Radionuclide-Based Cancer Imaging Targeting the Carcinoembryonic Antigen

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), highly expressed in many cancer types, is an important target for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Radionuclide-based imaging techniques (gamma camera, single photon emission computed tomography [SPECT] and positron emission tomography [PET]) have been extensively explored for CEA-targeted cancer imaging both preclinically and clinically. Briefly, these studies can be divided into three major categories: antibody-based, antibody fragment-based and pretargeted imaging. Radiolabeled anti-CEA antibodies, reported the earliest among the three categories, typically gave suboptimal tumor contrast due to the prolonged circulation life time of intact antibodies. Subsequently, a number of engineered anti-CEA antibody fragments (e.g. Fab’, scFv, minibody, diabody and scFv-Fc) have been labeled with a variety of radioisotopes for CEA imaging, many of which have entered clinical investigation. CEA-Scan (a 99mTc-labeled anti-CEA Fab’ fragment) has already been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for cancer imaging. Meanwhile, pretargeting strategies have also been developed for CEA imaging which can give much better tumor contrast than the other two methods, if the system is designed properly. In this review article, we will summarize the current state-of-the-art of radionuclide-based cancer imaging targeting CEA. Generally, isotopes with short half-lives (e.g. 18F and 99mTc) are more suitable for labeling small engineered antibody fragments while the isotopes with longer half-lives (e.g. 123I and 111In) are needed for antibody labeling to match its relatively long circulation half-life. With further improvement in tumor targeting efficacy and radiolabeling strategies, novel CEA-targeted agents may play an important role in cancer patient management, paving the way to “personalized medicine”

Anatomical and molecular imaging of skin cancer

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer types. It is generally divided into two categories: melanoma (∼ 5%) and nonmelanoma (∼ 95%), which can be further categorized into basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and some rare skin cancer types. Biopsy is still the gold standard for skin cancer evaluation in the clinic. Various anatomical imaging techniques have been used to evaluate different types of skin cancer lesions, including laser scanning confocal microscopy, optical coherence tomography, high-frequency ultrasound, terahertz pulsed imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, and some other recently developed techniques such as photoacoustic microscopy. However, anatomical imaging alone may not be sufficient in guiding skin cancer diagnosis and therapy. Over the last decade, various molecular imaging techniques (in particular single photon emission computed tomography and positron emission tomography) have been investigated for skin cancer imaging. The pathways or molecular targets that have been studied include glucose metabolism, integrin αvβ3, melanocortin-1 receptor, high molecular weight melanoma-associated antigen, and several other molecular markers. Preclinical molecular imaging is thriving all over the world, while clinical molecular imaging has not lived up to the expectations because of slow bench-to-bedside translation. It is likely that this situation will change in the near future and molecular imaging will truly play an important role in personalized medicine of melanoma patients

The origin of hydrothermal chlorite- and anhydrite-rich sediments in the middle Okinawa Trough, East China Sea

© The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Chemical Geology 465 (2017): 35-51, doi:10.1016/j.chemgeo.2017.05.020.During the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 331, five sites were drilled into the Iheya North Knoll hydrothermal system in the Okinawa Trough (OT) — a back-arc basin characterized by thick terrigenous sediment. Following up on the previous study by Shao et al. (2015), we present new mineralogical, geochemical, and Sr-Nd isotope data to investigate the origin of the hydrothermal sediments and characterize the hydrothermal system. The substrate at the Iheya North Knoll is dominated by pumiceous sediment and other volcanoclastic materials interbedded with hemipelagic (terrigenous and biogenous) sediments. Impermeable layers separate the hydrothermal sediments into distinct units with depth that are characterized by various assemblages of alteration materials, including polymetallic sulfides, sulfates, chlorite- and kaolinite-rich sediments. The rare earth elements (REEs) and Nd isotope data suggest that the chlorite-rich and kaolinite-rich layers primarily resulted from the alteration of pumiceous materials in different chemical and physical conditions. Kaolinite-rich sediment likely reflects low pH and low Mg concentration fluids, while chlorite-rich sediment formed from fluids with high pH and increased Mg contents, likely at higher temperatures. The Sr isotopic compositions of subsurface anhydrite reflect high seawater/hydrothermal fluid ratios in the mid-OT hydrothermal area. Compared with chlorite-rich sediments from other sediment-covered or felsic-hosted hydrothermal systems, the chlorite-rich sediments in the mid-OT are characterized by lower concentrations of Al and Fe but much higher Y, Zr, Hf, Th and REEs, indicative of the distinct nature of the precursor rocks in this region.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41376049 and 41225020), National Programme on Global Change and Air-Sea Interaction (GASI-GEOGE-03), AoShan Talents Program Supported by Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (No. 2015ASTP-OS11), Program of Shanghai Subject Chief Scientist (No. 14XD1403600), and Continental Shelf Drilling Program (No. GZH201100202)

SAR-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Synthetic Aperture Radar Multi-View Representation

SAR images are highly sensitive to observation configurations, and they exhibit significant variations across different viewing angles, making it challenging to represent and learn their anisotropic features. As a result, deep learning methods often generalize poorly across different view angles. Inspired by the concept of neural radiance fields (NeRF), this study combines SAR imaging mechanisms with neural networks to propose a novel NeRF model for SAR image generation. Following the mapping and projection pinciples, a set of SAR images is modeled implicitly as a function of attenuation coefficients and scattering intensities in the 3D imaging space through a differentiable rendering equation. SAR-NeRF is then constructed to learn the distribution of attenuation coefficients and scattering intensities of voxels, where the vectorized form of 3D voxel SAR rendering equation and the sampling relationship between the 3D space voxels and the 2D view ray grids are analytically derived. Through quantitative experiments on various datasets, we thoroughly assess the multi-view representation and generalization capabilities of SAR-NeRF. Additionally, it is found that SAR-NeRF augumented dataset can significantly improve SAR target classification performance under few-shot learning setup, where a 10-type classification accuracy of 91.6\% can be achieved by using only 12 images per class

Tetragonal Mexican-Hat Dispersion and Switchable Half-Metal State with Multiple Anisotropic Weyl Fermions in Penta-Graphene

In past decades, the ever-expanding library of 2D carbon allotropes has yielded a broad range of exotic properties for the future carbon-based electronics. However, the known allotropes are all intrinsic nonmagnetic due to the paired valence electrons configuration. Based on the reported 2D carbon structure database and first-principles calculations, herein we demonstrate that inherent ferromagnetism can be obtained in the prominent allotrope, penta-graphene, which has an unique Mexican-hat valence band edge, giving rise to van Hove singularities and electronic instability. Induced by modest hole-doping, being achievable in electrolyte gate, the semiconducting pentagraphene can transform into different ferromagnetic half-metals with room temperature stability and switchable spin directions. In particular, multiple anisotropic Weyl states, including type-I and type-II Weyl cones and hybrid quasi Weyl nodal loop, can be found in a sizable energy window of spin-down half-metal under proper strains. These findings not only identify a promising carbon allotrope to obtain the inherent magnetism for carbon-based spintronic devices, but highlight the possibility to realize different Weyl states by combining the electronic and mechanical means as well

Fabrication of densified wood via synergy of chemical pretreatment, hot-pressing and post mechanical fixation

Article describes examination of the appearance, color, chemical composition, and physiology and mechanical properties of densified Abies wood before and after densification treatment using a colorimeter, FTIR and mechanical testing machine

Effect of exogenous nitric oxide on sperm motility in vitro

BACKGROUND: Nitric oxide (NO) has been shown to be important in sperm function, and the concentration of NO appears to determine these effects. Studies have demonstrated both positive and negative effects of NO on sperm function, but have not been able to provide a clear link between NO concentration and the extent of exposure to NO. To study the relationship between nitric oxide and sperm capacitationin vitro, and to provide a theoretical basis for the use of NO-related preparations in improving sperm motility for in vitro fertilization, we investigated the effects of NO concentration and time duration at these concentrations on in vitro sperm capacitation in both normal and abnormal sperm groups. We manipulated NO concentrations and the time duration of these concentrations using sodium nitroprusside (an NO donor) and NG-monomethyl-L-argenine (an NO synthase inhibitor). RESULTS: Compared to the normal sperm group, the abnormal sperm group had a longer basal time to reach the appropriate concentration of NO (p < 0.001), and the duration of time at this concentration was longer for the abnormal sperm group (p < 0.001). Both the basal time and the duration of time were significantly correlated with sperm viability and percentage of progressive sperm (p < 0.001). The experimental group had a significantly higher percentage of progressive sperm than the control group (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: We hypothesize that there is a certain regularity to both NO concentration and its duration of time in regards to sperm capacitation, and that an adequate duration of time at the appropriate NO concentration is beneficial to sperm motility

Tryptophan-based carbon dots as fluorescent probe for detection of Pb2+ and Fe3+ ions

A Probe for metal ions based on carbon dots (CDs) has been prepared. A one-step method has been developed to synthesize the probe using tryptophan as the recognizing group. The synthesized probe has been evaluated for metal ions’ detection. The results show increase in fluorescence in the presence of Pb2+, over other 14 metal ions, illustrating the selective and sensitive detection of Pb2+

A Comprehensive Analysis of the CaMK2A Gene and Susceptibility to Alzheimer’s Disease in the Han Chinese Population

There is ample evidence suggesting that calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II alpha (CaMK2A) may play an important role in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This genetic study aimed to investigate whether CaMK2A confers susceptibility to the development of AD in the Han Chinese population. A total of seven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within CaMK2A were screened in two independent cohorts from southwestern China (333 AD patients and 334 controls) and eastern China (382 AD patients and 426 controls) to discern the potential association between this gene and AD. In addition, a cross-platform normalized expression resource was used to investigate whether CaMK2A is differentially expressed in the brain between individuals with AD and the controls. In addition, expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analysis was used to explore the differences in CaMK2A expression in the brain among different genotypes. The cross-platform normalized data showed significant differences in CaMK2A expression in the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex and temporal cortex between the AD patients and the control subjects (|log FC| &gt; 0.1, P &lt; 0.05); however, only the differences in the hippocampus and temporal cortex remained after the multiple comparisons correction [false discovery rate (FDR)-corrected, P &lt; 0.05]. The frequency of the rs4958445 genotype was significantly different between the AD subjects and the controls from southwestern China (P = 0.013, P = 0.034 after FDR correction). When the two samples were combined, rs4958445 still showed a significant association with AD (P = 0.044). Haplotype analysis indicated that the T-A-C-A-T-C-C and T-G-C-A-T-C-C haplotypes in the southwestern cohort and the T-G-C-G-C-T-C haplotype in the eastern cohort, consisting of rs10051644, rs6869634, rs3797617, rs3756577, rs4958445, rs10515639 and rs6881743, showed a significant association with AD (P = 0.037, P = 0.026 and P = 0.045, respectively). Furthermore, the brain eQTL analysis revealed a significant association between the rs4958445 polymorphism and CaMK2A expression in the inferior olivary nucleus (P = 0.029). Our results suggest an important role for CaMK2A in the pathophysiology of AD in the Han Chinese population, especially the southwestern population

Engineering oxygen vacancies in hierarchically Li-rich layered oxide porous microspheres for high-rate lithium ion battery cathode

Abstract(#br)Lithium-rich layered oxides always suffer from low initial Coulombic efficiency, poor rate capability and rapid voltage fading. Herein, engineering oxygen vacancies in hierarchically Li 1.2 Mn 0.54 Ni 0.13 Co 0.13 O 2 porous microspheres (L@S) is carried out to suppress the formation of irreversible Li 2 O during the initial discharge process and improve the Li + diffusion kinetics and structural stability of the cathode mateiral. As a result, the prepared L@S cathode delivers high initial Coulombic efficiency of 92.3% and large specific capacity of 292.6 mA h g −1 at 0.1 C. More importantly, a large reversible capacity of 222 mA h g −1 with a capacity retention of 95.7% can be obtained after 100 cycles at 10 C. Even cycled at ultrahigh rate of 20 C, the L@S cathode can..