Beatrice A. Brugger

The eco- and human toxicity and manufacturing sustainability of two different design options of antimicrobial water filtration membranes embedded with sonochemical CuO NPs were evaluated through a Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) approach.

Nanoparticle radioenhancement offers a promising strategy for augmenting radiotherapy by locally increasing radiation damage to tumor tissue. While past research has predominantly focused on nanomaterials with high atomic numbers, such as Au and HfO ₂ , recent work has revealed that their radioenhancement efficacy decreases considerably when using clinically relevant megavoltage X‐rays as opposed to the orthovoltage X‐rays typically employed in research settings. Here, radiocatalytically active Ti‐based nanomaterials for clinical X‐ray therapy settings are designed. A range of candidate materials, including TiO ₂ (optionally decorated with Ag or Pt nanoseeds), Ti‐containing metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), and 2D Ti‐based carbides known as Ti ₃ C ₂ T _x MXenes, is investigated. It is demonstrated that these titanium‐based candidates remain consistently performant across a wide energy spectrum, from orthovoltage to megavoltage. This sustained performance is attributed to the catalytic generation of reactive oxygen species, moving beyond the simple physical dose enhancements associated with photoelectric effects. Beyond titania, emergent materials like titanium‐based MOFs and MXenes exhibit encouraging results, achieving dose‐enhancement factors of up to three in human soft tissue sarcoma cells. Notably, these enhancements are absent in healthy human fibroblast cells under similar conditions of particle uptake, underscoring the selective impact of titanium‐based materials in augmenting radiotherapy across the clinically relevant spectral range.

With establishment of uteroplacental blood flow, the perfused fetal chorionic tissue has to deal with fluid shear stress that is produced by hemodynamic forces across different trophoblast subtypes. Amongst many other cell types, trophoblasts are able to sense fluid shear stress through mechanotransduction. Failure in the adaption of trophoblasts to fluid shear stress is suggested to contribute to pregnancy disorders. Thus, in the past twenty years, a significant body of work has been devoted to human- and animal-derived trophoblast culture under microfluidic conditions, using a rather broad range of different fluid shear stress values as well as various different flow systems, ranging from commercially 2D to customized 3D flow culture systems. The great variations in the experimental setup reflect the general heterogeneity in blood flow through different segments of the uteroplacental circulation. While fluid shear stress is moderate in invaded uterine spiral arteries, it drastically declines after entrance of the maternal blood into the wide cavity of the intervillous space. Here, we provide an overview of the increasing body of evidence that substantiates an important influence of maternal blood flow on several aspects of trophoblast physiology, including cellular turnover and differentiation, trophoblast metabolism, as well as endocrine activity, and motility. Future trends in trophoblast flow culture will incorporate the physiological low oxygen conditions in human placental tissue and pulsatile blood flow in the experimental setup. Investigation of trophoblast mechanotransduction and development of mechanosome modulators will be another intriguing future direction.