Polylactide Degradation Activates Immune Cells by Metabolic Reprogramming.

Polylactide (PLA) is the most widely utilized biopolymer in medicine. However, chronic inflammation and excessive fibrosis resulting from its degradation remain significant obstacles to extended clinical use. Immune cell activation has been correlated to the acidity of breakdown products, yet methods to neutralize the pH have not significantly reduced adverse responses. Using a bioenergetic model, delayed cellular changes were observed that are not apparent in the short-term. Amorphous and semi-crystalline PLA degradation products, including monomeric l-lactic acid, mechanistically remodel metabolism in cells leading to a reactive immune microenvironment characterized by elevated proinflammatory cytokines. Selective inhibition of metabolic reprogramming and altered bioenergetics both reduce these undesirable high cytokine levels and stimulate anti-inflammatory signals. The results present a new biocompatibility paradigm by identifying metabolism as a target for immunomodulation to increase tolerance to biomaterials, ensuring safe clinical application of PLA-based implants for soft- and hard-tissue regeneration, and advancing nanomedicine and drug delivery.

Soft Humanoid Hands with Large Grasping Force Enabled by Flexible Hybrid Pneumatic Actuators.

Soft grippers and actuators have attracted increasing attention due to safer and more adaptable human-machine and environment-machine interactions than their rigid counterparts. In this study we present a novel soft humanoid hand that is capable of robustly grasping a variety of objects with different weights, sizes, shapes, textures, and stiffnesses. The soft hand fingers are made of flexible hybrid pneumatic actuators (FHPAs) designed based on a modular approach. A theoretical model is proposed to evaluate the bending deformation, grasping force, and loading capacity of the FHPAs, and the effects of various design parameters on the performance of the FHPA are investigated for optimizing the soft hands. This new FHPA achieves a balance of required flexibility and necessary stiffness, and the resulting soft humanoid hand has the merits of fast response, large grasping force, low cost, light weight, and ease of fabrication and repair, which shows promise for a variety of applications such as fruit picking, product packaging, and manipulation of fragile objects.

The role of smart packaging system in food supply chain.

Food supply chain is a rapidly growing integrated sector and covers all the aspects from farm to fork, including manufacturing, packaging, distribution, storing, as well as further processing or cooking for consumption. Along this chain, smart packaging could impact the quality, safety, and sustainability of food. Packaging systems have evolved to be smarter with integration of emerging electronics and wireless communication and cloud data solutions. Although there are many factors causing the loss and waste issues for foods throughout the whole supply chain of food and there have been several articles showing the recent advances and breakthroughs in developing smart packaging systems, this review integrates these conceptual frameworks and technological applications and focuses on how innovative smart packaging solutions are beneficial to the overall quality and safety of food supply by enhancing product traceability and reducing the amount of food loss and waste. We start by introducing the concept of the management for the integrated food supply chain, which is critical in tactical and operational components that can enhance product traceability within the entire chain. Then we highlight the impact of smart packaging in reducing food loss and waste. We summarize the basic information of the common printing techniques for smart packaging system (sensor and indicator). Then, we discuss the potential challenges in the manufacturing and deployment of smart packaging systems, as well as their cost-related drawbacks and further steps in food supply chain.