Synergistic effects of ginsenoside Rg3 and cyclophosphamine on tumor growth and angiogenesis in lung cancer

To evaluate the effectiveness of ginsenoside Rg3 alone or in combination with cyclophosphamide (CPA) on tumor growth and angiogenesis in human lung cancer, 54 female athymic mice were transplanted with lung cancer cells (A549) which then were randomly divided into 4 groups: Ginsenoside Rg3 group, CPA group, ginsenoside Rg3 plus CPA group and control group. Ginsenoside Rg3 of 3.0 mg/kg (once/day for 10 days) and CPA of 20.0 mg/kg (once/day for 10 days) were intraperitoneally given to mice for consecutive 10 days. Seven mice selected from each group were sacrificed 18 days later. The survival time of the remaining 7 mice in each group was recorded. The life elongation rate, proliferating cell nuclear antigen labeling index (PCNALI), expression of vascular endothelial cell growth factor (VEGF) and microvessel density (MVD) in the tumor tissues were evaluated. The quality of life of mice with administration of ginsenoside Rg3 alone or ginsenoside Rg3 plus CPA were better with longer survival time, when compared with other groups. The PCNALI, MVD and VEGF expression in mice of the treated groups were significantly lowered when compared with that of the control group. Additionally, the MVD of mice in groups with treatment of ginsenoside Rg3 alone or ginsenoside Rg3 plus CPA were lower than that in the CPA group. Tumor growth and angiogenesis in lung cancer were profoundly inhibited by ginsenoside Rg3 alone or in combination with CPA. The synergistic anticancer effects of ginsenoside Rg3 and CPA improved the survival time in lung cancer.Key words: Ginseng, cyclophosphamide, angiogenesis, lung cancer

An assessment of hepatitis E virus (HEV) in US blood donors and recipients: No detectable HEV RNA in 1939 donors tested and no evidence for HEV transmission to 362 prospectively followed recipients.

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection has become relevant to blood transfusion practice because isolated cases of blood transmission have been reported and because HEV has been found to cause chronic infection and severe liver disease in immunocompromised patients. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: We tested for immunoglobulin (Ig)G and IgM antibodies to the HEV and for HEV RNA in 1939 unselected volunteer US blood donors. Subsequently, we tested the same variables in pre- and serial posttransfusion samples from 362 prospectively followed blood recipients to assess transfusion risk. RESULTS: IgG anti-HEV seroprevalence in the total 1939 donations was 18.8%: 916 of these donations were made in 2006 at which time the seroprevalence was 21.8% and the remaining 1023 donations were in 2012 when the seroprevalence had decreased to 16.0% (p \u3c 0.01). A significant (p \u3c 0.001) stepwise increase in anti-HEV seroprevalence was seen with increasing age. Eight of 1939 donations (0.4%) tested anti-HEV IgM positive; no donation was HEV RNA positive. Two recipients had an apparent anti-HEV seroconversion, but temporal relationships and linked donor testing showed that these were not transfusion-transmitted HEV infections. CONCLUSION: No transfusion-transmitted HEV infections were observed in 362 prospectively followed blood recipients despite an anti-HEV seroprevalence among donations exceeding 16%

Inter-vendor harmonization of Computed Tomography (CT) reconstruction kernels using unpaired image translation

The reconstruction kernel in computed tomography (CT) generation determines the texture of the image. Consistency in reconstruction kernels is important as the underlying CT texture can impact measurements during quantitative image analysis. Harmonization (i.e., kernel conversion) minimizes differences in measurements due to inconsistent reconstruction kernels. Existing methods investigate harmonization of CT scans in single or multiple manufacturers. However, these methods require paired scans of hard and soft reconstruction kernels that are spatially and anatomically aligned. Additionally, a large number of models need to be trained across different kernel pairs within manufacturers. In this study, we adopt an unpaired image translation approach to investigate harmonization between and across reconstruction kernels from different manufacturers by constructing a multipath cycle generative adversarial network (GAN). We use hard and soft reconstruction kernels from the Siemens and GE vendors from the National Lung Screening Trial dataset. We use 50 scans from each reconstruction kernel and train a multipath cycle GAN. To evaluate the effect of harmonization on the reconstruction kernels, we harmonize 50 scans each from Siemens hard kernel, GE soft kernel and GE hard kernel to a reference Siemens soft kernel (B30f) and evaluate percent emphysema. We fit a linear model by considering the age, smoking status, sex and vendor and perform an analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the emphysema scores. Our approach minimizes differences in emphysema measurement and highlights the impact of age, sex, smoking status and vendor on emphysema quantification.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, Submitted to SPIE Medical Imaging : Image Processing. San Diego, CA. February 202

Evaluation of Mean Shift, ComBat, and CycleGAN for Harmonizing Brain Connectivity Matrices Across Sites

Connectivity matrices derived from diffusion MRI (dMRI) provide an interpretable and generalizable way of understanding the human brain connectome. However, dMRI suffers from inter-site and between-scanner variation, which impedes analysis across datasets to improve robustness and reproducibility of results. To evaluate different harmonization approaches on connectivity matrices, we compared graph measures derived from these matrices before and after applying three harmonization techniques: mean shift, ComBat, and CycleGAN. The sample comprises 168 age-matched, sex-matched normal subjects from two studies: the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project (VMAP) and the Biomarkers of Cognitive Decline Among Normal Individuals (BIOCARD). First, we plotted the graph measures and used coefficient of variation (CoV) and the Mann-Whitney U test to evaluate different methods' effectiveness in removing site effects on the matrices and the derived graph measures. ComBat effectively eliminated site effects for global efficiency and modularity and outperformed the other two methods. However, all methods exhibited poor performance when harmonizing average betweenness centrality. Second, we tested whether our harmonization methods preserved correlations between age and graph measures. All methods except for CycleGAN in one direction improved correlations between age and global efficiency and between age and modularity from insignificant to significant with p-values less than 0.05.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, to be published in SPIE Medical Imaging 2024: Image Processin

Measurements of the neutron electric to magnetic form factor ratio GEn/GMn via the ^2H(\vec{e},e'\vec{n})^1H reaction to Q^2 = 1.45 (GeV/c)^2

We report values for the neutron electric to magnetic form factor ratio, GEn/GMn, deduced from measurements of the neutron's recoil polarization in the quasielastic 2H(\vec{e},e'\vec{n})1H reaction, at three Q^2 values of 0.45, 1.13, and 1.45 (GeV/c)^2. The data at Q^2 = 1.13 and 1.45 (GeV/c)^2 are the first direct experimental measurements of GEn employing polarization degrees of freedom in the Q^2 > 1 (GeV/c)^2 region and stand as the most precise determinations of GEn for all values of Q^2.Comment: 41 pages, 33 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. C, archival paper for R. Madey et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 122002 (2003

A Novel Biochemical Route for Fuels and Chemicals Production from Cellulosic Biomass

The conventional biochemical platform featuring enzymatic hydrolysis involves five key steps: pretreatment, cellulase production, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation, and product recovery. Sugars are produced as reactive intermediates for subsequent fermentation to fuels and chemicals. Herein, an alternative biochemical route is proposed. Pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis and cellulase production is consolidated into one single step, referred to as consolidated aerobic processing, and sugar aldonates are produced as the reactive intermediates for biofuels production by fermentation. In this study, we demonstrate the viability of consolidation of the enzymatic hydrolysis and cellulase production steps in the new route using Neurospora crassa as the model microorganism and the conversion of cellulose to ethanol as the model system. We intended to prove the two hypotheses: 1) cellulose can be directed to produce cellobionate by reducing β-glucosidase production and by enhancing cellobiose dehydrogenase production; and 2) both of the two hydrolysis products of cellobionate—glucose and gluconate—can be used as carbon sources for ethanol and other chemical production. Our results showed that knocking out multiple copies of β-glucosidase genes led to cellobionate production from cellulose, without jeopardizing the cellulose hydrolysis rate. Simulating cellobiose dehydrogenase over-expression by addition of exogenous cellobiose dehydrogenase led to more cellobionate production. Both of the two hydrolysis products of cellobionate: glucose and gluconate can be used by Escherichia coli KO 11 for efficient ethanol production. They were utilized simultaneously in glucose and gluconate co-fermentation. Gluconate was used even faster than glucose. The results support the viability of the two hypotheses that lay the foundation for the proposed new route