Published in Neuropsychobiology
Background: The results of studies examining the response to experimental pain during the menstrual cycle are conflicting because of differences in the definitions of the menstrual period, outcome measures and types of experimental pain stimulation. So far, there have been only a few studies correlating experimental pain with the levels of gonadal ...
Published in Science advances
Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) have been widely used to deliver nanomaterials and other types of macromolecules into mammalian cells for therapeutic and diagnostic use. Cationic CPPs that bind to heparan sulfate (HS) proteoglycans on the cell surface induce potent endocytosis; however, the role of other surface receptors in this process is unclea...
Published in ACS nano
The luminescence lifetime of nanocrystalline silicon is typically on the order of microseconds, significantly longer than the nanosecond lifetimes exhibited by fluorescent molecules naturally present in cells and tissues. Time-gated imaging, where the image is acquired at a time after termination of an excitation pulse, allows discrimination of a s...
Published in Journal of Molecular Medicine
AbstractMetastasis is the main killer in cancer; consequently, there is great interest in novel approaches to prevent and treat metastatic disease. Brain metastases are particularly deadly, as the protection of the blood-brain barrier obstructs the passage of common anticancer drugs. This study used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate t...
Published in ACS nano
Application of anticoagulants remains the primary strategy for prevention and treatment of thrombosis. However, high rate of bleeding complications limits their use. The peptide anticoagulant bivalirudin has been reported to exhibit a lower rate of bleeding complications than heparin, and it also has the advantage of not causing thrombocytopenia, w...
Published in Bioconjugate chemistry
The ability to detect and quantify macrophage accumulation can provide important diagnostic and prognostic information for atherosclerotic plaque. We have previously shown that LyP-1, a cyclic 9-amino acid peptide, binds to p32 proteins on activated macrophages, facilitating the visualization of atherosclerotic plaque with PET. Yet, the in vivo pla...
Published in The American Journal of Pathology
A major limitation in the pharmacological treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is the lack of pulmonary vascular selectivity. Recent studies have identified a tissue-penetrating homing peptide, CARSKNKDC (CAR), which specifically homes to hypertensive pulmonary arteries but not to normal pulmonary vessels or other tissues. Some tissue...
Published in Cancer research
The centrality of phosphoinositide-3-kinase (PI3K) in cancer etiology is well established, but clinical translation of PI3K inhibitors has been limited by feedback signaling, suboptimal intratumoral concentration, and an insulin resistance "class effect." This study was designed to explore the use of supramolecular nanochemistry for targeting PI3K ...
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Antibody cancer therapies rely on systemically accessible targets and suitable antibodies that exert a functional activity or deliver a payload to the tumor site. Here, we present proof-of-principle of in vivo selection of human antibodies in tumor-bearing mice that identified a tumor-specific antibody able to deliver a payload and unveils the targ...
Published in Cancer Letters
Epithelial cells and most adherent normal cells rely on adhesion-dependent, integrin-mediated survival signals from the extracellular matrix (ECM) to survive. When these cells are deprived of adhesion to the ECM, they undergo a specific form of apoptosis termed "anoikis." In contrast, malignant cells have attained mechanisms to enable them to survi...
