The establishment of a recombinase polymerase amplification technique for the detection of mouse poxvirus.

BACKGROUND: Ectromelia virus (ECTV) is the causative agent of mousepox in mice. In the past century, ECTV was a serious threat to laboratory mouse colonies worldwide. Recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA), which is widely used in virus detection, is an isothermal amplification method. RESULTS: In this study, a probe-based RPA detection method was established for rapid and sensitive detection of ECTV.Primers were designed for the highly conserved region of the crmD gene, the main core protein of recessive poxvirus, and standard plasmids were constructed. The lowest detection limit of the ECTV RT- RPA assay was 100 copies of DNA mol-ecules per reaction. In addition, the method showed high specificity and did not cross-react with other common mouse viruses.Therefore, the practicability of the RPA method in the field was confirmed by the detection of 135 clinical samples. The real-time RPA assay was very similar to the ECTV real-time PCR assay, with 100% agreement. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, this RPA assay offers a novel alternative for the simple, sensitive, and specific identification of ECTV, especially in low-resource settings.

Tough adhesion enhancing strategies for injectable hydrogel adhesives in biomedical applications.

Injectable hydrogel adhesives have gained widespread attention due to their ease of use, fast application time, and suitability for minimally invasive procedures. Several biomedical applications depend on tough adhesion between hydrogel adhesives and tissues, including wound closure and healing, hemostasis, tissue regeneration, drug delivery, and wearable electronic devices. Compared with bulk hydrogel adhesives formed ex situ, injectable hydrogel adhesives are more difficult to achieve strong adhesion strength due to a further balance of cohesion and adhesion while maintaining their flowability. In this review, the critical principles in designing tough adhesion of injectable hydrogel adhesives are summarized, including simultaneously enhancing their intrinsic interfacial toughness (Γ0inter) and mechanical dissipation (ΓDinter). Thereafter, various design strategies to enhance the Γ0inter and ΓDinter are discussed and evaluated respectively, involving multiple noncovalent/covalent interactions, topological connections, and polymer network structures. Furthermore, targeted biomedical applications of injectable hydrogel adhesives for specific tissue needs are systematically highlighted. In the end, this review outlines the challenges and trends in producing next-generation multifunctional injectable hydrogels for both practical and translational applications.

Barnacle-Inspired Wet Tissue Adhesive Hydrogels with Inherent Antibacterial Properties for Infected Wound Treatment.

Currently, antibiotics are the most common treatment for bacterial infections in clinical practice. However, with the abuse of antibiotics and the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, the use of antibiotics has faced an unprecedented challenge. It is imminent to develop nonantibiotic antimicrobial agents. Based on the cation-π structure of barnacle cement protein, a polyphosphazene-based polymer poly[(N,N-dimethylethylenediamine)-g-(N,N,N,N-dimethylaminoethyl p-ammonium bromide (ammonium bromide)-g-(N,N,N,N-dimethylaminoethyl acetate ethylammonium bromide)] (PZBA) with potential adhesion and inherent antibacterial properties was synthesized, and a series of injectable antibacterial adhesive hydrogels (PZBA-PVA) were prepared by cross-linking with poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA). PZBA-PVA hydrogels showed good biocompatibility, and the antibacterial rate of the best-performed hydrogel reached 99.81 ± 0.04% and 98.80 ± 2.16% against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli within 0.5 h in vitro, respectively. In the infected wound model, the healing rate of the PZBA-PVA-treated group was significantly higher than that of the Tegaderm film group due to the fact that the hydrogel suppressed inflammatory responses and modulated the infiltration of immune cells. Moreover, the wound healing mechanism of the PZBA-PVA hydrogel was further evaluated by real-time polymerase chain reaction and total RNA sequencing. The results indicated that the process of hemostasis and tissue development was prompted and the inflammatory and immune responses were suppressed to accelerate wound healing. Overall, the PZBA-PVA hydrogel is shown to have the potential for infected wound healing application.