There is significant current interest in identifying new combination therapies that synergize to treat disease, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the temporal resolution of their administration greatly impacts efficacy. To facilitate effective delivery, we developed a multicompartment hydrogel material composed of spherical vesicles interlaced within a self-assembled peptide-based network of physically crosslinked fibrils that allows time-resolved independent co-delivery of small molecules. Herein, we demonstrate that this material architecture effectively delivers the EGFR kinase inhibitor erlotinib (ERL) and doxorubicin (DOX, DNA intercalator) in an ERL→DOX sequential manner to synergistically kill glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer.

Tumors growing in a sheet-like manner on the surface of organs and tissues with complex topologies represent a difficult-to-treat clinical scenario. Their complete surgical resection is difficult due to the complicated anatomy of the diseased tissue. Residual cancer often responds poorly to systemic therapy and locoregional treatment is hindered by the limited accessibility to microscopic tumor foci. Here we engineered a peptide-based surface-fill hydrogel (SFH) that can be syringe- or spray-delivered to surface cancers during surgery or used as a primary therapy. Once applied, SFH can shape change in response to alterations in tissue morphology that may occur during surgery. Implanted SFH releases nanoparticles composed of miRNA and intrinsically disordered peptides that enter cancer cells attenuating their oncogenic signature. With a single application, SFH shows efficacy in four preclinical models of mesothelioma demonstrating a therapeutic impact of local application of tumor-specific miRNA, which might change the treatment paradigm for mesothelioma and possibly other surface cancers.

This study presents a systematic review and meta-analysis over the findings of significance of correlations between weather parameters (temperature, humidity, rainfall, ultra violet radiation, wind speed) and COVID-19. The meta-analysis was performed by using ‘meta’ package in R studio. We found significant correlation between temperature (0.11 [95% CI 0.01–0.22], 0.22 [95% CI, 0.16–0.28] for fixed effect death rate and incidence, respectively), humidity (0.14 [95% CI 0.07–0.20] for fixed effect incidence) and wind speed (0.58 [95% CI 0.49–0.66] for fixed effect incidence) with the death rate and incidence of COVID-19 (p < 0.01). The study included 11 articles that carried extensive research work on more than 110 country-wise data set. Thus, we can show that weather can be considered as an important element regarding the correlation with COVID-19.

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