The present work describes the fabrication of Ni–graphene composite coatings on carbon steel at different deposition temperatures (15 °C, 30 °C, 45 °C and 60 °C, respectively) by an electrochemical codeposition method.

Lipids, as the greatest constituent in cell membranes, have been widely used for biomedical applications because of their excellent biological properties. The introduction of membrane lipid molecules into gene vectors would embody greater biocompatibility, cellular uptake and transfection efficiency. In this work, one flexible strategy for readily conjugating lipid molecules with polycations was proposed based on atom transfer radical polymerization to produce a series of cholesterol (CHO)- and phosphatidylinositol (PI)-terminated ethanolamine-functionalized poly(glycidyl methacrylate)s, namely CHO-PGEAs and PI-PGEAs, as effective gene carriers. CHO-PGEAs and PI-PGEAs truly demonstrated much better transfection performances compared to linear ethanolamine-functionalized poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (denoted as BUCT-PGEA) counterparts and traditional standard branched polythylenimine (PEI, 25 kDa). In addition, the good antitumor effects of CHO-PGEA and PI-PGEA were confirmed with suppressor tumor gene p53 systems in vitro and in vivo. The present work could provide a new strategy to develop effective cationic conjugation of lipid molecules for gene therapy.

Long-time environmental protection of metallic materials is still required in the manufacturing and engineering applications.

There is an increasing demand for developing new materials and approaches for rapid and sensitive detection of protease biomarkers. Herein, the poly­(methacrylic acid) (PMAA) brushes were synthesized from silica nanoparticles via surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), and flexibly functionalized with different fluorescein-labeled peptides, serving as the substrates for protease assay. To facilitate the point-of-care detection of protease, polyacrylamide gel pad arrays were fabricated to allow permeation of fluorescein-labeled peptide fragments cleaved from the PMAA brushes. This experimental setup enables an on-chip protease assay with an adequate limit of detection (LOD) for detecting trypsin in a buffer solution (3.9 pM) or in serum (1.4 nM) and good specificity for differentiation of trypsin and chymotrypsin. By using this experimental setup, matrix metalloproteinase-2 and matrix metalloproteinase-9 can be detected with LODs of 2.5 nM and 3.3 nM, respectively. Moreover, by introducing an adamantine (Ad) motif to the side-chain of the peptide fragment and β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) groups to the gel pad matrix, a 2.2-fold lower LOD was achieved for the detection of trypsin (1.8 pM) due to the supramolecular self-assembly of Ad and β-CD. Given the advances in the ease of sample handling, this rational design of peptide-functionalized PMAA brushes could be useful for on-chip detection of protease biomarkers or the screening of potential protease inhibitors.