Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto

About: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Genus. The organization has 2143 authors who have published 3674 publications receiving 71071 citations. The organization is also known as: FFCLRP & FFCLRP-USP.

Dopamine-loaded nanoparticle systems circumvent the blood-brain barrier restoring motor function in mouse model for Parkinson's Disease.

Abstract: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive and chronic neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system. Early treatment for PD is efficient; however, long-term systemic medication commonly leads to deleterious side-effects. Strategies that enable more selective drug delivery to the brain using smaller dosages, while crossing the complex brain-blood barrier (BBB), are highly desirable to ensure treatment efficacy and decrease/avoid unwanted outcomes. Our goal was to design and test the neurotherapeutic potential of a forefront nanoparticle-based technology composed of albumin/PLGA nanosystems loaded with dopamine (ALNP-DA) in 6-OHDA PD mice model. ALNP-DA effectively crossed the BBB, replenishing dopamine at the nigrostriatal pathway, resulting in significant motor symptom improvement when compared to Lesioned and L-DOPA groups. Notably, ALNP-DA (20 mg/animal dose) additionally up-regulated and restored motor coordination, balance, and sensorimotor performance to non-lesioned (Sham) animal level. Overall, ALNPs represent an innovative, non-invasive nano-therapeutical strategy for PD, considering its efficacy to circumvent the BBB and ultimately deliver the drug of interest to the brain.

Probabilistic cellular automaton describing a biological immune system

Abstract: We have analyzed a probabilistic cellular automaton to describe the $T$-helper cells response under parasitic infections. The evolution rules are of totalistic type and possess "up-down" symmetry. The automaton displays a dynamical phase transition, from a disordered state to an ordered one, which takes place through a spontaneous symmetry breaking. In the ordered phase, one type of $T$-helper cells predominates over the others. The phase transition was studied both by a pair approximation and by Monte Carlo simulations. In addition, we were able to obtain some exact results for the densities of $T$-helper cells.