This analytical procedure has a high potential in effective diagnosis of steroidogenesis disorders. Due to the association between steroidogenesis and breast cancer progression, steroid profiling is an important tool, as well as in monitoring disease progression, improving prognosis, and minimizing recurrence.     

Synthesis and Characterization of Poly(1,4-phenylene vinylene)-co-(2,5-pyridilene vinylene)’s

Summary The polymerizability of nitrogen-containing bissulfonium salts was analyzed. The poor homopolymerization results were attributed to sluggish quinodimethane formation. However, copolymerizations with the non-nitrogenated analogue sulfonium salt were successful. We report here the synthesis and characterization of a series of poly(1,4-phenylene vinylene)-co-(2,5-pyridylene vinylene)s. Elemental analysis, FTIR, UV-vis and fluorescence studies demonstrate that the pyridilene units can be incorporated by the water soluble precursor route in PPV-type polymers with free-standing film formation properties.     

Optical properties of Bi12SiO20 (BSO) and Bi12TiO20 (BTO) obtained by mechanical alloying

Mechanical alloying has been used successfully to produce nanocrystalline powders of BTO and BSO. The milled BTO and BSO were studied by x-ray powder diffraction, DTA, infrared and Raman scattering spectroscopy. After 7 hours of milling the formation of BTO and BSO was confirmed by x-ray powder diffraction. The infrared and Raman scattering spectroscopy results suggest that the increase of the milling time lead to the formation of ferroelectric BTO and BSO, as seen by x-ray diffraction analysis. These materials are attractive for various electro-optical devices, including optical data processing. They present a number of attractive features as reversible recording materials for real-time holography and image processing applications. This milling process presents the advantage, that melting is not necessary, and the powder obtained is nanocrystalline with extraordinary mechanical properties. The material, can be compacted and transformed in solid piezoelectric ceramic samples. The high efficiency of the process, opens a way to produce commercial amount of nanocrystalline piezoelectric powders. Due to the nanocrystalline character of this powder, their mechanical properties have changed and for this reason a pressure of 1 GPa is enough to shape the sample into any geometry.     

Finite element simulation of the steel plates hot rolling process

In this paper we discuss our finite element procedure for simulating the hot rolling of flat steel products. We couple an Eulerian rigid‐viscoplastic model of the steel plates deformation to a Lagrangian elastic model of the rolls deformation. This latter model incorporates the bending deformation of the work rolls supported by the back‐up rolls and the flattening of the contact areas (Hertz problem) via an enhanced beam model. The finite element model is validated comparing its predictions with actual industrial measurements and then it is used to analyse different rolling set‐ups. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CHARACTERIZATION OF ASPHALTENES AND RESINS FROM PROBLEMATIC MEXICAN CRUDE OILS

Asphaltenes and resins have been separated from four mexican oils suffering from the deposition of asphaltenic material during recovery operations. A SARA separation of the oils was performed and the resins and asphaltenes further analyzed. Characterization methods employed were FTIR, elemental composition both of CHNSO, and trace metals and molecular weight determination using size exclusion chromatography. NMR techniques were applied to two asphaltene samples. The overall scope of the work was to get a better understanding of the nature of the asphaltene stability at a molecular level in these problematic oils. Separation of resin in two fractions indicates that there is no long alkyl chains in these as given by FTIR, which may be the cause of the lack of stability along with the large difference in bubble point and reservoir pressure.