Vasogenic edema dynamically accumulates in many brain disorders associated with brain inflammation, with the critical step of edema exacerbation feared in patient care. Water entrance through blood-brain barrier (BBB) opening is thought to have a role in edema formation. Nevertheless, the mechanisms of edema resolution remain poorly understood. Because the water channel aquaporin 4 (AQP4) provides an important route for vasogenic edema resolution, we studied the time course of AQP4 expression to better understand its potential effect in countering the exacerbation of vasogenic edema.

Urinary incontinence as a result of neurological or age-related diseases is a very disturbing problem concerning a significant percentage of the population. People afflicted with this disorder cannot control the arbitrary filling of the urinary bladder. The most widespread solution is catheterization, which is neither pleasant nor harmless. A device monitoring bladder fill level could remind patients about the need for a draining, grant them greater comfort and save their health and costs. We developed a concept of a wearable ultrasound system for continuous monitoring. Our system does not use ultrasound gel, but implements a dry coupling. This is why in contrary to existing ready-to-use systems, it can work automatically and continuously. For the duration of the cyclic measurements the skin adheres to the transducer and transmission becomes high enough to make the estimation of the bladder fill level with ultrasound possible. We present the results of a feasibility study. We empirically examined the power transmission as a function of adhering force for different skin samples and compared it with values achieved using ultrasound gel. For this purpose we constructed ultrasound transmitting and receiving hardware and a setup enabling to set and measure the applied force. Based on further calculations we confirmed that the level of the received reflected signal is high enough to successfully estimate the amount of urine in the bladder.

To streamline in vivo biomarker discovery, we developed a suppression subtractive DNA hybridization technique adapted for phage-displayed combinatorial libraries of 12 amino acid peptides (PhiSSH). Physical DNA subtraction is performed in a one-tube-all-reactions format by sequential addition of reagents, producing the enrichment of specific clones of one repertoire. High-complexity phage repertoires produced by in vivo selections in the multiple sclerosis rat model (experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, EAE) and matched healthy control rats were used to evaluate the technique. The healthy repertoire served as a physical DNA subtractor from the EAE repertoire to produce the subtraction repertoire. Full next-generation sequencing (NGS) of the three repertoires was performed to evaluate the efficiency of the subtraction technique. More than 96% of the clones common to the EAE and healthy repertoires were absent from the subtraction repertoire, increasing the probability of randomly selecting various specific peptides for EAE pathology to about 70%. Histopathology experiments were performed to confirm the quality of the subtraction repertoire clones, producing distinct labeling of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) affected by inflammation among healthy nervous tissue or the preferential binding to IL1-challenged vs. resting human BBB model. Combining PhiSSH with NGS will be useful for controlled in vivo screening of small peptide combinatorial libraries to discover biomarkers of specific molecular alterations interspersed within healthy tissues.

Neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by increased permeability of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) due to alterations in cellular and structural components of the neurovascular unit, particularly in association with neuroinflammation. A previous screening study of peptide ligands to identify molecular alterations of the BBB in neuroinflammation by phage-display, revealed that phage clone 88 presented specific binding affinity to endothelial cells under inflammatory conditions in vivo and in vitro. Here, we aimed to identify the possible target receptor of the peptide ligand 88 expressed under inflammatory conditions. A cross-link test between phage-peptide-88 with IL-1β-stimulated human hCMEC cells, followed by mass spectrometry analysis, was used to identify the target of peptide-88. We modeled the epitope–receptor molecular interaction between peptide-88 and its target by using docking simulations. Three proteins were selected as potential target candidates and tested in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays with peptide-88: fibronectin, laminin subunit α5 and laminin subunit β-1. Among them, only laminin subunit β-1 presented measurable interaction with peptide-88. Peptide-88 showed specific interaction with laminin subunit β-1, highlighting its importance as a potential biomarker of the laminin changes that may occur at the BBB endothelial cells under pathological inflammation conditions.

The Cryogenic Pumping Section (CPS) has been installed at the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe for the neutrino mass experiment KATRIN. The 7 m long cryostat is part of the tritium pumping and transport section of the KATRIN experiment. The cryostat hosts seven superconducting solenoid magnet modules in series with a maximum magnetic field of 5.6 T. The magnet safety system (MSS) is the central part for the safe operation of the CPS. A distinct quench detection is of interest but not trivial because of the non-negligible inductive coupling between neighbouring magnet modules. A distinct quench detection method has been developed based on the combination of a global detector and two (or more) detectors based on the conventional bridge method and a programmable logic controller (PLC). The MSS together with the quench detection system (QDS) and an external dumping unit has been successfully commissioned with the CPS magnet. This paper presents the first commissioning results.