Neurotrophins (NTs), which are crucial for the functioning of the nervous system, are also known to regulate vascularization. Graphene-based materials may drive neural growth and differentiation, and, thus, have great potential in regenerative medicine. In this work, we scrutinized the nano–biointerface between the cell membrane and hybrids made of neurotrophin-mimicking peptides and graphene oxide (GO) assemblies (pep−GO), to exploit their potential in theranostics (i.e., therapy and imaging/diagnostics) for targeting neurodegenerative diseases (ND) as well as angiogenesis. The pep−GO systems were assembled via spontaneous physisorption onto GO nanosheets of the peptide sequences BDNF(1-12), NT3(1-13), and NGF(1-14), mimicking the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), the neurotrophin 3 (NT3), and the nerve growth factor (NGF), respectively. The interaction of pep−GO nanoplatforms at the biointerface with artificial cell membranes was scrutinized both in 3D and 2D by utilizing model phospholipids self-assembled as small unilamellar vesicles (SUVs) or planar-supported lipid bilayers (SLBs), respectively. The experimental studies were paralleled via molecular dynamics (MD) computational analyses. Proof-of-work in vitro cellular experiments with undifferentiated neuroblastoma (SH-SY5Y), neuron-like, differentiated neuroblastoma (dSH-SY5Y), and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were carried out to shed light on the capability of the pep−GO nanoplatforms to stimulate the neurite outgrowth as well as tubulogenesis and cell migration.
We investigate medium-energy angular distributions data of proton elastic scattering on $^{12}$C, with the aim to probe the existence of cluster distributions in the ground state of $^{12}$C. In our approach, we exploit Coupled-Channel calculations to describe the scattering from a spheroidal-like structure, and we include a further contribution, based on a diffraction scattering formula, to explicitly take into account a possible triangular $\alpha$-cluster structure of the target. From the present analysis, we find a quite small cluster component in $^{12}$C ground state (with an upper limit on the occurrence probability of $1\%$, $99.75\%$ confidence level) and an inter-cluster distance of $\simeq 3.9$ fm. These values are compared with several theoretical predictions reported in the literature.
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