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JongWon Kim^1,2, Ning Li², Ramana Pidaparti^2,*, Xianqiao Wang^2,*
Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.15, No.3, pp. 127-141, 2018, DOI: 10.3970/mcb.2018.02669
Abstract Nonlinear microstructure of the microtubules (MTs) plays an important role in their mechanical properties. Despite the extensive efforts into the development of continuum models for microtubules, a mesoscale finite element model that can link the molecular level information to the overall performance of microtubules is still missing. The aim of this study is to develop a molecular dynamics model (MDM), finite element model (FEM) and structural mechanics beam model (SMBM) for tubulins of protofilament (PF). In MDM, the backbone atoms of α-tubulin were fixed while the backbone atoms of β-tubulin were attached to a molecular dynamics (MD) atom through a… More >

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Ying Mao¹, Chaojing Li¹, Peng Ge¹, Fujun Wang^1,*, Lu Wang^1,*
Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.15, No.3, pp. 143-154, 2018, DOI: 10.3970/mcb.2018.03987
Abstract Heparin/ PEG-PCL core-shell microcarriers were fabricated in one-step via coaxial-electrospraying technology. Optimization of the coaxial-electrospraying processing is by controlling the PEG-PCL concentration, applied voltage, receiving distance, and feed rate. The influence of the electrospray parameters on microsphere morphology was studied by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The functional groups and components of the electrosprayed microspheres were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Transmission electron microscope (TEM) observation proved the core-shell structure of heparin-loaded PEG-PCL microspheres. Drug loading and releasing study demonstrated that PEG-PCL concentration could control the encapsulation efficiency and releasing activity of the heparin in the microspheres.… More >

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Solenne Mondésert-Deveraux^{1, *}, Rachele Allena², Denis Aubry¹
Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.15, No.3, pp. 155-176, 2018, DOI: 10.3970/mcb.2018.03053
Abstract Cell migration is the cornerstone of many biological phenomena such as cancer metastasis, immune response or organogenesis. Adhesion-based motility is the most renown and examined motility mode, but in an adhesion-free confined environment or simply to achieve a higher migration speed, cells can adopt a very interesting bleb-based migration mode called “chimneying”. This mode rests on the sharp synchronization between the active contraction of the cells uropod and the passive friction force between the cell and the confining surface. In this paper, we propose a one dimensional poroelastic model of chimneying which considers the active strains of the cell, but,… More >

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Ruihan Zhang^1,2, Junhao Yang¹, Chunxiao Chen^1,*
Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.15, No.3, pp. 177-187, 2018, DOI: 10.3970/mcb.2018.04292
Abstract The proportion of cells staining for the nuclear antigen Ki-67 is an important predictive indicator for assessment of tumor cell proliferation and growth in routine pathological investigation. Instead of traditional scoring methods based on the experience of a trained laboratory scientist, deep learning approach can be automatically used to analyze the expression of Ki-67 as well. Deep learning based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) for image classification and single shot multibox detector (SSD) for object detection are used to investigate the expression of Ki-67 for assessment of biopsies from patients with breast cancer in this study. The results focus on… More >

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