Diffusive drug delivery in the brain extracellular space from a cellular scale microtube.

The effectiveness of state-of-the-art systemic treatments for neurological disorders is hampered not only by the difficulty in crossing the blood brain barrier but also off-target drug interactions. In this study, a delivery method is simulated for a novel U-shaped microtube locally infusing drugs directly into the extracellular space of the brain and relying on diffusion as a transport mechanism. The influence of flow rate, drug properties and device geometry are investigated. It is anticipated that these findings will accelerate progress on both developmental and applied drug delivery and materials research. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1557/s43579-022-00247-9.

Fluidic enabled bioelectronic implants: opportunities and challenges.

Bioelectronic implants are increasingly facilitating novel strategies for clinical diagnosis and treatment. The integration of fluidic technologies into such implants enables new complementary routes for sensing and therapy alongside electrical interaction. Indeed, these two technologies, electrical and fluidic, can work synergistically in a bioelectronics implant towards the fabrication of a complete therapeutic platform. In this perspective article, the leading applications of fluidic enabled bioelectronic implants are highlighted and methods of operation and material choices are discussed. Furthermore, a forward-looking perspective is offered on emerging opportunities as well as critical materials and technological challenges.

Unencapsulated and washable two-dimensional material electronic-textile for NO2 sensing in ambient air.

Materials adopted in electronic gas sensors, such as chemiresistive-based NO2 sensors, for integration in clothing fail to survive standard wash cycles due to the combined effect of aggressive chemicals in washing liquids and mechanical abrasion. Device failure can be mitigated by using encapsulation materials, which, however, reduces the sensor performance in terms of sensitivity, selectivity, and therefore utility. A highly sensitive NO2 electronic textile (e-textile) sensor was fabricated on Nylon fabric, which is resistant to standard washing cycles, by coating Graphene Oxide (GO), and GO/Molybdenum disulfide (GO/MoS2) and carrying out in situ reduction of the GO to Reduced Graphene Oxide (RGO). The GO/MoS2 e-textile was selective to NO2 and showed sensitivity to 20 ppb NO2 in dry air (0.05%/ppb) and 100 ppb NO2 in humid air (60% RH) with a limit of detection (LOD) of ~ 7.3 ppb. The selectivity and low LOD is achieved with the sensor operating at ambient temperatures (~ 20 °C). The sensor maintained its functionality after undergoing 100 cycles of standardised washing with no encapsulation. The relationship between temperature, humidity and sensor response was investigated. The e-textile sensor was embedded with a microcontroller system, enabling wireless transmission of the measurement data to a mobile phone. These results show the potential for integrating air quality sensors on washable clothing for high spatial resolution (< 25 cm2)-on-body personal exposure monitoring.

OptiJ: Open-source optical projection tomography of large organ samples.

The three-dimensional imaging of mesoscopic samples with Optical Projection Tomography (OPT) has become a powerful tool for biomedical phenotyping studies. OPT uses visible light to visualize the 3D morphology of large transparent samples. To enable a wider application of OPT, we present OptiJ, a low-cost, fully open-source OPT system capable of imaging large transparent specimens up to 13 mm tall and 8 mm deep with 50 µm resolution. OptiJ is based on off-the-shelf, easy-to-assemble optical components and an ImageJ plugin library for OPT data reconstruction. The software includes novel correction routines for uneven illumination and sample jitter in addition to CPU/GPU accelerated reconstruction for large datasets. We demonstrate the use of OptiJ to image and reconstruct cleared lung lobes from adult mice. We provide a detailed set of instructions to set up and use the OptiJ framework. Our hardware and software design are modular and easy to implement, allowing for further open microscopy developments for imaging large organ samples.