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Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) or exosomes are responsible for a variety of signaling processes and overall physiological and pathological states of stem cells and tissues. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) have unique...
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders and causes cognitive impairment and memory deficits of the patients. The mechanism of AD is not well known, due to the lack of study materials, e.g., human...
MRI magnets are constantly evolving with technologies for higher fields, improving sensitivity and increasing resolution. Major achievements in MRI magnet technology in recent years include the successful construction of a 21.1-T, 900...
Polyethylenes with halogen substitution at a precise distance along the methylene backbone are unique models to study the effect of nano-structured chain-defects on folding and crystallization of polymers. Prior work has shown that the...
High field 1H and 23Na MRI provide sensitive metrics of quantifying ischemic stroke over time. In this work, the efficacy of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) aggregated into 3D spheroids (a-hMSC) as a treatment method for ischemic...
In this work, we study the dynamics of polyelectrolytes in microchannel and nanochannel flows under externally applied pressure and electric fields using both theoretical and computational approaches. Hydrodynamic interactions, acting...
Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) isolated from bone marrow have multi-lineage differentiation potential and have attracted considerable attention in bone tissue regeneration. However, previous studies have shown that 2D-expanded...
Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) provides a unique contrast based on the restricted directionality of water movement in an anisotropic environment. As such, DTI-based tractography can be used to characterize and quantify the structural...
Microparticles are widely used and studied for biomedical applications and can be fabricated by bottom-up and top-down techniques. While the top-down techniques are superior to the bottom-up techniques in controlling particle geometry, ...
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) provides a map of diffusional anisotropy based on the Brownian motion of water within the restricted boundaries of tissues. In this work, a high angular resolution DTI acquired with 18 diffusion directions...
In the first part of this thesis, the bivariate or cross branching distribution of a film-grade ethylene 1-hexene copolymer with enhanced MD and TD Elmendorf tear (> 400 g/mil) and high dart impact, synthesized ExxonMobil Chemical...
Gels are a very unique state of matter and play very important roles in nature. As a special intermediate state between solid and liquid, gels have some peculiar characteristics, such as phase transition and ion-exchange. These unique...
Model random ethylene copolymers with ethyl branches are known to exhibit strong melt memory of crystallization even above their equilibrium melting temperatures. Seeds remain in the melt at high temperatures lowering the change in free...
Poly-ϵ-caprolactone (PCL) based copolymers have received much attention as drug or growth factor delivery carriers and tissue engineering scaffolds due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and tunable biophysical properties....
Microparticles are widely used for biomedical applications. Top-down techniques are able to generate particles with non-spherical shapes, precisely defined geometries, and complex structures and compositions. These properties allow well...
Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) are considered as a novel candidate for cell therapy due to the differentiation potential, migration ability, and secretion function. Late stage clinical trials require a large amount of cells that...
Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) isolated from various adult tissues are primary candidates in cell therapy for tissue regeneration. The pro-regenerative properties of hMSCs are largely attributed to their trophic effects by the...
The design of novel proteins with unique functions has immense application for the development of novel drugs, catalytic enzymes, vaccines, and the creation of innovative biotechnological devices. Hindering the design of novel proteins...
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides an effective approach to track the labeled pluripotent stem cell (PSC)-derived neural progenitor cells (NPCs) for neural transplantation and neurological disorder treatments. However, labeling...
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) relaxation and diffusion properties are sensitive to the physiological state of cells and tissues. In particular, cerebral ischemia and stroke is associated with a reduced apparent diffusion coefficient ...
Microcontact printing (μCP) is a soft lithographic technique based on transferring an ink material from a stamp on to a substrate through physical contact to produce features at the micrometer scale. Compared to other surface-patterning...
This works provides atomic level molecular information regarding the self-assembled states of several designer nanofibers; nanofibers that have demonstrated utility in the fields of drug delivery and tissue engineering. The first self...
Stem cells are responsible for the development of cellular tissue from the embryo to adult tissue. Adult-stem cells are found throughout various niches of the body and localize to damaged tissue to initiate repair. Of specific interest...
Astrocytes are vital components in neuronal circuitry and there is increasing evidence linking the dysfunction of these cells to a number of central nervous system diseases. Studying the role of these cells in human brain function in the...
The work described in this dissertation focuses on the development of a novel two-stage pretreatment for lignocellulosic biomass utilizing existing pilot-scale pretreatment technology with an additional solvent treatment step for...
The fate of human mesenchyam stem cells (hMSCs) is determined in large part by microenvironmental cues. Cells respond to these biochemical and biophysical signals through proliferation, specific lineage commitment and differentiation, or...
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is part of a unique class of diseases because it is unlike the conventional diseases which are caused by viruses or bacteria. It is a "molecular disease" caused by the aggregation of a small protein (peptide)...
Designing an implantable construct requires the simulation of microenvironmental cues that drive cellular response in vivo. Guided bone regeneration (GBR) is a technique that utilizes a physical barrier membrane to facilitate healing of...
Using the Layer by Layer (LbL) technique combined with microcontact printing, novel pH sensors were developed in order to detect the extracellular pH (pHe) of the cancerous cell lines K562 and HeLa. Key to this process was the...
Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is one of the deadliest heart diseases in the United States. CHD is described as the narrowing of capillaries. Risk factors that contribute to this disease are smoking and stress. In the Cappendijk Lab, the...
To improve the design of prostheses surfaces, our research group investigates how biocompatible polyelectrolyte multilayers (PEMUs) can be constructed to serve as coatings for biomedical implants, providing a versatile, inexpensive, and...
The main product of this work is the detailed molecular structure of nanofibers formed by the RADA16-I designer peptide. RADA16-I is a designer self-assembling peptide that has shown great utility in the area of tissue engineering....
ABSTRACT Precisely halogenated polyethylenes are unique polyolefins with a halogen placed on and every "n" number of backbone carbons. Contrasting random analogs, these systems are highly crystalline developing spherulitic morphologies...
The cerebral cortex is a thin folded sheet of neural tissue forming the outmost layer of the cerebrum (brain). Several biological hypotheses have suggested dierent mechanisms involved the development of its folding pattern into sulci ...
Magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography experiments were performed on the abdominal ganglia of aplysia californica at 11.75 T with matrix sizes of 64x64 and 128x128. The ganglia were suspended in a custom built circular...
Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) isolated from various adult tissues are primary candidates in cell therapy and being tested in clinical trials for a wide range of diseases. The pro-regenerative and therapeutic properties of hMSCs...
The effect of controlled isothermal crystallization conditions on the final crystalline structure of a set of polyethylenes with precise Cl substitution on each and every 9th, 15th, 19th and 21st backbone carbons was assessed....
Many neurodegenerative diseases have neither a cure nor a clear delineation of causation at the root of the pathology. However, several neurological diseases do present significant metal deposition that gradually increases with the...
Skeletal muscle is responsible for the voluntary movement of materials through the body and locomotion; however, the performance and efficiency of the muscle depend on many factors including alterations in oxygen concentrations and...
Migraine affects approximately 38 million people in the United States, and is the 8th most disabling condition in the world. Though several hypotheses implicate neuronal and trigeminovascular involvement with migraine onset and...
LARP6 in Type I Collagen Expression and Embryonic Development: Role in Partition of Collagen mRNA to ER Membrane and in PIh1D3 Mediated Xenopus Development
Excessive production of Type I collagen is the hallmark of fibrotic disorders. The production of Type I collagen is mainly regulated at post-transcriptional level by a COLLAGEN mRNAs binding protein La ribonucleoprotein domain family...
Extensive research in the fields of biochemistry, biological sciences, genetics and molecular biology has helped scientists delve into the molecular machinery of cell function. However, the unity and common features of living organisms...
While neurodegenerative conditions represent a rapidly growing medical and social problem worldwide, the definite diagnosis of the most common neurodegenerative pathologies such as Parkinson's disease (PD), Progressive Supranuclear Palsy...
Neurodegenerative diseases affect large portions of the population worldwide and account for a significant portion of medical spending in associated costs. This dissertation will attempt to utilize graph theory and Magnetic Resonance...
Roughly 800, 000 Americans a year suffer an ischemic stroke, motivating numerous clinical and preclinical research endeavors into therapeutic applications to mitigate degenerative affects. One of the more promising potential therapeutics...
Migraine is a disabling, multifactorial recurrent neurological disorder. Affecting approximately 38 million people in the United States alone, migraine is recognized by the World Health Organization as the 7th most disabling condition, ...
Stem cells have been proven to be an essential part of the human body when it comes to growth, development, maintenance, and repair. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are programmed to behave and differentiate with the...
An important objective in radiofrequency (RF) coil design for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is improving sensitivity. The low RF losses of thin-film high temperature superconducting (HTS) coils make them well suited to...
Stroke is a leading causing of death and disability world-wide, and yet, few options for therapeutic treatment exist. Cell therapies, particularly human bone-marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC), have elicited particular interest...
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
