The role of S-1 in the treatment of gastric cancer

S-1 is a potent antitumour drug in gastric cancer. After years of disagreement about the utility of chemotherapy for advanced gastric cancer, several studies have recently demonstrated the efficacy of S-1 in both the adjuvant and primary settings. In this Minireview, the value of S-1 in the treatment of gastric cancer is discussed

Capture barrier of Sn-related DX centers in AlGaAs epilayers

Thermal capture and emission processes of Sn-related DX centers in AlxGa1-xAs (x = 0.26) were measured by a constant capacitance (CC) voltage transient in various temperatures, By employing a Laplace defect spectroscopic (LDS) method, the non-exponential transients were decomposed into several discrete exponential components. The results shown that more exponential components appeared in the small emission rate region as capture period increased. This indicates that electrons preferentially fill shallow energy levels due to their lower capture barriers. Discrete exponential components of the capture process were identified and four of their barriers were preliminarily measured to be about 0.14, 0.15, 0.16, and 0.17 eV, respectively

Phylogenetic Reconstruction and DNA Barcoding for Closely Related Pine Moth Species (Dendrolimus) in China with Multiple Gene Markers

Unlike distinct species, closely related species offer a great challenge for phylogeny reconstruction and species identification with DNA barcoding due to their often overlapping genetic variation. We tested a sibling species group of pine moth pests in China with a standard cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene and two alternative internal transcribed spacer (ITS) genes (ITS1 and ITS2). Five different phylogenetic/DNA barcoding analysis methods (Maximum likelihood (ML)/Neighbor-joining (NJ), “best close match” (BCM), Minimum distance (MD), and BP-based method (BP)), representing commonly used methodology (tree-based and non-tree based) in the field, were applied to both single-gene and multiple-gene analyses. Our results demonstrated clear reciprocal species monophyly for three relatively distant related species, Dendrolimus superans, D. houi, D. kikuchii, as recovered by both single and multiple genes while the phylogenetic relationship of three closely related species, D. punctatus, D. tabulaeformis, D. spectabilis, could not be resolved with the traditional tree-building methods. Additionally, we find the standard COI barcode outperforms two nuclear ITS genes, whatever the methods used. On average, the COI barcode achieved a success rate of 94.10–97.40%, while ITS1 and ITS2 obtained a success rate of 64.70–81.60%, indicating ITS genes are less suitable for species identification in this case. We propose the use of an overall success rate of species identification that takes both sequencing success and assignation success into account, since species identification success rates with multiple-gene barcoding system were generally overestimated, especially by tree-based methods, where only successfully sequenced DNA sequences were used to construct a phylogenetic tree. Non-tree based methods, such as MD, BCM, and BP approaches, presented advantages over tree-based methods by reporting the overall success rates with statistical significance. In addition, our results indicate that the most closely related species D. punctatus, D. tabulaeformis, and D. spectabilis, may be still in the process of incomplete lineage sorting, with occasional hybridizations occurring among them

Hydroclimatic Contrasts Over Asian Monsoon Areas and Linkages to Tropical Pacific SSTs

Knowledge of spatial and temporal hydroclimatic differences is critical in understanding climatic mechanisms. Here we show striking hydroclimatic contrasts between northern and southern parts of the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau (ETP), and those between East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and Indian summer monsoon (ISM) areas during the past ~2,000 years. During the Medieval Period, and the last 100 to 200 years, the southern ETP (S-ETP) area was generally dry (on average), while the northern ETP (N-ETP) area was wet. During the Little Ice Age (LIA), hydroclimate over S-ETP areas was wet, while that over N-ETP area was dry (on average). Such hydroclimatic contrasts can be broadly extended to ISM and EASM areas. We contend that changes in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of the tropical Pacific Ocean could have played important roles in producing these hydroclimatic contrasts, by forcing the north-south movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and intensification/slowdown of Walker circulation. The results of sensitivity experiments also support such a proposition

Evaluations of biomarkers associated with 5-FU sensitivity for non-small-cell lung cancer patients postoperatively treated with UFT

The sensitivity to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) has been reported to be associated with target molecule thymidylate synthase (TS), fluoropyrimidine-metabolising enzymes such as orotate phosphoribosyltransferase (OPRT), and dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (DPD). We performed an immunohistochemical study on the clinical significance of TS, OPRT, and DPD expression using 151 resected non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients postoperatively treated with a combination of tegafur and uracil (UFT). Eighty-two carcinomas were TS-positive, 105 carcinomas were OPRT-positive, 68 carcinomas were DPD-positive. No correlation was observed in the HSCORE between the TS and OPRT expression (r=0.203), between the TS and DPD expression (r=0.098), or between the OPRT and DPD expression (r=0.074). Regarding the survival of NSCLC patients treated with UFT, the 5-year survival rate of patients with TS-negative tumours was significantly higher than that with TS-positive tumours (P=0.0133). The 5-year survival rate of patients with OPRT-positive stage II to III tumours was significantly higher than that with OPRT-negative stage II to III tumours (P=0.0145). In addition, the 5-year survival rate of patients with DPD-negative tumours was also significantly higher than that with DPD-positive tumours (P=0.0004). A Cox multivariate regression analysis revealed the TS status (hazard ratio 2.663; P=0.0003), OPRT status (hazard ratio 2.543; P=0.0005), and DPD status (hazard ratio 2.840; P<0.0001) to all be significant prognostic factors for the survival of resected NSCLC patients postoperatively treated with UFT

Present and future evolution of advanced breast cancer therapy

Although the introduction of novel therapies and drug combinations has improved the prognosis of metastatic breast cancer, the disease remains incurable. Increased knowledge of the biology and the molecular alterations in breast cancer has facilitated the design of targeted therapies. These agents include receptor and nonreceptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (epidermal growth factor receptor family), intracellular signaling pathways (phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase, AKT, mammalian target of rapamycin) angiogenesis inhibitors and agents that interfere with DNA repair (poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors). In the present review, we present the most promising studies of these new targeted therapies and novel combinations of targeted therapies with cytotoxic agents

A multi-proxy reconstruction of spatial and temporal variations in Asian summer temperatures over the last millennium

To investigate climate variability in Asia during the last millennium, the spatial and temporal evolution of summer (June–July–August; JJA) temperature in eastern and south-central Asia is reconstructed using multi-proxy records and the regularized expectation maximization (RegEM) algorithm with truncated total least squares (TTLS), under a point-by-point regression (PPR) framework. The temperature index reconstructions show that the late 20th century was the warmest period in Asia over the past millennium. The temperature field reconstructions illustrate that temperatures in central, eastern, and southern China during the 11th and 13th centuries, and in western Asia during the 12th century, were significantly higher than those in other regions, and comparable to levels in the 20th century. Except for the most recent warming, all identified warm events showed distinct regional expressions and none were uniform over the entire reconstruction area. The main finding of the study is that spatial temperature patterns have, on centennial time-scales, varied greatly over the last millennium. Moreover, seven climate model simulations, from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), over the same region of Asia, are all consistent with the temperature index reconstruction at the 99 % confidence level. Only spatial temperature patterns extracted as the first empirical orthogonal function (EOF) from the GISS-E2-R and MPI-ESM-P model simulations are significant and consistent with the temperature field reconstruction over the past millennium in Asia at the 90 % confidence level. This indicates that both the reconstruction and the simulations depict the temporal climate variability well over the past millennium. However, the spatial simulation or reconstruction capability of climate variability over the past millennium could be still limited. For reconstruction, some grid points do not pass validation tests and reveal the need for more proxies with high temporal resolution, accurate dating, and sensitive temperature signals, especially in central Asia and before AD 1400