Islamic Azad University

About: Islamic Azad University is a education organization based out in Tehran, Iran. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Adsorption. The organization has 83635 authors who have published 113437 publications receiving 1275049 citations. The organization is also known as: Azad University.

Artemia salina as a model organism in toxicity assessment of nanoparticles.

Abstract: Because of expanding presence of nanomaterials, there has been an increase in the exposure of humans to nanoparticles that is why nanotoxicology studies are important. A number of studies on the effects of nanomatrials in in vitro and in vivo systems have been published. Currently cytotoxicity of different nanoparticles is assessed using the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay on different cell lines to determine cell viability, a tedious and expensive method. The aim of this study was to evaluate the Artemia salina test in comparison with the MTT assay in the assessment of cytotoxicity of nanostructures because the former method is more rapid and convenient and less expensive. At the first stage, toxicity of different nanoparticles with different concentrations (1.56–400 μg/mL) was measured by means of the brine shrimp lethality test. At the second stage, the effect of nanoparticles on the viability of the L929 cell line was assessed using the MTT assay. Experiments were conducted with each concentration in triplicate. The results obtained from both tests (A. salina test and MTT assay) did not have statistically significant differences (P > 0.05). These findings suggest that the A. salina test may expedite toxicity experiments and decrease costs, and therefore, may be considered an alternative to the in vitro cell culture assay.

Molecular Mechanisms and Biological Functions of siRNA

Abstract: One of the most important advances in biology has been the discovery that siRNA (small interfering RNA) is able to regulate the expression of genes, by a phenomenon known as RNAi (RNA interference). The discovery of RNAi, first in plants and Caenorhabditis elegans and later in mammalian cells, led to the emergence of a transformative view in biomedical research. siRNA has gained attention as a potential therapeutic reagent due to its ability to inhibit specific genes in many genetic diseases. siRNAs can be used as tools to study single gene function both in vivo and in-vitro and are an attractive new class of therapeutics, especially against undruggable targets for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. The siRNA delivery systems are categorized as non-viral and viral delivery systems. The non-viral delivery system includes polymers; Lipids; peptides etc. are the widely studied delivery systems for siRNA. Effective pharmacological use of siRNA requires 'carriers' that can deliver the siRNA to its intended site of action. The carriers assemble the siRNA into supramolecular complexes that display functional properties during the delivery process.

A Fuzzy DEMATEL framework for modeling cause and effect relationships of strategy map

Abstract: Research highlights? The proposed framework can identify cause and effect relationships among strategic objectives of strategy map through processing of the expertise and knowledge of senior managers. In this process, the integrated structure is introduced for the macro level balanced scorecard. And in addition to the mathematical modeling of cause and effect relationships, a decision support system could be presented that may increase the efficiency of the balanced scorecard management system. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a widely adopted performance management framework first introduced in the early 1990s. More recently, it has been proposed as the basic for a strategic management system. Strategy mapping is the most important task in building a Balanced Scorecard system. Strategy mapping is the process for visually making cause and effect relationships between all possible strategic objectives in an organization. The process for building and constructing a strategy map is a human centric activity which could be considered as the combination and integration of all knowledge and preferences of the managerial boards. From the view point of strategic decision making in an organization, the process for building a strategy map could be viewed in a general body of a unified group decision making context. If we see the strategy map, as a structural modeling framework for making the cause and effect relationships among the strategic objectives, it is possible to deploy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) as a framework for structural modeling approach subject to the problem. The DEMATEL method gathers collective knowledge to capture the causal relationships between strategic criteria. The model is especially practical and useful for visualizing the structure of complicated causal relationships with matrices or digraphs. Generally speaking, because in building any strategy map, the assigned preferences between the objectives are not crisp necessarily, and experts' domain knowledge could be extracted in a fuzzy environment, then the extended fuzzy DEMATEL is proposed to deal with the ambiguities inherent of such the judgments.