The normal mammary microenvironment can suppress tumorigenesis and redirect cancer cells to adopt a normal mammary epithelial cell fate in vivo. Understanding of this phenomenon offers great promise for novel treatment and detection strategies in cancer, but current model systems make mechanistic insights into the process difficult. We have recently described a low-cost bioprinting platform designed to be accessible for basic cell biology laboratories. Here we report the use of this system for the study of tumorigenesis and microenvironmental redirection of breast cancer cells. We show our bioprinter significantly increases tumoroid formation in 3D collagen gels and allows for precise generation of tumoroid arrays. We also demonstrate that we can mimic published in vivo findings by co-printing cancer cells along with normal mammary epithelial cells to generate chimeric organoids. These chimeric organoids contain cancer cells that take part in normal luminal formation. Furthermore, we show for the first time that cancer cells within chimeric structures have a significant increase in 5-hydroxymethylcytosine levels as compared to bioprinted tumoroids. These results demonstrate the capacity of our 3D bioprinting platform to study tumorigenesis and microenvironmental control of breast cancer and highlight a novel mechanistic insight into the process of microenvironmental control of cancer.
The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) spans decades, and the same can be said for its inclusion in healthcare. The IoT is an attractive target in medicine; it offers considerable potential in expanding care. However, the application of the IoT in healthcare is fraught with an array of challenges, and also, through it, numerous vulnerabilities that translate to wider attack surfaces and deeper degrees of damage possible to both consumers and their confidence within health systems, as a result of patient-specific data being available to access. Further, when IoT health devices (IoTHDs) are developed, a diverse range of attacks are possible. To understand the risks in this new landscape, it is important to understand the architecture of IoTHDs, operations, and the social dynamics that may govern their interactions. This paper aims to document and create a map regarding IoTHDs, lay the groundwork for better understanding security risks in emerging IoTHD modalities through a multi-layer approach, and suggest means for improved governance and interaction. We also discuss technological innovations expected to set the stage for novel exploits leading into the middle and latter parts of the 21st century.
Craniomaxillofacial (CMF) surgery is a challenging and very demanding field that involves the treatment of congenital and acquired conditions of the face and head. Due to the complexity of the head and facial region, various tools and techniques were developed and utilized to aid surgical procedures and optimize results. Virtual Surgical Planning (VSP) has revolutionized the way craniomaxillofacial surgeries are planned and executed. It uses 3D imaging computer software to visualize and simulate a surgical procedure. Numerous studies were published on the usage of VSP in craniomaxillofacial surgery. However, the researchers found inconsistency in the previous literature which prompted the development of this review. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the findings of the studies by conducting an integrated approach to synthesize the literature related to the use of VSP in craniomaxillofacial surgery. Twenty-nine related articles were selected as a sample and synthesized thoroughly. These papers were grouped assigning to the four subdisciplines of craniomaxillofacial surgery: orthognathic surgery, reconstructive surgery, trauma surgery and implant surgery. The following variables - treatment time, the accuracy of VSP, clinical outcome, cost, and cost-effectiveness - were also examined. Results revealed that VSP offers advantages in craniomaxillofacial surgery over the traditional method in terms of duration, predictability and clinical outcomes. However, the cost aspect was not discussed in most papers. This structured literature review will thus provide current findings and trends and recommendations for future research on the usage of VSP in craniomaxillofacial surgery.
28 August 2015 in Journal of Applied Polymer Science
An estimated $7.1 billion dollars a year is spent due to irreproducibility in pre-clinical data from errors in data analysis and reporting. Therefore, developing tools to improve measurement comparability is paramount. Recently, an open source tool, DiameterJ, has been deployed for the automated analysis of scanning electron micrographs of fibrous scaffolds designed for tissue engineering applications. DiameterJ performs hundreds to thousands of scaffold fiber diameter measurements from a single micrograph within a few seconds, along with a variety of other scaffold morphological features, which enables a more rigorous and thorough assessment of scaffold properties. Herein, an online, publicly available training module is introduced for educating DiameterJ users on how to effectively analyze scanning electron micrographs of fibers and the large volume of data that a DiameterJ analysis yields. The end goal of this training was to improve user data analysis and reporting to enhance reproducibility of analysis of nanofiber scaffolds. User performance was assessed before and after training to evaluate the effectiveness of the training modules. Users were asked to use DiameterJ to analyze reference micrographs of fibers that had known diameters. The results showed that training improved the accuracy and precision of measurements of fiber diameter in scanning electron micrographs. Training also improved the precision of measurements of pore area, porosity, intersection density, and characteristic fiber length between fiber intersections. These results demonstrate that the DiameterJ training module improves precision and accuracy in fiber morphology measurements, which will lead to enhanced data comparability.