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BIOMEDICINE

Edited by Chao Lin

Biomedicine

Edited by Chao Lin

Published by InTech

Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia

Copyright © 2012 InTech

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Notice

Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors

and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the

accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no

responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any

materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book.

Publishing Process Manager Anja Filipovic

Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic

Cover Designer InTech Design Team

First published March, 2012

Printed in Croatia

A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com

Additional hard copies can be obtained from [email protected]

Biomedicine, Edited by Chao Lin

p. cm.

ISBN 978-953-51-0352-3

Contents

Preface IX

Part 1 Regenerative Medicine 1

Chapter 1 Encapsulation and Surface Engineering of Pancreatic Islets:

Advances and Challenges 3

Veronika Kozlovskaya, Oleksandra Zavgorodnya

and Eugenia Kharlampieva

Chapter 2 In-Situ Forming Biomimetic

Hydrogels for Tissue Regeneration 35

Rong Jin

Part 2 Gene Medicine and Nanobiomedicine 59

Chapter 3 RNA Interference for Tumor Therapy 61

Wei Xia and Jing Ni

Chapter 4 Bioreducible Cationic Polymers

for Gene Transfection 85

Chao Lin and Bo Lou

Chapter 5 Stable Magnetic Isotopes

as a New Trend in Biomedicine 105

Vitaly K. Koltover

Part 3 Medical Device Performance 123

Chapter 6 Optical Fiber Gratings in Perspective

of Their Applications in Biomedicine 125

Vandana Mishra and Nahar Singh

Chapter 7 Additive Manufacturing

Solutions for Improved Medical Implants 147

Vojislav Petrovic, Juan Vicente Haro,

Jose Ramón Blasco and Luis Portolés

VI Contents

Part 4 Public Perception of Biomedicine 181

Chapter 8 Crossings on Public Perception of Biomedicine:

Spain and the European Indicators 183

Eulalia Pérez Sedeño and María José Miranda Suárez

Preface

How to successfully circumvent human disease? How to efficaciously treat human

disease? How to healthily live to a decent age? These problems have baffled our

ancestors for a few centuries. People have attempted to address these puzzled

problems since recorded time, but the answers are often disruptive and even

unreliable in part due to the modification or alteration of medical principles in every

history era. Over the past decades, comprehensive and systematic scientific researches

in cell biology and molecular biology have accelerated the evolution of traditional

medicine. Scientists are now able to investigate these problems on the basis of

molecular levels. Thus, the purpose of this book is to interpret clinical and

fundamental medical findings through the lens of 21st-century biomedicine. The

contents of this book provide readers with a broad spectrum of basic biomedical

understanding dealing with regenerative medicine, gene medicine, and medical

devices.

Biomedicine can be divided into four sections: regenerative medicine in Chapter 1 and

2; gene medicine and nanobiomedicine in Chapter 3 to 5; biomedical device

performance in Chapter 6 and 7; and public perception of medicine in Chapter 8. Each

chapter is intently chosen and written by invited experts or physicians from

professional biomedical field, to address hot issues related with contemporary

biomedical science. Additionally, the core concepts in each chapter are highlighted

and the authors wish readers to grasp them smoothly through readily readable

schemes and colourful illustrations. The reference lists also comprise state-of-the-art

reviews, relevant research articles, proceedings in frontier conferences, which are

certainly helpful to beginners for further learning.

Chapter 1 provides a complete overview on current methods for the protection of

isolated pancreatic islets from host immune response. The authors emphasize an

emerging lay-by-lay technique as an innovative route to maintain viability and

functions of islet, implying great promise for the treat of diabetes. Next, in-situ

forming hydrogels as scaffolds for tissue regeneration are summarized in Chapter 2.

Several types of hydrogels that are bioactive and bio-response are outlined in detail

and indicated to be highly desirable for clinical practices. Chapter 3 gives an

introduction on recent progress in RNA interference (RNAi) for cancer therapy,

including mechanisms of gene silencing, cancer-related gene targets for RNAi and

X Preface

RNAi-based clinical trails, although there remain big challenges for clinical RNAi. A

latest research arena in the improvement of clinical drug availability is the

“nanobiomedicine”, since nanoscale carriers loaded with drugs or genes reveal high

possibility for efficient and targeted delivery. Chapter 4 presents the advancement in

disulfide-based cationic polymers, in response to intracellular reducing milieu, as

nano-carriers for gene transfection. Chapter 5 brings a new outlook on stable magnetic

isotopes, which might offer the generation of new pharmaceuticals for biomedical

applications. Medical devices are very crucial for diagnosis and therapy of human

diseases. Chapter 6 provides recent research progress of fiber-gating sensors for

medical diagnosis to facilitate surgery and clinical therapy. The history, working

principle and fabrications of optical fiber gratings are introduced thoroughly. In

Chapter 7, electron beam melting for processing ferrous metallic powders to fully￾dense materials is discussed and this technique is valuable in the field of medical

implants. At last, a review in Chapter 8 points out the evolution process of public

perception on biomedicine in the last decades through survey and statistical data in

Spain and other European countries. This chapter is constructive to alarm scientists to

take into account public awareness on medicine rather than scientific activity alone.

Thus, I truly believe that Biomedicine is a valuable book that may assist readers to be

aware of current advancement in rapidly moving field of biomedicine.

Chao Lin

Tongji University School of Medicine

Tongji University

Shanghai,

PR China

Part 1

Regenerative Medicine

1

Encapsulation and Surface Engineering of

Pancreatic Islets: Advances and Challenges

Veronika Kozlovskaya, Oleksandra Zavgorodnya

and Eugenia Kharlampieva

Department of Chemistry, University of Alabama at Birmingham

USA

1. Introduction

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a chronic autoimmune disease representing a major health care

problem worldwide (Tierney et al., 2002). T1D is caused by islet-reactive immune T cells that

destroy insulin-producing pancreatic β-cells. Transplantation of insulin-producing

pancreatic islets by their injection in vascularized organs has been recently recognized as a

promising path to curing diabetes (Meloche, 2007; Robertson, 2000). However, despite the

significant promise, the clinical application of the procedure remains limited due to (a)

limited supply of islets suitable for transplantation, (b) a hypoxia because of a low tension of

oxygen at the implantation sites and (c) an acute rejection during transplantation. One of the

challenges is associated with isolation and culturing islets in vitro before injection. In the

pancreas, endocrine cells of the islet clusters are separated from exocrine cells by a

discontinuous mantle of collagen fibers defining their respective basement membrane.

During collagenase isolation of islets from the pancreas, further disruption of the islet

mantle results in preparations exhibiting various morphological changes (islet

fragmentation, fusion) under routine tissue culture conditions, particularly in human islets

(Lacy & Kostianovsky, 1967). Attenuation of islet viability and functionality accompanies

these morphological changes. The second issue is associated with islet transplantation which

requires immunosuppression to protect the donor islets from the host immune response and

prevent implant rejection and post-surgery inflammations (Ricordi & Strom, 2004). Despite

the fact that a range of immunosuppressive drugs have demonstrated pharmacologically

inhibitory effects on pro-inflammatory cytokines (Riachy et al., 2002; Contreras et al., 2002;

Lv et al., 2008; Stosic-Grujicic et al., 2001), the use of immunosuppressive molecules is very

specific since they can induce non-specific suppression of the immune system resulting in

serious side effects and increased risk of infection which can work against the benefits of a

transplant (Narang & Mahato, 2006). These issues have inspired the development of a

number of strategies to prevent immunogenic reactions and stabilize islet morphology and

functionality, both in vitro and following transplantation in vivo (Chandy et al., 1999;

Abalovich et al., 2001). Two major approaches have been introduced to prevent

immunogenic reactions on the islet surfaces: macro and microencapsulation of the islet cells

and islet cell surface modification (Fig. 1) (De Vos et al., 2003; Panza et al., 2000; Scott &

Murad, 1998; Opara et al., 2010).