In: CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry, 2019, vol. 73, no. 1, p. 51–54
Understanding the interaction between cells and their environment is fundamental for mechanobiology. To mimic the behavior of cells in physiological and pathological conditions, synthetic substrates must have topographical and/or mechanical properties that evolve in time. Dynamic substrates mainly rely on stimuli-responsive materials where an external stimulus induces controlled variations in...
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In: CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry, 2019, vol. 73, no. 1, p. 63–68
The main cause of cancer-related death is due to cancer cell spreading and formation of secondary tumors in distant organs, the so-called metastases. Metastatic cancer cells are detectable in the blood of cancer patients as circulating tumor cells (CTC) and may be exploited for prognostic and monitoring purposes, including in breast cancer. Due to their very low frequency, however, their...
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In: CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry, 2019, vol. 73, no. 1, p. 55–58
Nanoparticles (NPs) possess unique properties useful for designing specific functionalities for biomedi- cal applications. A prerequisite of a safe-by-design and effective use in any biomedical application is to study NP–cell interactions to gain a better understanding of cellular consequences upon exposure. Cellular uptake of NPs results mainly in the localization of NPs in the complex...
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In: CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry, 2019, vol. 73, no. 1, p. 7–11
While coupling mechanical and chemical processes is widespread in living organisms, the idea to harness the mechanically induced dissociation of weak covalent and non- covalent bonds to create artificial materials that respond to mechanical stimulation has only recently gained attention. Here we summarize our activities that mainly revolve around the exploitation of non-covalent interactions...
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In: CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry, 2019, vol. 73, no. 1, p. 25–28
For many decades, it has been challenging to synthesize auxetic materials at the molecular level. Auxetic materials exhibit counterintuitive behavior; they expand perpendicularly to the direction in which they are stretched. An aromatic macrocycle containing a sequence of N-substituted and N-unsubstituted amides was designed to resemble the re-entrant structure found in macromolecular auxetic...
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In: Nature Chemistry, 2019, vol. 11, no. 5, p. 488–494
In a conventional living ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP), an equal number of ruthenium complexes to the number of polymer chains synthesized are required. This can lead to high loadings of ruthenium complexes when aiming for shorter polymers. Here, a reversible chain-transfer agent was used to produce living ROMP polymers from norbornene derivatives using catalytic amounts of...
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In: CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry, 2019, vol. 73, no. 1, p. 59–62
Pore-forming peptides are of interest due to their antimicrobial activity and ability to form gateways through lipid membranes. Chemical modification of these peptides makes it possible to arrange several peptide monomers into well-defined pore-forming structures using various templating strategies. These templated super-structures can exert antimicrobial activity at significantly lower total...
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In: Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, 2019, vol. 474, p. 637–642
Magnetic hyperthermia for cancer treatment has gained significant attention in recent years, due to its biocompatibility of applied nanoparticles and the possibility for spatially localized heating in deep tissues. Clinical treatments use nanoparticle concentrations of 112 mg Fe/mL, while the concentrations experimental studies have addressed are considerably smaller, usually between 0.1...
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In: Environmental Science & Technology, 2019, vol. 53, no. 4, p. 1748–1765
On account of environmental concerns, the fate and adverse effects of plastics have attracted considerable interest in the past few years. Recent studies have indicated the potential for fragmentation of plastic materials into nanoparticles, i.e., “nanoplastics,” and their possible accumulation in the environment. Nanoparticles can show markedly different chemical and physical properties...
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In: Scientific Reports, 2019, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 900
As a highly interdisciplinary field, working with nanoparticles in a biomedical context requires a robust understanding of soft matter physics, colloidal behaviors, nano- characterization methods, biology, and bio-nano interactions. When reporting results, it can be easy to overlook simple, seemingly trivial experimental details. In this context, we set out to understand how in vitro...
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