Self-healing hydrogels like tissues or organs which are repaired automatically in response to damage show great promise. However, it remains a challenge to develop novel functional nanoparticles as crosslinkers to prepare tough and self-healing nanocomposite hydrogels. Here, we report the preparation of water-soluble ultrasmall aluminum hydroxide nanoparticles with a diameter of 2-3 nm through a simple sol-gel method. Furthermore, a tough nanocomposite hydrogel is prepared by the in situ copolymerization of acylamide and 2-acrylamido-2-methyl propane sulfonic acid in the presence of aluminum hydroxide nanoparticles. The resulting hydrogels exhibit high compressive strength of 18.9 MPa and an elongation at break of ∼2100%. Importantly, the Al-NC gel displayed a high self-healing efficiency of 86% without any external stimulus at room temperature. Moreover, we found an interesting multi-hierarchical porous morphology of the Al-NC gel depending on the contents of the aluminum hydroxide nanoparticles. The tough nanocomposite hydrogel might provide a novel promising avenue for designing advanced self-healable soft materials for various biomedical applications.
Possessing the combined advantages of a stable network structure, brilliant structural color, and high sensitivity, the three-dimensional inverse opal hydrogel film could be used as a colorimetric sensor for the precise detection of glucose.
Increasing evidence demonstrate that circular RNAs (circRNAs) play critical role in regulation of gene expression, which participate in the pathogenesis of cancer, including chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). In this study, we aimed to investigate the expression profiling of circHIPK3 in CML. We found that circHIPK3 was significantly upregulated in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and serum samples from CML compared with healthy controls. High circHIPK3 expression predicted a poor outcome of CML patients. Further loss-function experiments suggested the oncogenic role of circHIPK3 in CML. Our findings provide insights on the role of circHIPK3 in the development and treatment of CML.
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