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Autologous fat grafting, or lipotransfer, is an important surgical approach to relocate adipose tissue within an individual to create volume. While used extensively in plastic and reconstructive surgery, significant drawbacks exist, including unpredictable volume retention. Thus, considerable research has been undertaken to identify surgical or therapeutic approaches that improve outcomes, primarily utilizing a xenograft immunocompromised mouse model. Large animal models are an important step in translating preclinical laboratory studies to the clinic, and previous studies utilizing pigs have been applied successfully for fat grafting research, but protocol variability exists across studies, and no previous publication has adequately described the impact of the swine breed on the experimental outcomes. In this report, we provide information on the critical attributes of the swine fat grafting model, including the following: (1) model selection; (2) donor site and surgical harvest approach; (3) tissue processing; (4) recipient site location and preparation; (5) post-operative care; and (6) longitudinal fat grafting assessments. Our experience comparing the use of Yorkshire and Yucatan breeds in our model showed that Yorkshire adipose tissue was fibrotic, extremely difficult to obtain through liposuction, and labor intensive to process into injectable formats. Alternatively, Yucatan adipose was more similar to human tissue, could be readily obtained through the surgical excision of inguinal fat pads, was amenable to mincing with surgical scissors, and yielded injectable tissue with a 95% efficiency. We determined that generation of a surgical pocket reduced the graft migration and spread, consequently facilitating the graft retrieval without significantly impacting retention. Using 5 cc grafts, the ultimate 3-month volume retention in 16 grafts was 19% ± 17% (or 1.14 cc ± 1.08 cc). While the use of ultrasound did not readily enable graft volume approximation during the study, it was a useful method to visualize the graft placement and ensure injection into the subcutaneous adipose layers.

Obesity is a significant public health concern that is closely associated with various comorbidities such as heart disease, stroke, type II diabetes (T2D), and certain cancers. Due to the central role of adipose tissue in many disease etiologies and the pervasive nature in the body, engineered adipose tissue models are essential for drug discovery and studying disease progression. This study validates a fat-on-a-chip (FOAC) model derived from primary mature adipocytes. Our FOAC model uses a Micronit perfusion device and introduces a novel approach for collecting continuous data by using two non-invasive readout techniques, resazurin and glucose uptake. The Micronit platform proved to be a reproducible model that can effectively maintain adipocyte viability, metabolic activity, and basic functionality, and is capable of mimicking physiologically relevant responses such as adipocyte hypertrophy and insulin-mediated glucose uptake. Importantly, we demonstrate that adipocyte size is highly dependent on extracellular matrix properties, as adipocytes derived from different patients with variable starting lipid areas equilibrate to the same size in the hyaluronic acid hydrogel. This model can be used to study T2D and monitor adipocyte responses to insulin for longitudinally tracking therapeutic efficacy of novel drugs or drug combinations.

The current paper describes the process used for developing the Guidelines for Diagnosis and Assessment of Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Learning Disabilities-Consensus Statement and Supporting Documents, and the rationale for some of the decisions. The guidelines were developed by a cross-sectoral working group of psychologists who achieved a consensus on the criteria for diagnosis and the assessment process. We outline key features of the guidelines, describe topics where the group achieved consensus quickly and topics for which there was considerable debate (e.g., intelligence testing, ability/achievement discrepancy, and processing deficits). The group members shared information with each other about topics such as the advantages of early assessment, the importance of formally assessing effort and motivation, and assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse individuals. We conclude with the lessons learned and professional challenges regarding contextual influences on LD assessment and diagnosis and dissemination of research to practitioners.

Acute basilar artery occlusion (BAO) may cause ischemia in the region of brainstem, parts of the thalamus, occipital lobes, and cerebellum, resulting in severe disability or mortality rate above 70%. Recurrent BAO has been described in only a small number of cases. We present a case of repeated mechanical thrombectomy (MT) for the tip of basilar artery (BA) reocclusion within 24 hours. A previously healthy 37-year-old male presented with occipital headache, nausea, vomiting, right-sided hemiparesis, within 30 minutes from the onset and NIHSS 18. The patient was vaccinated against COVID-19 with Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine seven days before the onset. On initial computed tomography (CT) scan, the pc-ASPECTS was 10 and CT angiography (CTA) showed the tip of BA thrombosis. Intravenous thrombolytic therapy was administered, followed by MT, achieving mTICI 3 and NIHSS 5 after the procedure. Within 24 hours from the first MT, there was neurological deterioration followed by coma. Urgent CT/CTA was performed and rethrombosis of BA was confirmed with pc-ASPECTS 10. MT was repeated with mTICI 2b. Stroke etiology was undetermined. After 17 days, the patient was discharged and referred to continue rehabilitation treatment. After 90 days of stroke, his NIHSS was 2 and mRS 1. We can consider that early recurrent BAO can be successfully treated with repeated MT.

People in contemporary industrial societies encounter countless novel materials that did not exist previously, many of which present risks to health and environment. In this article, we build on the concept of “materials sovereignty” as the right of people to use and be surrounded by environmentally benign, non-toxic, and renewing materials in their everyday lives. As a rights-based approach, materials sovereignty may help change the politics of governing materials. We suggest that social movements that explicitly base interventions into design on materials sovereignty may be better able to gain traction in changing industrial production. We consider the case of nanotechnology as a particularly challenging field for social movement intervention. We review several pathways that have been used by social movement organizations in attempts to influence the development of nanomaterials, but which have met with limited success. We more closely examine three participatory pathways through which social movements could intervene more directly into material design: participatory technology assessment, collaboration with industry, and co-design. We identify three key elements of materials sovereignty: participatory knowledge systems, which create multi-directional flows of knowledge and agency; the embedding of citizen voices into design processes; and building accountability systems. Of the pathways we examine here, co-design appears to be the most promising from a theoretical and ethical perspective, but there remain significant institutional and organizational challenges for bringing it into practice.

Abstract Recently, the number of water insoluble and poorly soluble drug compounds has increased significantly. Therefore, growing interest has been witnessed in different particle size reduction techniques to improve the dissolution rates, transport characteristics and bioavailability of drugs. Laser ablation has proven to be an alternative method to the production of nano- and micrometre-sized drug particles without considerable chemical damage. We present the nanosecond laser ablation of drug pastilles in distilled water, targeting meloxicam, a poorly water soluble nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, at different laser wavelengths (248 nm, 532 nm and 1064 nm). Besides chemical characterization, crystallinity, morphology and particle size studies, the mechanism of the particle generation process was examined. The applicability of ablated particles in drug formulation was investigated by solubility, cytotoxicity and anti-inflammatory effect measurements. We showed that laser ablation is a clean, efficient and chemically non-damaging method to reduce the size of meloxicam particles to the sub-micrometre–few micrometre size range, which is optimal for pulmonary drug delivery. Complemented by the excellent solubility (four to nine times higher) and anti-inflammatory (four to five times better) properties of the particles compared to the initial drug, laser ablation is predicted to have wider applications in the development of drug formulations.