Biological animal experiments

Toxicity data on niobium and its compounds are sparse. The most common materials, e.g., niobium concentrates, ferroniobium, niobium metal and niobium alloys, appear to be relatively inert biologically. Limited animal experiments show high toxicity for some salts, which arc related to disturbance of enzyme action, Niobium hydride lias moderate fibiogenic and general toxic action. Recommended maximum allowable concentrations arc 6 mg/m3. Recommended maximum permissible concentration of Nb ill reservoir water is 0.01 mg/L. The threshold for affecting clarity and biological oxygen demand (BOD) is 0.1 mg/L. 

It is important to understand, however, that any animal experiment in the laboratory is an artificial situation, and it may be biologically different from the natural behavior of the animal. Thus, it is crucial to correctly interpret the animal behavior observed in an experiment in order to identify parallels with specific human brain disorders. Although there are many other conceptual and methodological limitations of working with mice, this species shows much promise for future psychopharmacological research. 

Literature is available describing Se bioavailability, pharmacokinetics, and/or possible biological effects of selenized natural products in different clinical trials and in animal experiments. ICP-MS detection has been used in several studies [37, 38, 125D130]. 

In the search for proteins with properties that influences important biological functions we have come to a point where both separation efficiency as well as sequencing ability and sensitivity can be automated to a great extent. Experimental in-vivo and in-vitro models as well as small-animal experiments and human clinical material can easily generate peptide mass sequence data that fdls the autosamplers and 2-D gel tanks for higher-capacity expression studies. 

Current research and development efforts have focused on the use of more biocompatible coatings to reduce the biological response of both intravascular and subcutaneous devices. These efforts are based on the expectation that such developments wfllbe critical to the ultimate success in developing implanted sensors that yield continuous analytical results that match closely with conventional in vitro test methods. One new approach in this direction employs novel nitric oxide (NO) release polymers to coat the surface of intravascular sensors.The potent antiplatelet activity of NO has been shown to greatly reduce the formation of thrombus on the surface of implantable electrochemical oxygen sensing catheters, and yield much more accurate continuous PO2 values in animal experiments. 

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