Over the past decade, wearables have become pervasive in our lives. Healthcare wearables like a smartwatch continuously monitor personal health status and provide personalized feedback to motivate progress towards medically recommended goals. While present set of on-body electronics empowers users to visualize health status outside of clinic spaces, its traditionally...
Nanocarriers, structures with at least one dimension on the nanoscale (1-1000 nm), have been engineered for delivery of various cargoes. The shape and flexibility of nanocarriers are important parameters that influence their biological performance. Self-assembling polymeric filamentous nanocarriers, known as filomicelles (FM), are of great interest to nanomedicine due to...
Nanocarriers are drug delivery vehicles that have at least one dimension at the nanoscale (10-9 m). Engineering the nanocarrier surface is a strategy for targeting drug delivery to specific cell types to enhance efficacy and minimize side effects. A useful analogy is to consider how the chassis of an automotive...
Nanocarriers as structures with at least one dimension in the nanometer scale are capable of loading small molecule therapeutics that would otherwise have poor bioavailability, non- specific uptake, and off target effects. Polymeric nanocarriers can be modified to tune their chemical and biological behavior to better suit the intended application....
Like many diseases, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is driven by the activity of inflammatory cells. Using molecular imaging to target and analyze populations of inflammatory cells is one promising strategy to non-invasively assess atherosclerosis progression. However, current molecular imaging contrast agents are not suited for such targeted imaging applications. Nanomaterial-based strategies...
Nucleic acids such as DNA or RNA of various lengths and structures have a wide scope of functions as therapeutic entities compared to conventional drugs. For instance, native and modified forms of nucleic acids can be used for gene silencing, genome editing, gene replacement, immune system modulation, and theranostics. While...
Humans have a remarkable ability to create stable walking patterns that can resist and recover from perturbations. Unfortunately, this ability is substantially impaired after a stroke, limiting mobility and contributing to a high fall rate. To facilitate gait training during post-stroke rehabilitation, clinicians often incorporate body-weight support (BWS) systems that...
Coordinated movement relies on the precise and controlled activation of populations of motor units, which convert the commands of the nervous system into muscle forces. Motor unit firing patterns are often nonlinear and generated through the response to a combination of ionotropic excitatory and inhibitory commands, as well as metabotropic...
Soft materials in nature are formed through programmed self-assembly of biomolecules to create complex architectures and optimized physical properties. It is therefore a key challenge in biomaterials science and engineering to understand the principles that govern the structure and properties of such materials, and the interactions between their different components....
Optical microscopy is one of the most ubiquitous tools for functional imaging of biological phenomena. While relatively non-destructive to living organisms, light microscopy’s spatial resolution is diffraction limited, restricting the minimum resolvable features. On the other hand, high resolution techniques such as electron microscopy or STORM, have several orders of...