The surfaces of materials and nanomaterials are the place of their reactivity and govern their interactions with the surrounding environment. Whether they are flat surfaces or plasmonic nanostructures, these (nano)materials are at the very core of diverse applications such as diagnosis, sensing, drug delivery and antifouling.
The input of surface chemistry to the ultimate success of these...
Imaging is a fundamental tool in the practice of medicine. In parallel with the development of improved imaging systems and techniques, there are numerous new contrast agents under assessment for concurrent cancer therapy and diagnostics, or โtheranostics.โ In this emerging field, materials scientists are leading the design of new colloidal materials that can be both tracked and capable of...
The dynamics of infectious disease (ID) require fast accurate diagnosis for effective management and treatment. In low and middle income countries (LMICs). syndromic or presumptive actions are followed, where positive cases may go undetected in the community, or mistreated due to wrong diagnosis. Without affordable, accessible diagnostics, this undermines effective clinical decision-making and...
Health disparities are population specific variations in the presence of diseases and access to treatments, across racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups which have adverse personal and community health consequences. The inequity is directly related to historical and current unequal distribution of social, political, economic, and environmental resources. Global healthcare governance (GHG)...
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The upsurge in research focusing on dithiocarbamate and thiourea derived Ru(II) complexes with potential applications in catalysis, sensor and medicine have been reported in recent times. This paper reports the continued efforts to serve this important research field. A benign one-pot reaction synthesis method using ruthenium(II) triphenylphosphine chloride as a metal precursor with...
Croton megalabotrys mixed with Ricinnus cummunis and coconut seed oils produced high quality organic soaps with some levels of antioxidant and antimicrobial activities. The pHs of these soaps ranged from 10.01 and 10.30 showing that these soaps are mildly alkaline and hence cannot burn the skin while at the same time killing bacteria and other microorganisms on the skin surface. The low levels...
Microorganisms interact with fluid interfaces in contexts relevant to health, industry and the environment. The dynamic interaction of cells with energy-rich interfaces causes them to adsorb and become trapped, eliminating a patch of the interface, and lowering the free energy of the system. However, very little is known about the effects of interfacial tension and associated stresses at...
Amyloid fibrils interact with metal ions via metal-ligand supramolecular interactions whose energy is of the order of tens to hundreds of KBT (1). The occurrence and abundance of the 20 essential amino acids in food-based amyloid fibrils derived from inexpensive animal and plant proteins, including from food waste and agricultural side streams, combined with the extreme aspect ratio of the...
The ability to assemble arbitrary 3D structures using nano- to micron-scaled colloidal building blocks has several interesting potential applications, including photonic, electronic, and biological. To achieve this, the combination of optical tweezers (OT) with two-photon polymerization (TPP), offers the advantage of complete 3D optical manipulation and immobilization of particles without the...
Titanium alloys are promising candidates for use in biomedical applications for orthopedic implants due to their low Young's modulus, high strength, and good biocompatibility. Amongst Ti alloys, Ti6Al4V alloy is the most widely utilized for biomedical implants. However, both alloying elements Al and V in Ti6Al4V, have adverse effects in human body which is not desirable. Currently, ฮฒ-type...
Vernonia amygdalina , a widely distributed indegenous plant speciesall over Africa famed for its wide range of use in traditional medicine including anti bacterial, anti diabetic , anti cancer potency mediated the biosynthesis of silver doped zinc oxide (Ag-ZnO) nanoparticles through an ecofriendly easily scalable simple co-precipitation method. The morphology of the synthesized nanocomposite...
Over the last decade, there has been a growing body of experimental work showing that proteins devoid of aromatic and conjugated groups can absorb light in the near-UV beyond 300 nm and subsequently, fluoresce in the visible. Understanding the origins of this phenomena offers the possibility of designing non-invasive spectroscopic probes for local interactions in biological systems. It was...
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder characterized by high level of blood sugar as a result of deficiency of insulin. This study evaluates the hypoglycemic activity of methanol extracts of Buchholzia coriacea and Garcinia kola seeds in alloxan induced diabetic rats. The phytochemical composition was determined by standard methods. The acute toxicity study was performed using Lorkeโs...
The propensity of cells to interact with nanomaterials has broad applications for diagnostics and therapies. Due to the small spatial scales and dynamic behaviors of live samples, precisely characterizing the nature of these interactions is challenging. The lack of detailed data hinders a rational-design approach for new materials. Here, we present how a standard fluorescence microscope can be...
The inability to continuously monitor biomarkers of human health status limits the current usefulness of sensing technologies. For example, most sensing systems cannot measure key low concentration biochemicals indicative of stress, inflammation, metabolic, and reproductive status. This information can transform health and wellness by providing real-time actionable feedback to wearers and...
The successful clinical translation of nanocarriers strongly depends on their biodistribution, biodegradation and elimination patterns in vivo. However, the visualization and quantification of nanomaterials in in vivo models is not trivial. A fundamental aspect of the fate of nanocarriers, in relation with their application in drug delivery, is their degradation. The stability of the core...
Recent World Health Organisation data reveals an 8 to 11-year gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, highlighting the ongoing burden of diseases worldwide. Without significant intervention, achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3, Good Health and Wellbeing for all, remains at risk. The growing geriatric population, estimated to reach 2.1 billion by 2050,...
DNA-based molecular circuits able to perform complex information processing in biological systems are highly desirable. However, conventional DNA circuits are constitutively always in an ON state and immediately operate when they meet the biomolecular inputs, precluding precise molecular computation at a desired time and in a desired site. To address this issue, our group has used light and...
Different nanotechnology platforms have been developed to improve the performance of drugs. Self-assembled polymeric nanoparticles produced by the spontaneous aggregation of amphiphilic block and graft copolymers in water emerged as one of the most versatile strategies to encapsulate and deliver hydrophobic small-molecule ones owing their high chemical flexibility and modularity to tailor the...
The design of safe materials for use as antibacterial agent has been challenging for material scientists. Herein, the Ag/Ag2S/g-C3N4 heterojunction nanocomposite was prepared by using as-prepared bismuth(III) N-methyl-N-phenyl dithiocarbamate, graphitic carbon nitride and silver nanoparticles in the presence of oleic acid at 220 oC. The nanocomposite was characterized by using X-ray...
Subcutaneous pancreatic islet transplantation as a source of insulin secreting beta cells has become a viable treatment for type 1 diabetes alleviating the need for daily insulin injections. Hydrogel scaffolds are known to protect cells from immune response and can be used to encapsulate pancreatic for transplantation. They can also be loaded with anti-inflammatory/pro-angiogenic molecules...
African trypanosomiasis is an infectious vector-borne parasitic disease of humans and animals with serious public health challenges in some regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Current chemotherapy of the disease is beset with the problems of high cost, non-availability, parasite resistance and toxicity. This study evaluated the in vivo anti-trypanosomal, and Cysteine protease inhibitory activities...
The development of new therapies for the management of diabetes mellitus is of great interest worldwide, as maintaining glycemic control with conventional drugs is still an issue. This research was undertaken to investigate the in vivo antihyperglycaemic activity of the crude and different fractions (n-hexane, ethyl acetate and methanol) of ethanol extract of Piliostigma thonningii leaves on...
This study investigates the biocorrosion response of spark plasma sintered biomedical-grade titanium (Ti6Al4V) reinforced with varying amounts of zirconia (ZrO2) in 0.9% NaCl and Hanksโ solutions. The objective was to evaluate how different zirconia concentrations affect the corrosion resistance of titanium alloys under simulated physiological conditions. To characterize the sintered...
The emergence of drug resistant disease strains has severely thwarted global efforts to eliminate diseases such as tuberculosis (TB). There is an urgent need for newer antimicrobials with superior modes of action. This study proposes to amplify the antimicrobial properties of Elephantorrhiza elephantina (E. elephantina), a medicinal plant traditionally used in the treatment of TB in...
In recent years, the field of drug design has undergone a remarkable transformation due to advancements in computer hardware and algorithms. This talk will explore how computational biophysics tools are driving this revolution, ultimately accelerating therapeutic discovery. The presentation will commence with an introduction to various computational biophysics tools utilized in drug design,...
The increasing interest in natural polymers has driven research into hydrogels due to their unique properties and potential applications across various industries. This study investigates the cross-linking of schizophyllan hydrogel, a natural ฮฒ-glucan polysaccharide, with nanocellulose extracted from hemp hurd biomass. Schizophyllan hydrogels exhibit high water retention, viscoelastic...
Three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies have become the new standard for fabricating microfluidic devices. Among them, stereolithography (SL) printing has been increasingly used to create fluidic channels, but these devices are limited by the properties of photoresins and photoabsorbers. In contrast, extrusion printing, particularly direct ink write (DIW) 3D printing, allows for the...
Sanitary pads are vital for feminine hygiene, and there is growing interest in developing affordable and eco-friendly alternatives. Among various materials explored for this purpose, plantain fibers have received limited attention. This study aims to fill this research gap by investigating the use of plantain fibers extracted from waste pseudo-stems as absorbent cores for sanitary pads. The...
This study investigate the compression properties of quenched Ti-Mo alloys for potential use in load bearing implants. Three binary alloys, namely, Ti-15Mo,Ti-17Mo and Ti-20Mo were designed using theoretical predictive methods such as the Molybdenum equivalence (Moeq), the electron to atom ratio (e/a) and the d electron methods. These alloys were fabricated using the ultrasonic-based machine...
Bioactive glass (BG) is one of the most remarkable biomaterials in the field of biomedical applications due to its properties such as bioactivity, biodegradability, biocompatibility and etc., which are mainly used for the applications of bone implants, dermal fillers and drug releasing carriers. Bioactive glass materials with a porous spherical structure are the most predominant materials in...
Malaria is one of the worldโs deadliest infectious diseases. Each year over 2 million people are infected and around half a million die. Sadly over 90% of deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa where on average a child dies of malaria every 12 seconds. Currently there is no effective vaccine against malaria. The earliest drug was Quinine, which was discovered in 1820, but due to severe side...
