Efficient internalization of peptide-conjugated SPIONs in dendritic cells for tumor targeting.

Antigen delivery using nanoparticles becomes useful and novel strategy to develop immunotherapeutic approaches against cancer. In the current study, we examined the feasibility of SPIONs-mediated delivery of antigenic peptides to local tumor for application to cancer immunotherapy. SPIONs carrying murine melanoma antigens, hgp100(25-33) were prepared and used to test its efficacy in mouse model. Efficient uptake of peptide-conjugated SPIONs by murine dendritic cells (DCs) was shown, using NP labeled with the fluorescent dye Furthermore, potential targeting effect of SPIONs carrying tumor antigenic peptide was verified in vitro and in vivo. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of SPIONs-mediated antigen delivery for cancer immunotherapy and highlight the clinical potential of SPIONs for future cancer treatment with high efficacy.

Complete phase transfer of hydrophobic magnetic nanocrystals into aqueous phase.

The effective phase transfer of hydrophobic nanocrystals synthesized in nonpolar solvents into polar solvents remains great challenge for their nanomedicinal applications. To resolve this issue, the exsiting strategies for phase transfer of nanocrystals in organic solvents use amphiphilic compounds or lipids as imperative moieties by ligand exchange and encapsulations. Ligand exchange involves by exchanging the hydrophobic molecules with bifunctional compounds and small size of molecules is coordinated with functional molecules to increase the steric repulsion forces between boundary of water and nanoparticles. However, the yield of phase transferred nanocrystals from hydrophobic nonpolar to hydrophilic polar phase is exceptionally low, and sometime irreversible desorption of replaced ligands leads to agglomeration and aggregation. Also, their intrinsic physiochemical properties are easily influenced by surrounding ion species or pH when the particles are suspended in phosphate saline buffer (PBS). Moreover, conjugation of bioactive molecules often leads to colloidal instability in PBS because of the hydrodynamic nature of the amphiphilic molecules on the surfaces of nanoparticles. Here we report a robust and simple post-synthetic surface modification procedure of hydrophobic nanoparticles to remove the original surface-bound carboxylic acid and increase the water-solubility for nanomedicinal applications.

A mixture of experts model for the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis by measuring the liver stiffness.

OBJECTIVES: The mixture-of-experts (ME) network uses a modular type of neural network architecture optimized for supervised learning. This model has been applied to a variety of areas related to pattern classification and regression. In this research, we applied a ME model to classify hidden subgroups and test its significance by measuring the stiffness of the liver as associated with the development of liver cirrhosis. METHODS: The data used in this study was based on transient elastography (Fibroscan) by Kim et al. We enrolled 228 HBsAg-positive patients whose liver stiffness was measured by the Fibroscan system during six months. Statistical analysis was performed by R-2.13.0. RESULTS: A classical logistic regression model together with an expert model was used to describe and classify hidden subgroups. The performance of the proposed model was evaluated in terms of the classification accuracy, and the results confirmed that the proposed ME model has some potential in detecting liver cirrhosis. CONCLUSIONS: This method can be used as an important diagnostic decision support mechanism to assist physicians in the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis in patients.