Assessment of angiogenesis by CD105 antigen in epithelial salivary gland neoplasms with diverse metastatic behavior

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Information on the biology of metastasis development in salivary gland tumors is scarce. Since angiogenesis seems associated with this phenomenon in other tumors, we sought to compare salivary gland tumors with diverse metastatic behavior in order to improve the knowledge and management of these lesions.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Samples from the most important salivary gland tumors were segregated according to its metastatic behavior and submitted to routine immunohistochemistry to identify vessels positive for CD105 expression. Frequency of positive cases and intratumoral microvessel density (IMD) was compared among the group of lesions.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>CD105 positive vessels were absent in normal salivary gland tissue, were rare in pleomorphic adenomas and adenoid cystic carcinomas (ACC), more common in polymorphous low-grade adenocarcinomas and highest in mucoepidermoid carcinomas. Only ACC with such feature were metastatic. IMD was higher in malignant rather than benign tumors.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Immunostaining of CD105 in salivary gland tumors implies participation of angiogenesis in the development of malignant lesions, as well as some role for myoepithelial cells in the control of new vessel formation. In addition, suggest that ACC with positive CD105 vessels are at higher risk for metastasis.</p

A comparison of univariate, vector, bilinear autoregressive, and band power features for brain–computer interfaces

Selecting suitable feature types is crucial to obtain good overall brain–computer interface performance. Popular feature types include logarithmic band power (logBP), autoregressive (AR) parameters, time-domain parameters, and wavelet-based methods. In this study, we focused on different variants of AR models and compare performance with logBP features. In particular, we analyzed univariate, vector, and bilinear AR models. We used four-class motor imagery data from nine healthy users over two sessions. We used the first session to optimize parameters such as model order and frequency bands. We then evaluated optimized feature extraction methods on the unseen second session. We found that band power yields significantly higher classification accuracies than AR methods. However, we did not update the bias of the classifiers for the second session in our analysis procedure. When updating the bias at the beginning of a new session, we found no significant differences between all methods anymore. Furthermore, our results indicate that subject-specific optimization is not better than globally optimized parameters. The comparison within the AR methods showed that the vector model is significantly better than both univariate and bilinear variants. Finally, adding the prediction error variance to the feature space significantly improved classification results

Expression of human protein S100A7 (psoriasin), preparation of antibody and application to human larynx squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract\ud \ud Background\ud Up-regulation of S100A7 (Psoriasin), a small calcium-binding protein, is associated with the development of several types of carcinomas, but its function and possibility to serve as a diagnostic or prognostic marker have not been fully defined. In order to prepare antibodies to the protein for immunohistochemical studies we produced the recombinant S100A7 protein in E. coli. mRNA extracted from human tracheal tumor tissue which was amplified by RT-PCR to provide the region coding for the S100A7 gene. The amplified fragment was cloned in the vector pCR2.1-TOPO and sub-cloned in the expression vector pAE. The protein rS100A7 (His-tag) was expressed in E. coli BL21::DE3, purified by affinity chromatography on an Ni-NTA column, recovered in the 2.0 to 3.5 mg/mL range in culture medium, and used to produce a rabbit polyclonal antibody anti-rS100A7 protein. The profile of this polyclonal antibody was evaluated in a tissue microarray.\ud \ud \ud Results\ud The rS100A7 (His-tag) protein was homogeneous by SDS-PAGE and mass spectrometry and was used to produce an anti-recombinant S100A7 (His-tag) rabbit serum (polyclonal antibody anti-rS100A7). The molecular weight of rS100A7 (His-tag) protein determined by linear MALDI-TOF-MS was 12,655.91 Da. The theoretical mass calculated for the nonapeptide attached to the amino terminus is 12,653.26 Da (delta 2.65 Da). Immunostaining with the polyclonal anti-rS100A7 protein generated showed reactivity with little or no background staining in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells, detecting S100A7 both in nucleus and cytoplasm. Lower levels of S100A7 were detected in non-neoplastic tissue.\ud \ud \ud Conclusions\ud The polyclonal anti-rS100A7 antibody generated here yielded a good signal-to-noise contrast and should be useful for immunohistochemical detection of S100A7 protein. Its potential use for other epithelial lesions besides human larynx squamous cell carcinoma and non-neoplastic larynx should be explored in future.FAPES

Combined Treatment of Heterocyclic Analogues and Benznidazole upon Trypanosoma cruzi In Vivo

Chagas disease caused by Trypanosoma cruzi is an important cause of mortality and morbidity in Latin America but no vaccines or safe chemotherapeutic agents are available. Combined therapy is envisioned as an ideal approach since it may enhance efficacy by acting upon different cellular targets, may reduce toxicity and minimize the risk of drug resistance. Therefore, we investigated the activity of benznidazole (Bz) in combination with the diamidine prodrug DB289 and in combination with the arylimidamide DB766 upon T. cruzi infection in vivo. The oral treatment of T.cruzi-infected mice with DB289 and Benznidazole (Bz) alone reduced the number of circulating parasites compared with untreated mice by about 70% and 90%, respectively. However, the combination of these two compounds decreased the parasitemia by 99% and protected against animal mortality by 100%, but without providing a parasitological cure. When Bz (p.o) was combined with DB766 (via ip route), at least a 99.5% decrease in parasitemia levels was observed. DB766+Bz also provided 100% protection against mice mortality while Bz alone provided about 87% protection. This combined therapy also reduced the tissular lesions induced by T. cruzi infection: Bz alone reduced GPT and CK plasma levels by about 12% and 78% compared to untreated mice group, the combination of Bz with DB766 resulted in a reduction of GPT and CK plasma levels of 56% and 91%. Cure assessment through hemocultive and PCR approaches showed that Bz did not provide a parasitological cure, however, DB766 alone or associated with Bz cured ≥13% of surviving animals

TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the inclusive and dijet cross-sections of b-jets in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The inclusive and dijet production cross-sections have been measured for jets containing b-hadrons (b-jets) in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements use data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb^-1. The b-jets are identified using either a lifetime-based method, where secondary decay vertices of b-hadrons in jets are reconstructed using information from the tracking detectors, or a muon-based method where the presence of a muon is used to identify semileptonic decays of b-hadrons inside jets. The inclusive b-jet cross-section is measured as a function of transverse momentum in the range 20 < pT < 400 GeV and rapidity in the range |y| < 2.1. The bbbar-dijet cross-section is measured as a function of the dijet invariant mass in the range 110 < m_jj < 760 GeV, the azimuthal angle difference between the two jets and the angular variable chi in two dijet mass regions. The results are compared with next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. Good agreement is observed between the measured cross-sections and the predictions obtained using POWHEG + Pythia. MC@NLO + Herwig shows good agreement with the measured bbbar-dijet cross-section. However, it does not reproduce the measured inclusive cross-section well, particularly for central b-jets with large transverse momenta.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (21 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version published in European Physical Journal