Six assays for protein in urine were compared for linearity, ease of standardization, precision, comparability of assay values, technical ease of assay, and current cost. The assays investigated were three dye-binding techniques, a recent turbidimetric technique, the trichloroacetic acid--biuret reaction, and a tannic acid protein precipitation reaction with ferric chloride. All assays suffered...

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To increase the monodispersity of magnetic hybrid nanocomposites, a novel ultrasonic method was introduced to synthesize uniform Fe3O4@SiO2-Ag nanospheres. The immobilized Ag nanocrystals were tunable by varying the experimental conditions. An antibacterial assay indicated that the Fe3O4@SiO2-Ag nanospheres exhibited excellent antibacterial activities against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherich...

This paper reports a novel self-detection method for tumor cells using living nano-robots. These living robots are a nonpathogenic strain of E. coli bacteria equipped with naturally synthesized bio-nano-sensory systems that have an affinity to VEGF, an angiogenic factor overly-expressed by cancer cells. The VEGF-affinity/chemotaxis was assessed using several assays including the capillary chemo...

In the present study, a sensitive modification of the colorimetric assay for catalase activity is reported. This assay is based on the reaction of undecomposed hydrogen peroxide with ammonium molybdate to give a yellowish color, which has maximum absorbance at 354 nm. Catalase-like activity is calculated from a comparison with the activity of a certified standard enzyme with known unit activity...

Ethanol is generally used as a therapeutic reagent against Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC or hepatoma) worldwide, as it can induce Hepatocellular carcinoma cell apoptosis at low concentration through a multifactorial process regulated by several unknown proteins. This paper provides a simple and available proteomic strategy for exploring differentially expressed proteins in the apoptotic pathway...

Calreticulin (CRT) is a cytoplasmic calcium-binding protein. The aim of this study was to investigate CRT presence in cancer with the use of fluorescent gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) and to explore AuNC synthesis using mercaptosuccinic acid (MSA) as a coating agent. MSA-coated AuNCs conferred well-dispersed, bio-stable, water-soluble nanoparticles with bioconjugation capacity and 800-850 nm fluores...

Tissue engineering, defined as using a combination of cultured cells and biodegradable scaffolds to repair tissue damaged by injury or disease, represents a booming sector of biomedical research. Animal experimentation is routinely performed prior to clinical trials. The presented study tries to translate the aspect of the 3Rs to tissue engineering research: Cell culture protocols were adapted ...

3D bio-artificial liver systems and transplantable devices are gaining significance due to the increase in number of patients with liver diseases. We demonstrate an ex-vivo system that mimics liver tissue and enhance the liver specific function with better viability. The proposed in vitro microchip takes advantage of micro contact printing and encapsulating process to achieve the goal. A multip...

We have evaluated three commercially available column-chromatographic methods (Isolab, Helena, and Bio-Rad) for the determination of "fast" hemoglobin (HbA1). All three methods correlated with HbA1c measurements by "high-performance" liquid chromatography for 121 samples from diabetic patients, with the Isolab method showing the highest correlation (r = 0.921). The Isolab and Helena methods gav...