In this meeting report, particularly addressing the topic of protection of the cardiovascular system from ischemia/reperfusion injury, highlights are presented that relate to conditioning strategies of the heart with respect to molecular mechanisms and outcome in patients' cohorts, the influence of co-morbidities and medications, as well as the contribution of innate immune reactions in cardioprotection. Moreover, developmental or systems biology approaches bear great potential in systematically uncovering unexpected components involved in ischemia-reperfusion injury or heart regeneration. Based on the characterization of particular platelet integrins, mitochondrial redox-linked proteins, or lipid-diol compounds in cardiovascular diseases, their targeting by newly developed theranostics and technologies opens new avenues for diagnosis and therapy of myocardial infarction to improve the patients' outcome.
Pathogenic free-living amoebae including Acanthamoeba spp., Balamuthia mandrillaris, and Naegleria fowleri cause infections of the central nervous system (CNS), which almost always prove fatal. The mortality rate is high with the CNS infections caused by these microbes despite modern developments in healthcare and antimicrobial chemotherapy. The low awareness, delayed diagnosis, and lack of effective drugs are major hurdles to overcome these challenges. Nanomaterials have emerged as vital tools for concurrent diagnosis and therapy, which are commonly referred to as theranostics. Nanomaterials offer highly sensitive diagnostic systems and viable therapeutic effects as a single modality. There has been good progress to develop nanomaterials based efficient theranostic systems against numerous kinds of tumors, but this field is yet immature in the context of infectious diseases, particularly parasitic infections. Herein, we describe the potential value of theranostic applications of nanomaterials against brain infections due to pathogenic amoebae.