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The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a standard molecular method that has the potential to solve the need for accurate, viable, and immediate infectious pathogen detection at point-of-care (POC) centers in different fields such as pathogen identification, and forensics. In this work, we present a photonic PCR thermocycler that achieves strong optical absorption, more efficient gene amplification, and further improves the effect of temperature distribution through the PCR sample using two gold nanofilms (AuNFs) and a high-power light-emitting diode chip (LED). The photonic device achieved higher heating and cooling rates of 13.20 null°C/s and 7.92 null°C/s, respectively on average, with uniform and reliable temperature distribution throughout the sample with negligible deviations. During amplification cycles, maximum temperatures attained had variations less than 1 °C at 90 °C, less than 0.8 °C at 55 °C, and less than 0.5 °C at 72 °C, showing uniform heating which yielded more accurate and reliable results. Using the fabricated device, PCR amplification for a bacteria genomic DNA was performed in 7.5 minutes for 30 thermal cycles with a sample volume of 20 μL. Due to the device's simple configuration and increased heat transfer rates, this photonic platform will be a highly efficient choice for rapid POC applications in developing countries.

AbstractBetter in vitro models are needed to identify active drugs to treat pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAC) patients. We used 3D hanging drop cultures to produce spheroids from five PAC cell lines and tested nine FDA-approved drugs in clinical use. All PAC cell lines in 2D culture were sensitive to three drugs (gemcitabine, docetaxel and nab-paclitaxel), however most PAC (4/5) 3D spheroids acquired profound chemoresistance even at 10 µM. In contrast, spheroids retained sensitivity to the investigational drug triptolide, which induced apoptosis. The acquired chemoresistance was also transiently retained when cells were placed back into 2D culture and six genes potentially associated with chemoresistance were identified by microarray and confirmed using quantitative RT-PCR. We demonstrate the additive effect of gemcitabine and erlotinib, from the 12 different combinations of nine drugs tested. This comprehensive study shows spheroids as a useful multicellular model of PAC for drug screening and elucidating the mechanism of chemoresistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CO2 laser ablation is a rapid and precise technique for machining microfluidic devices. And also, low-cost epoxy resin (ER) proved the great feasibility of fabricating these devices using the CO2 laser ablation technique in our previous studies. However, such a technique has shown negative impacts on such ER-based microfluidics as rough surface microchannels, and thermal defects. Therefore, incorporating different proportions of boric acid (BA) into epoxy resin formulation was proposed to obviate the genesis of these drawbacks in ER-based microfluidics. The structural and optical properties of plain ER- and B-doped ER-based chips were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and UV/Vis spectral analyses. Furthermore, their thermal properties were studied by thermo-gravimetric (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) analysis. A CO2 laser ablation machine was used in vector mode to draw the designed micro-channel pattern onto plain ER- and B-doped ER-based chips. The quality of microchannels engraved onto these chips was assessed using 3D laser microscopy. This microscopic examination showed a noticeable reduction in the surface roughness and negligible bulge heights in the laser-ablated micro-channels. On the other hand, overall and specific migration using gravimetric methods and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS), respectively, and PCR compatibility test were performed to explore the convenience of these micro-plates for the biological reactions. These findings validated the applicability of B-doped ER-based microfluidics in bio-analytical applications as a result of the effective role of boric acid in enhancing the thermal properties of these chips leading to get micro-channels with higher quality with no effect on the biological reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tuning the reaction parameters to maximize products yield is one of the major needs for any process. The goal of this research is to increase the reduction of CO2 with water by examining the operating parameters of a meso-scale continuous-flow type photochemical reactor over hydrothermally synthesized photocatalysts such as Pt/TiO2 and Pt/TiO2/RGO. Effects of catalyst type, weight of catalyst utilized, photochemical reactor temperature, retention time by variating the liquid water flow rate, and cocatalyst loading were investigated to increase the concentration of total organic carbon compounds including HCHO and CH3OH. The effect of titanium dioxide phase ratio (anatase: rutile) presence at the Pt/TiO2/RGO photocatalysts was also studied. The results revealed that the 0.3 wt.% Pt/TiO2/RGO5% photocatalyst which includes a phase ratio of 81:19 for anatase: rutile respectively has the superior photocatalytic activity to other studied photocatalysts. The physciochemical properties of different prepared photocatalytic samples were determined using various characterization techniques. Analyzing the liquid products on gas chromatography, it was found that CH3OH represents the major product whereas HCHO was the minor one. This reactor exhibits a great performance towards CO2 photocatalytic reduction under the optimized conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]