Brain diseases, including psychosis, neurological disorders, strokes, etc., account for more than 15% of all global health damage, which is higher than that caused by cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Brain health and the treatment of brain diseases have become major challenges of the 21st century. The past few decades have witnessed a series of significant advances in human brain science research. The pathogenesis of brain diseases at the molecular and genetic level is being revealed, indicating promising outcomes. However, the existence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) significantly impedes the delivery of drugs and genes to the brain, which seriously hinders the treatment of brain diseases. This review article provides a brief overview of the concept and history of the BBB. We focus on the critical obstacles and solutions of different kinds of therapeutics, including small molecule drugs, peptides, proteins, and genes, to break through the BBB. Delivery mechanisms, strategies, and vehicles are summarized. Recent advances and efforts in drug delivery studies that aim to overcome the BBB will greatly facilitate the development of brain disease treatment.

This mini-review explores advancements in the synthesis of nano-carrier-based drug delivery systems using microfluidic chip technology and their evaluation using tumor organ-on-a-chip models. We discuss the principles and advantages of hydrodynamic fluid focusing (HFF) and micromixer for synthesizing polymeric nano-carriers, highlighting their ability to precisely control particle size, shape, and surface properties. The functionalization of nano-carriers for targeted drug delivery is also explored, emphasizing the potential for personalized medicine. The review emphasizes the use of tumor organ-on-a-chip models for evaluating nano-carrier-based drug delivery systems, highlighting their ability to simulate physiological environments and provide dynamic and controllable evaluation platforms. This approach holds great promise for enhancing our understanding of drug behaviors and accelerating the translation of nanomedicines from bench to bedside.

Nanoscience and nanotechnology have steered in the new era of medical innovation and offered a promising solution to the longstanding challenges in the healthcare due to size dependent physicochemical properties. The ability to engineer the specific nanostructures makes the nanomaterials more attractive and find potential applications in the field of biomedical sciences. Among various noble metal nanomaterials, copper and copper-based nanomaterials are considered as a unique nanomaterial for multitude of the biomedical applications. Plant biomolecules contain various terpenoids, alkaloids, flavonoids, flavones, proteins, polyphenols, saponins, tannins, steroids, as well as other nutritional compounds; which are capable of acting as reducing and capping agents for copper-based nanomaterials formation. Biosynthesis of copper-based nanomaterials has great advantages due to less-toxicity, biocompatible, antiviral or anti-bacterial properties for the development of bio-sensor or drug delivery application. In this mini-review, the biosensor and drug delivery potential of the copper-based functional nano-formulation are discussed.

A large amount of medical equipment is now extensively utilized in healthcare institutions to assist clinical practitioners in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. And the applications of such advanced and sophisticated medical equipment have greatly improved the quality of patient care, significantly alleviated the sufferings of patients, and facilitated their rehabilitation. Nevertheless, failures and malfunctions of medical equipment have compromised its reliability and effectiveness as well as jeopardizing the safety of patients and clinical staffs. And a majority of the failures can be attributed to the insufficient and inappropriate maintenance. Therefore, it is imperative to implement effective maintenance management to ensure that medical equipment is in its optimal function, and thereby mitigating the clinical risk resulted by adverse events. The presented review mainly discussed the maintenance strategies of medical equipment including corrective maintenance, preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance. In order to replace the fixed-interval of preventive maintenance, we systematically discussed methods to adjust the maintenance period. Additionally, two strategies to predicting future failures of medical equipment through processing and analyzing the maintenance data obtained from the historical maintenance logs and condition data collected by the embedded sensors are elaborated. Besides, the classification and life cycle of medical equipment are also summarized.