Donghua University

About: Donghua University is a education organization based out in Shanghai, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Fiber & Nanofiber. The organization has 21155 authors who have published 21841 publications receiving 393091 citations. The organization is also known as: Dōnghuá Dàxué & China Textile University.

Effect of pH-Responsive Alginate/Chitosan Multilayers Coating on Delivery Efficiency, Cellular Uptake and Biodistribution of Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles Based Nanocarriers

Abstract: Surface fuctionalization plays a crucial role in developing efficient nanoparticulate drug-delivery systems by improving their therapeutic efficacy and minimizing adverse effects. Here we propose a simple layer-by-layer self-assembly technique capable of constructing mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) into a pH-responsive drug delivery system with enhanced efficacy and biocompatibility. In this system, biocompatible polyelectrolyte multilayers of alginate/chitosan were assembled on MSN’s surface to achieve pH-responsive nanocarriers. The functionalized MSNs exhibited improved blood compatibility over the bare MSNs in terms of low hemolytic and cytotoxic activity against human red blood cells. As a proof-of-concept, the anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded into nanocarriers to evaluate their use for the pH-responsive drug release both in vitro and in vivo. The DOX release from nanocarriers was pH dependent, and the release rate was much faster at lower pH than that of at higher pH. The in vitro...

Energy-Delay Tradeoff for Dynamic Offloading in Mobile-Edge Computing System With Energy Harvesting Devices

Abstract: Mobile-edge computing (MEC) has aroused significant attention for its performance to accelerate application's operation and enrich user's experience. With the increasing development of green computing, energy harvesting (EH) is considered as an available technology to capture energy from circumambient environment to supply extra energy for mobile devices. In this paper, we propose an online dynamic tasks assignment scheduling to investigate the tradeoff between energy consumption and execution delay for an MEC system with EH capability. We formulate it into an average weighted sum of energy consumption and execution delay minimization problem of mobile device with the stability of buffer queues and battery level as constraints. Based on the Lyapunov optimization method, we obtain the optimal scheduling about the CPU-cycle frequencies of mobile device and transmit power for data transmission. Besides, the dynamic online tasks offloading strategy is developed to modify the data backlogs of queues. The performance analysis shows the stability of the battery energy level and the tradeoff between energy consumption and execution delay. Moreover, the MEC system with EH devices and task buffers implements the high energy efficient and low latency communications. The performance of the proposed online algorithm is validated with extensive trace-driven simulations.

Coaxial extrusion bioprinting of 3D microfibrous constructs with cell-favorable gelatin methacryloyl microenvironments.

Abstract: Bioinks with shear-thinning/rapid solidification properties and strong mechanics are usually needed for the bioprinting of three-dimensional (3D) cell-laden constructs. As such, it remains challenging to generate soft constructs from bioinks at low concentrations that are favorable for cellular activities. Herein, we report a strategy to fabricate cell-laden constructs with tunable 3D microenvironments achieved by bioprinting of gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA)/alginate core/sheath microfibers, where the alginate sheath serves as a template to support and confine the GelMA pre-hydrogel in the core during the extrusion process, allowing for subsequent UV crosslinking. This novel strategy minimizes the bioprinting requirements for the core bioink, and facilitates the fabrication of cell-laden GelMA constructs at low concentrations. We first showed the capability of generating various alginate hollow microfibrous constructs using a coaxial nozzle setup, and verified the diffusibility and perfusability of the bioprinted hollow structures that are important for the tissue engineering applications. More importantly, the hollow alginate microfibers were then used as templates for generating cell-laden GelMA constructs with soft microenvironments, by using GelMA pre-hydrogel as the bioink for the core phase during bioprinting. As such, GelMA constructs at extremely low concentrations (<2.0%) could be extruded to effectively support cellular activities including proliferation and spreading for various cell types. We believe that our strategy is likely to provide broad opportunities in bioprinting of 3D constructs with cell-favorable microenvironments for applications in tissue engineering and pharmaceutical screening.