IMPACT OF SODIUM DICHLOROACETATE ALONE AND IN COMBINATION THERAPIES ON LUNG TUMOR GROWTH AND METASTASIS

Lung cancer is the second most common form of cancer with the highest mortality rate worldwide in 2020 despite the advances in targeted- and immuno-therapies. Metabolic reprogramming has been recognized as an essential emerging cancer hallmark in which altered metabolic pathways represent an attractive therapeutic target. Sodium Dichloroacetate (DCA), a pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDK) inhibitor, effect has been investigated in various tumors. Building on the already published data, this pre-clinical study aims to explore the anticancer potential of DCA in lung cancer alone and in combination with chemo- and targeted therapies using two non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines namely, A549 and LNM35. This project was addressed through the investigation of the impact of DCA on lung cancer cell viability, migration, invasion, and colony growth in-vitro and on tumor growth and metastasis using the chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) and the nude mice models in-vivo. The anti-angiogenic potential of DCA, its safety profile, and the impact of its combination with the proposed chemotherapy and first-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKi) were also investigated. This study demonstrated that DCA causes a concentration- and time-dependent decrease in the viability of A549 and LNM35 cells and the growth of their colonies in-vitro. Similarly, DCA slow-down the growth of A549 and LNM35 tumor xenografts in both the chick embryo CAM and nude mice models in-vivo. DCA decreases the angiogenic capacity of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) in-vitro by decreasing HUVECs tube formation and sprouting, suggesting the inhibition of tumor angiogenesis as a potential mechanism behind its anti-tumor growth effect. On the other hand, DCA did not inhibit the in-vitro migration and invasion and the in-vivo incidence and growth of lymph nodes metastases in nude mice xenografted with the highly metastatic lung cancer cells LNM35. Treatment with DCA did not show any significant side effects on the chick embryos viability or on the nude mice weight and survival. In addition, blood, kidney, and liver function tests showed no toxicity with DCA when compared to the control group. Finally, DCA significantly enhanced the anticancer effect of cisplatin in LNM35, gefitinib and erlotinib in both cell lines. In summary, these findings demonstrate that DCA is a safe and promising therapeutic agent for lung cancer and pave the way for further pre-clinical studies validating the impact of DCA in combination with not only the first generation but also the second and third generation of EGFR-Tki in-vivo

A New Approach to Automatic Saliency Identification in Images Based on Irregularity of Regions

This research introduces an image retrieval system which is, in different ways, inspired by the human vision system. The main problems with existing machine vision systems and image understanding are studied and identified, in order to design a system that relies on human image understanding. The main improvement of the developed system is that it uses the human attention principles in the process of image contents identification. Human attention shall be represented by saliency extraction algorithms, which extract the salient regions or in other words, the regions of interest. This work presents a new approach for the saliency identification which relies on the irregularity of the region. Irregularity is clearly defined and measuring tools developed. These measures are derived from the formality and variation of the region with respect to the surrounding regions. Both local and global saliency have been studied and appropriate algorithms were developed based on the local and global irregularity defined in this work. The need for suitable automatic clustering techniques motivate us to study the available clustering techniques and to development of a technique that is suitable for salient points clustering. Based on the fact that humans usually look at the surrounding region of the gaze point, an agglomerative clustering technique is developed utilising the principles of blobs extraction and intersection. Automatic thresholding was needed in different stages of the system development. Therefore, a Fuzzy thresholding technique was developed. Evaluation methods of saliency region extraction have been studied and analysed; subsequently we have developed evaluation techniques based on the extracted regions (or points) and compared them with the ground truth data. The proposed algorithms were tested against standard datasets and compared with the existing state-of-the-art algorithms. Both quantitative and qualitative benchmarking are presented in this thesis and a detailed discussion for the results has been included. The benchmarking showed promising results in different algorithms. The developed algorithms have been utilised in designing an integrated saliency-based image retrieval system which uses the salient regions to give a description for the scene. The system auto-labels the objects in the image by identifying the salient objects and gives labels based on the knowledge database contents. In addition, the system identifies the unimportant part of the image (background) to give a full description for the scene

Using Bernoulli Equation to Solve Burger's Equation

In this paper we find the exact solution of Burger's equation after reducing it to Bernoulli equation. We compare this solution with that given by Kaya where he used Adomian decomposition method, the solution given by chakrone where he used the Variation iteration method (VIM)and the solution given by Eq(5)in the paper of M. Javidi. We notice that our solution is better than their solutions

Design and construction of Video extractor

Design and construction of video extractor circuit require an understanding of several parameters, which include: Selector circuit, extracting circuit which contains sampling signal and multiplexing. At each radar pulse, the video signal is fed to one of the selector. The fast filter has a pass –band from 190 Hz to 1800 Hz. These frequencies correspond to targets having radial velocities laying between and 10 Kph and 200 Kph.Slow filter: 60 Hz to 230 Hz for radial velocities laying between 3.5 and 13 Kph.The video- extractor is organized in four PCB CG (A-B-C-D) each one having 16 selector. The sampling signal (ADS) (1-2-3-4) control the 4-line-to-16-line decoders. 8 multiplexers of 8 inputs each, are required for the multiplexing of the 64 selectors

Study on the Effect of Adding Bovine Serum Albumin to Semen Diluent on the Viability of Awassi Ram Semen Preserved at 5oC

This study was aimed to test the effect of adding bovine serum albumin (BSA) to Tris-fructose-egg yolk diluent to increase the ram sperm storage period at 5ºC. Semen samples from six mature Awassi rams used in this study. Semen samples were diluted by Tris-glucose-egg yolk. Diluted semen sample was divided into two parts. The first part BSA was added 10 mg ml-1 and the second part considered as a control group without any addition. The diluted semen samples were cooled and preserved at 5oC for 5 days. Cooled diluted semen samples were examined for individual motility, percent of live sperm, sperm abnormalities and acrosomal defects every 24 h until 5 days. Results of the present study showed an increased viability of spermatozoa diluted in the Tris diluent containing BSA stored at 5oC for 120 h of preservation compared with the control group. Spermatozoa motility and viability declined gradually in BSA Tris containing diluent when preserved at 5oC from 0 h to 120 h to 54.0±0.9% and 59.0±0.9 %, respectively compared to control of Tris diluent without BSA which was declined markedly to 35.9±1.9 %, 40.9±1.8 %, respectively. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that supplementation with BSA of ram semen diluents during semen preservation at 5oC, may exert beneficial effects on the quality of the Awassi ram semen

Fertility Indices of Rats in Response to Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) Administration

The aim of the present study is to evaluate the effect of oral administration of DHEA on fertility indices in female rats. A total of 18 adult female rats 2.5-3.5 months old and weighting 200-250g were divided into three equal groups: G1-control received saline solution, G2- received 2mg DHEA /kg B.Wt orally and daily for 2 weeks prior to gestation. G3- received the same dose for two weeks prior and during gestation. The was a significant increase in fertility, gestation indeces of rats received DHEA for two weeks prior and during gestation. At the meantime, the gestation length, viability and lactating indeces were decreased in this group as compared with others. In conclusion, administration of DHEA at dose of 2 mg /kg B.Wt for 2 weeks prior to and during gestation seems to be safe as no abortion and fetal abnormalities were recorded. Keywords: DHEA, Fertility indeces, rats

Corrosion Inhibition of Mild Steel in Hydrochloric Acid Solution by an Isatin-aniline Compound

Recently the researchers go to the eco-friendly corrosion inhibitors.In the present investigation, isatin which found in many plants, Isatis tinctoria,Calanthe discolor and Couroupita guianensis has been used as corrosioninhibitor. An isatin-aniline compound, namely ethyl 4-amino-N-(3-isatinyl)benzoate (AIB), was successfully synthesized in high yield and its inhibitionimpact on corrosion of MS (mild steel) in hydrochloric acid as corrosivesolution was examined via weight loss and Scanning electron microscopetechniques. The results acquired appeared that AIB has employ perfect as acorrosion inhibitor at low concentrations towards mild steel in HCl bath. Theimpact of temperature on the corrosion behavior of MS in corrosive bath withpresence of (250) ppm of AIB has been investigated in the range oftemperatures (303-333) K. The thermodynamic parameters for inhibitingprocess were investigated to find out the mechanism of corrosion inhibition ofMS acid bath