Sharif Digital Repository

Protein capturing on polymeric substrate of microfluidic devices is a key factor for the fabrication of immunoassay with high sensitivity. In this work, simple and versatile technique of electrospinning was used to produce electrospun nanofibrous membranes (e.NFMs) with high surface area as a substrate for microfluidic-based immunoassay to increase sensitivity. It was found that the simultaneous use of e.NFM and 1-Ethylethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)-carbodiimide/N-Hydroxysuccinimide hydroxysuccinimide as coupling agent has synergic effect on antigen immobilization onto the microchannels. It was found that the oxygen plasma technique for the creation of oxygen containing functional group... 

Pemphigus vulgaris is an autoimmune disease, in which the role of Th17 cytokines needs to be further explored. This study was performed to assess serum levels of three interleukins (IL) required for Th17 differentiation (IL-β, IL-6 and IL-23) and two specific Th17 cytokines (IL- 17 and IL-22) in a group of patients with pemphigus vulgaris, at baseline, 3 weeks and 6 months after of treatment. Correlations between anti-desmogleins and cytokines with disease severity as well as the influence of therapy on the above factors were assessed. Forty-three first-admitted pemphigus vulgaris patients with the active disease entered the study, but only 31 completed the study. Forty-five healthy... 

Artificial Immune System (AIS) models have outstanding properties, such as learning, adaptivity and robustness, which make them suitable for learning in dynamic and noisy environments such as the web. In this study, we tend to apply AIS for tracking evolving patterns of web usage data. The definition of the similarity of web sessions has an important impact on the quality of discovered patterns. Many prevalent web usage mining approaches ignore the sequential nature of web navigations for defining similarity between sessions. We propose the use of a new web sessions' similarity measure for investigating the usage data from web access log files. In this similarity measure, in addition to the... 

Coronaviruses (CoV) are a family of viral pathogens that infect both birds and mammals, including humans. Seven human coronaviruses (HCoV) have been recognized so far. HCoV-229E, -OC43, -NL63, and -HKU1 account for one-third of common colds with mild symptoms. The other three members are severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2. These viruses are responsible for SARS, MERS, and CoV disease 2019 (COVID-19), respectively. A variety of diagnostic techniques, including chest X-rays, computer tomography (CT) scans, analysis of viral nucleic acids, proteins, or whole virions, and host antibody detection using serological assays have... 

Understanding the foreign body response (FBR) and desiging strategies to modulate such a response represent a grand challenge for implant devices and biomaterials. Here, the development of a microfluidic platform is reported, i.e., the FBR-on-a-chip (FBROC) for modeling the cascade of events during immune cell response to implants. The platform models the native implant microenvironment where the implants are interfaced directly with surrounding tissues, as well as vasculature with circulating immune cells. The study demonstrates that the release of cytokines such as monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1) from the extracellular matrix (ECM)-like hydrogels in the bottom tissue chamber... 

Vaccines require a period of at least three months for clinical trials, hence a method that can identify elicitation of immune response a few days after the first dose is a necessity. Evolutionary variable selections are modeling approaches for proper manipulation of available data which were used to set up an animal model for classification of time dependent 'HNMR metabolomic profiles and pattern recognition of fluctuations of metabolites in two groups of male rabbits. One group of rabbits was immunized with human red blood cells and the other used as control. Blood was obtained every 48 h from each rabbit for a period of six weeks and the serum monitored for antibodies and metabolites by... 

Background: Warts are the most common clinical manifestation of the human papilloma-virus infection in the skin and mucous membranes. In spite of the various therapeutic modalities for nongenital skin warts, there is still no single method to be used as an approved treatment. In this study, we compared the efficacy of immunotherapy and cryotherapy on wart lesions. Methods: Sixty patients with verruca vulgaris and plantar warts were randomly divided into two groups. One group received intralesional injection of candida antigen repeated every 3 weeks until complete improvement of all warts or for a maximum of three sessions. The second group was treated by cryotherapy with liquid nitrogen for... 

In the present study, the feasibility of electrospun polyethersolfone (PES) nanofibrous membrane as the solid substrate for microfluidic based immunoassays to enhance the density of immobilized antibody on the surface of membrane was assessed. Conversely, the efficacy of antibody immobilization was compared by two different strategies as 1-Ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)-carbodiimide (EDC)/N-Hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) coupling chemistry and hydrophobic interaction. Compared to conventional immunoassays carried out in plates or gels, microfluidic based immunoassays grant a lot of advantages such as a consumption of little samples and reagents, shorter analysis time, and higher efficiency.... 

Despite tremendous efforts toward vaccination, influenza remains an ongoing global threat. The induction of strain-specific neutralizing antibody responses is a common phenomenon during vaccination with the current inactivated influenza vaccines, so the protective effect of these vaccines is mostly strain-specific. There is an essential need for the development of next-generation vaccines, with a broad range of immunogenicity against antigenically drifted or shifted influenza viruses. Here, we evaluate the potential of whole inactivated vaccines, based on chemical and physical methods, as well as new approaches to generate cross-protective immune responses. We also consider the mechanisms by... 

Organ-on-a-chip technology tries to mimic the complexity of native tissues in vitro. Important progress has recently been made in using this technology to study the gut with and without microbiota. These in vitro models can serve as an alternative to animal models for studying physiology, pathology, and pharmacology. While these models have greater physiological relevance than two-dimensional (2D) cell systems in vitro, endocrine and immunological functions in gut-on-a-chip models are still poorly represented. Furthermore, the construction of complex models, in which different cell types and structures interact, remains a challenge. Generally, gut-on-a-chip models have the potential to... 

The safe, highly effective measles vaccine has been recommended globally since 1974, yet in 2017 there were more than 17 million cases of measles and 83,400 deaths in children under 5 years old, and more than 99% of both occurred in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)1–4. Globally comparable, annual, local estimates of routine first-dose measles-containing vaccine (MCV1) coverage are critical for understanding geographically precise immunity patterns, progress towards the targets of the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), and high-risk areas amid disruptions to vaccination programmes caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)5–8. Here we generated annual estimates of routine childhood... 

Cervical cancer is the second-most-common cause of malignancies in women worldwide, and the oncogenic activity of the human papilloma virus types (HPV) E7 protein has a crucial role in anogenital tumors. In this study, we have designed a therapeutic vaccine based on chitosan nanodelivery systems to deliver HPV-16 E7 DNA vaccine, considered as a tumor specific antigen for immunotherapy of HPV-associated cervical cancer. We have developed a Nano-chitosan (NCS) as a carrier system for intramuscular administration using a recombinant DNA vaccine expressing HPV-16 E7 (NCS-DNA E7 vaccine). NCS were characterized in vitro for their gene transfection ability. Results: The transfection of CS-pEGFP... 

Objective: This systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to determine the prevalence rate of influenza virus from different parts of Middle East region, and present an overall relative frequency (RF) for this region. Methods: The authors performed a systematic literature review from several reliable databases such as PubMed, ISI Web of Science and Scopus during 2000–2016. Furthermore, the keywords of this research were ‘Influenza’, ‘Subtype’, ‘Seroprevalence’, ‘Incidence’, ‘Seroepidemiology’, ‘H1N1’, ‘H3N2’, ‘H5N1’, ‘H9N2’, ‘Middle-East’ and ‘Meta-analysis’. The reported data were selected according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: The authors selected 71 studies out of... 

Since physiological and pathological processes occur at nano-environments, nanotechnology has considered as an efficient tool for designing of next generation specific biomolecules with enhanced pharmacodynamic and pharmacodynamic properties. In the current investigation, by control of the size and hydrodynamic volume at the nanoscale, for the first time, physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties of an anti-VEGFA nanobody was remarkably improved by attachment of a Proline-Alanine-Serine (PAS) rich sequence. The results elucidated unexpected impressive effects of PAS sequence on physicochemical properties especially on size, hydrodynamics radius, and even solubility of nanobody. CD...