Daniel Calle

Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón | HGGM · Experimental Research Unit

Purpose. The Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus bacterium is one of the leading causes of infection in humans. The lack of specific noninvasive techniques for diagnosis of staphylococcal infection together with the severity of its associated complications support the need for new specific and selective diagnostic tools. This work presents the succ...

Background and Aims Hyponatremia is the most common electrolyte disturbance in clinical care. Even mild presentations are associated with poor prognosis and increased mortality, in spite of which there is a trend to minimize the importance of small variations in natremia, that have historically been dismissed as not having negative consequences des...

Background and Purpose Reperfusion therapy is the standard of care for ischaemic stroke; however, there is a need to identify new therapeutic targets able to ameliorate cerebral damage. Neutrophil β1 adrenoceptors (β1AR) have been linked to neutrophil migration during exacerbated inflammation. Given the central role of neutrophils in cerebral damag...

Stimuli-responsive nanomaterials are very attractive for biomedical applications. They can be activated through external stimuli or by the physico-chemical conditions present in cells or tissues. Here, we describe the preparation of hybrid iron oxide-manganese oxide core-satellite shell nanostructures that change their contrast mode in magnetic res...

In both clinical and preclinical scenarios, 2-deoxy-2[18F]fluoro-D-glucose ([18F]FDG) is the radiotracer most widely used to study brain glucose metabolism with positron emission tomography (PET). In clinical practice, there is a worldwide standardized protocol for preparing patients for [18F]FDG-PET studies, which specifies the room lighting. Howe...

Mutations in the EPM2A and EPM2B genes, encoding laforin and malin proteins respectively, are responsible for Lafora disease, a fatal form of progressive myoclonus epilepsy with autosomal recessive inheritance. Neuroimaging studies of patients with Lafora disease have shown different degrees of brain atrophy, decreased glucose brain uptake and alte...

Nowadays, biomaterials have become a crucial element in numerous biomedical, preclinical, and clinical applications. The use of nanoparticles entails a great potential in these fields mainly because of the high ratio of surface atoms that modify the physicochemical properties and increases the chemical reactivity. Among them, carbon nanotubes (CNTs...

Nowadays, biomaterials have become a crucial element in numerous biomedical, preclinical, and clinical applications. The use of nanoparticles entails a great potential in these fields mainly because of the high ratio of surface atoms that modify the physicochemical properties and increases the chemical reactivity. Among them, carbon nanotubes (CNTs...

The Front Cover shows an occlusion in an artery which is marked by bimodal nanoparticles and detected by optical coherence tomography, while being exposed to a magnetic field, thereby improving the signal. More information can be found in the Article by J. Hu et al.

The front cover artwork is provided by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, the Jožef Stefan Institute Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the university hospitals Gregorio Marañon and La Princesa in Madrid, Spain. The image shows an occlusion in an artery which is marked by bimodal nanoparticles and detected by optical coherence tomography, while being exp...

Improving clinical techniques for cardiovascular imaging is important for better diagnosis / treatment of cardiovascular diseases, a main cause of mortality in western countries. One problem is a lack of contrast and hence the difficult interpretation of intracoronary images, especially those achieved by optical techniques, such as intracoronary op...

BACKGROUND Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most common cause of cancer death worldwide. It is broadly described that cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is mainly overexpressed in CRC but less is known regarding post-translational modifications of this enzyme that may regulate its activity, intracellular localization and stability. Since metabolic and p...

We report on the magnetic properties of stable suspensions from oxidized Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNT) functionalized with aminopyrene (AP). MWCNT form π−π stacking adducts with AP (AP-MWCNT), originating homogenous, stable, suspensions in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) or melted agarose. First, we investigated the magneto-optical properties of...

Magnetic resonance images are obtained by a combination of different radiofrequency pulses and gradient waveforms applied to the subject inside a magnetic field. There are multiple pulse sequences used in clinical and preclinical studies adjusted to whatever physician or researches want to analyze, from basic anatomic images to accurate diagnostic...

Clinical imaging modalities have reached a prominent role in medical diagnosis and patient management in the last decades. Different image methodologies as Positron Emission Tomography, Single Photon Emission Tomography, X-Rays, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging are in continuous evolution to satisfy the increasing demands of current medical diagnosis....

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a technique based on the contents and relaxation features of water in tissues. In basic MRI sequences, diffusion phenomenon of water molecules is not taken into account although it has a notable influence in the relaxation times, and therefore in the signal intensity of images. In fact, MRI techniques that take a...

In recent years, while the research budget and development times increased for different phases of drug development, the number of clinically approved new medicines declined. In fact, many promising drug candidates failed to demonstrate their full therapeutic potential in vivo. Reasons for unfavorable outcome include some intrinsic properties of dr...

We describe the preparation, physico-chemical characterization and anti-inflammatory properties of liposomes containing the superparamagnetic nanoparticle Nanotex, the fluorescent dye Rhodamine-100 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid ethyl ester (ω-3 PUFA-EE), as theranostic anti-inflammatory agents. Liposomes were prepared after drying chlorofo...

The relaxivity displayed by Gd3+ chelates immobilized onto gold nanoparticles is the result of the complex interplay between the nanoparticle size, the water exchange rate and the chelate structure. In this work we study the effect of the length of ω-thioalkyl linkers, anchoring fast water exchanging Gd3+ chelates onto gold nanoparticles, on the re...

We report on the preparation and characterization of magnetically oriented single-walled carbon nanotube arrangements as novel nanoprobes to enhance anisotropically water relaxation as detected by magnetic resonance imaging methods. SWCNT suspensions immobilized in agarose gels showed evident magnetic anisotropy with significantly longer T2 in the...

A novel synthetic methodology for preparing amide conjugates of the DO3A-N-(α-amino)propionate chelator is described, using the synthesis of the DO3A-N-(α-benzoylamido)propionate chelator as an illustrative example. The model Gd[DO3A-N-(α-benzoylamido)propionate] chelate displays accelerated water exchange, stability in a wide pH range and inertnes...

Even though alterations in the microenvironmental properties of tissues underlie the development of the most prevalent and morbid pathologies, they are not directly observable in vivo by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) or Spectroscopy (MRS) methods. This circumstance has lead to the development of a wide variety of exogenous paramagnetic and diama...