Magnetic nanoparticles have an important role as heat generators in magnetic fluid hyperthermia, a type of nextgeneration cancer treatment. Despite various trials to improve the heat generation capability of magnetic nanoparticles, iron oxide nanoparticles are the only approved heat generators for clinical applications, which require a large injection dose due to their low hyperthermia efficiency. In this study, iron oxide nanoclusters (NCs) with a highly enhanced hyperthermia effect and adjustable size were synthesized through a facile and simple solvothermal method. Among the samples, the NCs with a size of 25 nm showed the highest hyperthermia efficiency. Differently sized NCs exhibit inconsistent interparticle crystalline alignments, which affect their magnetic properties (e.g., coercivity and saturation magnetization). As a result, the optimal NCs exhibited a significantly enhanced heat generation efficiency compared with that of isolated iron oxide nanoparticles (ca. 7 nm), and their hyperthermia effect on skin cancer cells was confirmed.

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The market availability of irradiated products requires proper labeling to safeguard the consumer's right of choice. Ten commercial cinnamon powders of different origins were investigated to confirm their irradiation history using photostimulated-luminescence, thermoluminescence, and electron spin resonance analyses. Photostimulated-luminescence analysis screened out one sample as an intermediate (700-5000 PCs) while all others were negative. Upon thermoluminescence analysis, two samples yielded weak but clear peaks in the temperature range of 150-250 o C, showing the possibility of irradiation. The electron spin resonance analysis showed limited sensitivity for all the commercial samples with the absence of radiation-specific features. The applicability of these techniques was confirmed by analyzing the radiation-induced detection markers in the in-house irradiated samples. Hygienic quality parameters and physicochemical properties (moisture content, pH, Hunter's color, and particle size) showed variable results which can affect the quality of end product and should be taken into serious considerations to ensure hygienic quality and practical applications of cinnamon powders.

Mag-spinner, a system in which magnets are combined with a spinner system, is a new type of magnetic separation system for the preprocessing of biological and medical samples. Interference by...

In clinical and diagnostic proteomics, it is important to discover significant biomarkers from biosamples. Thus, a reliable proteomics methodology is required for the development and standardization of an MSbased protein identification and quantification method in biosamples. In particular, plasma is one of the most complex fluids in the human body and is commonly used in hospitals to diagnose disease. The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and reproducible proteomics method using lung cancer plasma for biomarker discovery and diagnostic kits for screening. Glycoproteins are well-known to be associated with diseases (especially cancers) so in this study glycoproteomics was used for discovering biomarkers from lung cancer plasma. Thirty-five lung cancer plasma were pooled, and glycoproteins were separated using lectin affinity chromatography (LAC). After affinity selection, trypsin-digestion, and deglycosylation with PNGase F, the resulting deglycosylated peptides were analyzed with nLC-MS/MS runs twice. The corresponding parent proteins were identified separately through two database search engines and then analyzed individually. The identified proteins from each set were compared, combined, and then categorized for analysis. The combined total identified number of proteins were about 50% increased than in a single run and some proteins seemed to be more reproducible and reliable biomarker candidates because they were always identified in every run. From this research, method-optimized proteomics can be applied to biomarker discovery for diagnosis and prognosis of disease such as cancer for better MS-based clinical studies. The identified plasma proteins from this research will also be lung cancer biomarker candidates and can be utilized for the development of in vitro lung cancer diagnostic kits.