The in vitro intestinal cell model: different co-cultured cells create different applications.

As a vitro absorption model, the Caco-2 cells originate from a human colon adenocarcinomas and can differentiate into a cell layer with enterocyte-like features. The Caco-2 cell model is popularly applied to explore drug transport mechanisms, to evaluate the permeability of drug and to predict the absorption of drugs or bioactive substances in the gut. However, there are limitations to the application of Caco-2 cell model due to lack of a mucus layer, the long culture period and the inability to accurately simulate the intestinal environment. The most frequent way to expand the Caco-2 cell model and address its limitations is by co-culturing it with other cells or substances. This article reviews the culture methods and applications of 3D and 2D co-culture cell models established around Caco-2 cells. It also concludes with a summary of model strengths and weaknesses.

Multi-path-based quasi-real-time key provisioning in quantum-key-distribution enabled optical networks (QKD-ON).

With its information-theoretic security, quantum-key-distribution-enabled optical networks (QKD-ON) have become a promising candidate for future optical networks. The concept of quantum key pool (QKP) was introduced to offer an effective strategy for storing quantum keys. However, with the loss on its theoretical security due to storing these keys, balancing the storage of quantum keys and the security requirements of QKD-ONs poses a major challenge in their practical deployments. Hence, in this paper a concept of quasi-real-time key provisioning (QRT-KP) is introduced to address the tradeoff between quantum key storage and the degree of security. To satisfy the practical deployment of QRT-KP and the requirement of high-traffic flow, we propose a multi-path based QRT-KP (MP-QRT-KP) algorithm. Simulation results show that the MP-QRT-KP effectively enhances the performance of QKD-ONs in different scenarios, and it turns out that the algorithm performs better than single-path based QRT-KP (SP-QRT-KP) in terms of the success probability of key-allocation requests and key-resources utilization.

3D-Printed Gastric Resident Electronics.

Long-term implantation of biomedical electronics into the human body enables advanced diagnostic and therapeutic functionalities. However, most long-term resident electronics devices require invasive procedures for implantation as well as a specialized receiver for communication. Here, a gastric resident electronic (GRE) system that leverages the anatomical space offered by the gastric environment to enable residence of an orally delivered platform of such devices within the human body is presented. The GRE is capable of directly interfacing with portable consumer personal electronics through Bluetooth, a widely adopted wireless protocol. In contrast to the passive day-long gastric residence achieved with prior ingestible electronics, advancement in multimaterial prototyping enables the GRE to reside in the hostile gastric environment for a maximum of 36 d and maintain ≈15 d of wireless electronics communications as evidenced by the studies in a porcine model. Indeed, the synergistic integration of reconfigurable gastric-residence structure, drug release modules, and wireless electronics could ultimately enable the next-generation remote diagnostic and automated therapeutic strategies.