Matthew J.

Chronic non-healing wounds significantly strain modern healthcare systems, affecting 1–2% of the population in developed countries with costs ranging between $28.1 and $96.8 billion annually. Additionally, it has been established that chronic wounds resulting from comorbidities, such as peripheral vascular disease and diabetes mellitus, tend to be polymicrobial in nature. Treatment of polymicrobial chronic wounds with oral and IV antibiotics can result in antimicrobial resistance, leading to more difficult-to-treat wounds. Ideally, chronic ulcers would be topically treated with antibiotic combinations tailored to the microbiome of a patient’s wound. We have previously shown that a topical collagen-rich hydrogel (cHG) can elute single antibiotics to inhibit bacterial growth in a manner that is nontoxic to mammalian cells. Here, we analyzed the microbiology of cultures taken from human patients diagnosed with diabetes mellitus suffering from chronic wounds present for more than 6 weeks. Additionally, we examined the safety of the elution of multiple antibiotics from collagen-rich hydrogel in mammalian cells in vivo. Finally, we aimed to create tailored combinations of antibiotics impregnated into cHG to successfully target and treat infections and eradicate biofilms cultured from human chronic diabetic wound tissue. We found that the majority of human chronic wounds in our study were polymicrobial in nature. The elution of multiple antibiotics from cHG was well-tolerated in mammalian cells, making it a potential topical treatment of the polymicrobial chronic wound. Finally, combinations of antibiotics tailored to each patient’s microbiome eluted from a collagen-rich hydrogel successfully treated bacterial cultures isolated from patient samples via an in vitro assay.

Single-molecule imaging reveals that peptidoglycan synthesis and synthase activity, rather than FtsZ treadmilling, are rate limiting and drive septum constriction in Staphylococcus aureus.

Abstract Optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs) offer a new wearable means to measure magnetoencephalography (MEG) signals, with many advantages compared to conventional systems.

Trigonelline is identified as a human metabolite that can be used for NAD+ synthesis and is shown to improve muscle function in aged worms and mice.

A modelling framework characterising the dynamics of Plasmodium vivax lactate dehydrogenase provides estimates of key biological parameters to facilitate the development of improved diagnostic tools for the detection of P. vivax.

Abstract Therapeutic vaccines that elicit cytotoxic T cell responses targeting tumor-specific neoantigens hold promise for providing long-term clinical benefit to patients with cancer.

A genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screen in osimertinib-treated EGFR mutant cell lines identifies the Hippo pathway as an important non-genetic mechanism of cell survival in persister cells.

Abstract We present a transmon qubit fabrication technique that yields systematic improvements in T relaxation times.

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The preparation and processing of rodent brains for evaluation by immunohistochemistry is time-consuming. A large number of mouse brains are routinely used in experiments in neuroscience laboratories to evaluate several models of human diseases. Thus, methods are needed to reduce the time associated with processing brains for histology. A scalable method was developed to embed, section, and stain multiple mouse brains using supplies found in any common histology laboratory. Section collection schemes can be scaled to provide identical bregma locations between adjacent sections for immunohistochemistry, facilitating comprehensive, high-quality immunohistochemistry. As a result, sectioning and staining times are considerably reduced as sections from multiple blocks are stained simultaneously. This method improves on previous procedures and allows multiple embedding and subsequent immunostaining of brains easily with a dramatically reduced time requirement. Furthermore, we expand this method for use in numerous mouse tissues, rat brain tissue, and post-mortem human brain and arterial tissues. In summary, this procedure allows the processing of many rodent or human tissues from perfusion through microscopy in 10 days or less.