George M. Rodgers,* Michael Auerbach, David Cella, Glenn M. Chertow, Daniel W. Coyne, John A. Glaspy, and David H. Henry** *University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; Georgetown University, Washington, DC; Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois; Stanford University, Stanford, California; Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri; University of California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California...

Dextran is widely exploited in medical products and as a component of drug-delivering nanoparticles (NPs). Here, we tested whether dextran can serve as the main substrate of NPs and form a stable backbone. We tested dextrans with several molecular masses under several synthesis conditions to optimize NP stability. The analysis of the obtained nanoparticles showed that dextran NPs that were synt...

Nutritional iron deficiency anemia is the most common deficiency disorder, affecting more than two billion people worldwide. Oral iron supplementation is usually the first choice for the treatment of iron deficiency anemia, but in many conditions, oral iron is less than ideal mainly because of gastrointestinal adverse events and the long course needed to treat the disease and replenish body iro...

Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) used as MRI contrast agents or for theranostic applications encounter a complex mixture of extracellular proteins that adsorb on the SPION surface forming a protein corona. Our goal was to understand how cellular binding and T2 relaxation times are affected by this protein corona. Our studies focused on carboxymethyl dextran-modified SPIONs, c...

We describe here the use of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to measure the transfection efficiency of the transient expression vector pCMVcat in lymphoblasts and fibroblasts. By using a pCMVcat probe, we can visualize the location of the plasmid after transfection and thus determine transfection efficiency. In this report, we show that, for transfection of pCMVcat by the diethylaminoe...

To clarify the action of dextran sulphate, a heparin analogue, in the clotting of fibrinogen by thrombin, determinations were carried out on the clotting activity, the release of fibrinopeptides from fibrinogen, and the hydrolytic activity of thrombin against a peptide chromogenic substrate in the absence or presence of antithrombin III (heparin cofactor). It was shown that dextran sulphate its...

Although the behavior of nanoscopic delivery systems in blood is an important parameter when contemplating their intravenous injection, this aspect is often poorly investigated when advancing from in vitro to in vivo experiments. In this paper, the behavior of siRNA loaded dextran nanogels in human plasma and blood is examined using fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy, platelet aggregometry, ...

shown by demonstrating that the overall rate of dextransucrase synthesis is independent of the concentration of 1,6-linked dextran acceptor if synthesis is continued for periods that are directly proportional to the amount of acceptor present. For example, in the presence of 1 mg of acceptor dextran, the rate of dextransucrase action measured over lOmin is identical with the rate measured over ...

We have investigated whether the developing spinal cord is intrinsically segmented in its rostrocaudal (anteroposterior) axis by mapping the spread of clones derived from single labelled cells within the neural tube of the chick embryo. A single cell in the ventrolateral neural tube of the trunk was marked in situ with the fluorescent tracer lysinated rhodamine dextran (LRD) and its descendants...