Publications

@article{McCrorie2020-ag,

title = {Biomedical engineering approaches to enhance therapeutic 

 delivery for malignant glioma},

author = {Phoebe McCrorie and Catherine E Vasey and Stuart J Smith and Maria Marlow and Cameron Alexander and Ruman Rahman},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-12-01},

journal = {J. Control. Release},

volume = {328},

pages = {917\textendash931},

publisher = {Elsevier BV},

abstract = {We review the challenges of next-generation therapeutics for 

 both systemic and localised delivery to brain tumours and 

 discuss how recent engineering advances may be used to enhance 

 brain penetration of systemic delivery therapies. The unmet 

 clinical need which drug delivery seeks to address is discussed 

 with reference to the therapy obstacles that the intra-tumour 

 heterogeneity of glioma present. The unmet chemistry and 

 biomedical engineering challenge to develop controlled release 

 therapeutics is appraised, with commentary on current 

 success/failures in systemic carrier-mediated delivery, 

 including receptor-targeted, cell-based, blood-brain-barrier 

 disrupting and MRI-guided focused ultrasound. Localised 

 therapeutic delivery is a relatively under-studied research 

 avenue and is discussed with reference to existing technologies 

 in preclinical development. These include convection-enhanced 

 delivery, alternative catheter delivery, and neuro-surgically 

 applied delivery systems such as polymeric hydrogels and 

 interstitial spray. A myriad of nano-scale therapeutic delivery 

 systems is emerging as potential future medicines for malignant 

 brain tumours. Such biomedically-engineered systems will 

 increasingly feature in next-generation neuro-oncological 

 clinical trials to deliver repurposed and experimental 

 therapeutics, aimed at achieving therapeutic drug concentrations 

 in the brain, with associated mortality and morbidity benefits 

 for patients.},

keywords = {blood-brain-barrier, brain tumour, Drug delivery, nanoparticles, Polymers, Receptor-targeting},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Sinjab2020-az,

title = {Induction and measurement of the early stage of a host-parasite 

 interaction using a combined optical trapping and Raman 

 microspectroscopy system},

author = {Faris Sinjab and Hany M Elsheikha and Max Dooley and Ioan Notingher},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-02-01},

journal = {J. Biophotonics},

volume = {13},

number = {2},

pages = {e201960065},

publisher = {Wiley},

abstract = {Understanding and quantifying the temporal acquisition of host 

 cell molecules by intracellular pathogens is fundamentally 

 important in biology. In this study, a recently developed 

 holographic optical trapping (HOT)-based Raman microspectroscopy 

 (RMS) instrument is applied to detect, characterize and monitor 

 in real time the molecular trafficking of a specific molecular 

 species (isotope-labeled phenylalanine (L-Phe(D8)) at the single 

 cell level. This approach enables simultaneous measurement of 

 the chemical composition of human cerebrovascular endothelial 

 cells and the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii in isolation 

 at the very start of the infection process. Using a model to 

 decouple measurement contributions from host and pathogen 

 sampling in the excitation volume, the data indicate that 

 manipulating parasites with HOT coupled with RMS chemical 

 readout was an effective method for measurement of L-Phe(D8) 

 transfer from host cells to parasites in real-time, from the 

 moment the parasite enters the host cell.},

keywords = {blood-brain-barrier, host-parasite interaction, optical trapping, Raman spectroscopy, Toxoplasma gondii},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}