Tendon injuries are frequent and occur in the elderly, young, and athletic populations. The inadequate number of donors combined with many challenges associated with autografts, allografts, xenografts, and prosthetic devices have added to the value of engineering biological substitutes, which can be implanted to repair the damaged tendons. Electrospun scaffolds have the potential to mimic the native tissue structure along with desired mechanical properties and, thus, have attracted noticeable attention. In order to improve the biological responses of these fibrous structures, we designed and fabricated 3D multilayered composite scaffolds, where an electrospun nanofibrous substrate was coated with a thin layer of cell-laden hydrogel. The whole construct composition was optimized to achieve adequate mechanical and physical properties as well as cell viability and proliferation. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were differentiated by the addition of bone morphogenetic protein 12 (BMP-12). To mimic the natural function of tendons, the cell-laden scaffolds were mechanically stimulated using a custom-built bioreactor. The synergistic effect of mechanical and biochemical stimulation was observed in terms of enhanced cell viability, proliferation, alignment, and tenogenic differentiation. The results suggested that the proposed constructs can be used for engineering functional tendons.
Abstract-This work presents the design and the realization of a flexible front-end circuitry for electrochemical sensing with wearable devices. The hardware combines readout circuitry for amperometric and Open Circuit Potential (OCP) measurements. The sensing platforms are dedicated to lactate and lithium detection in sweat, hence allowing the monitoring of athletes under physical effort. The wearability of the system is ensured by the flexibility of the electronic substrate, its small dimensions that fit an armband case, and the wireless transmission through a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) module. The power consumption of the system has been evaluated to be 200 mW, with 3.6 V on board power supply.
In this paper, we present the design, the implementation and the validation of a novel Internet of Things (IoT) drug monitoring system for the online continuous and simultaneous detection of two main anesthetics, e.g., propofol and paracetamol, in undiluted human serum. The described full system consists of a custom-built electronic Raspberry Pi (RPi) based Printed Circuit Board (PCB) that drives and reads out the signal from an electrochemical sensing platform integrated into a fluidic system. Thanks to the Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) fluidic device, the analyzed sample is automatically fluxed on the sensing site. The IoT network is supported by a Cloud system, which allows the doctor to control and share all the patient's data through a dedicated Android application and a smart watch. The validation closes with the first ever demonstration that our system successfully works for the simultaneous monitoring of propofol and paracetamol in undiluted human serum by measuring the concentration trends of these two drugs in fluxing conditions over time.
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