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A novel design of gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticles was fabricated as a potential delivery system to improve the efficiency and stability of d, l-sulforaphane as an anticancer drug. To this purpose, the surface of gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticles was modified for sulforaphane delivery via furnishing its surface with thiolated polyethylene glycol-folic acid and thiolated polyethylene glycol-FITC. The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized by different techniques such as FTIR, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, UV-visible spectroscopy, scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The average diameters of the synthesized nanoparticles before and after sulforaphane loading were obtained ∼ 33 nm and ∼ 38 nm, respectively, when ∼ 2.8 mmol/g of sulforaphane was loaded. The result of cell viability assay which was confirmed by apoptosis assay on the human breast cancer cells (MCF-7 line) as a model of in vitro-cancerous cells, proved that the bare nanoparticles showed little inherent cytotoxicity, whereas the sulforaphane-loaded nanoparticles were cytotoxic. The expression rate of the anti-apoptotic genes (bcl-2 and bcl-xL), and the pro-apoptotic genes (bax and bak) were quantified, and it was found that the expression rate of bcl-2 and bcl-xL genes significantly were decreased when MCF-7 cells were incubated by sulforaphane-loaded nanoparticles. The sulforaphane-loaded into the designed gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticles, acceptably induced apoptosis in MCF-7 cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Development of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine has led to designing scaffolds and their modification to provide a better microenvironment which mimics the natural niche of the cells. Gelatin surface modification was applied to improve scaffold flexibility and cytocompatibility. Methods: PLLA/PCL aligned fibrous scaffold was fabricated using electrospinning method. ADSCs were seeded after O2 plasma treatment and gelatin coating of the scaffolds. The morphological and mechanical properties of blends were assessed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), tensile test and ATR-FTIR. The cells proliferation was evaluated by MTT assay. Results: Based on the results, it is supposed that gelatin coating is a brilliant method of surface modification which significantly increases the mechanical properties of scaffold without any changes on the construction or on the direction of nanofibers which conducts cell's elongation. MTT analysis exhibited that ADSCs attachment, viability and proliferation significantly (p<0.05) increased after gelatin treatment. Conclusion: Gelatin surface modification is a highly beneficial method to improve cytocompatibility, flexibility and mechanical features of the scaffolds which doesn't affect the nanofibers construction. Proliferation of Adipose Derived Stem Cells (ADSCs) as a remarkable source of stem cells was investigated for the first time on PLLA/PCL hybrid scaffold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed morphological variation among 17 forewing characters within five populations of the paper wasp, Polistes dominulus, in Iran. The raw planar coordinate data were aligned using geometric and mathematical calculations in kendall's shape space. After transfer of the data to a linear euclidean space, i.e., tangent space, multivariate analysis of 135 images of forewings were made using their geometric morphometric characters (30 in the forewings). We observed a direct correlation between morphological characters and the geographically easiest travel distance along river valleys and mountain ranges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]