EVALUATION THE EXPRESSION OF THREE GENES TO EPITHELIAL OVARIAN CANCER RISK IN CHINESE POPULATION

Background: Ovarian cancer is associated with poor survival, because patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage of the disease, and in addition, tumors develop chemoresistance, which carries a poor prognosis for the patient. Material and methods: We hypothesize that high expression of SDF-1, survivin and smac is associated with ovarian cancers development and could be used as a biomarker to identify this disease. The expressions of SDF-1, survivin and smac in normal ovarian (NO) tissue, benign tumor (BT) tissue and epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) tissue were immunohistochemically analysed. Results: Positive expressions of SDF-1, survivin and smac were significantly higher in EOC tissue than those in NO and BT tissues. SDF-1 expressions were significantly more weaker in advanced ovarian carcinomas (FIGO stage III–IV), and in high-grade carcinomas. There was a positive correlation between EOC patients with lymph node metastasis and with ascites and SDF-1 positivity (P < 0.05). Survivin expressions were significantly more stronger in advanced ovarian carcinomas (FIGO stage III–IV), and in high-grade carcinomas. There was a positive correlation between EOC patients with lymph node metastasis and with ascites and surviving positivity (P < 0.05). Smac expressions were significantly more stronger in advanced ovarian carcinomas (FIGO stage III–IV), and in high-grade carcinomas. There was a positive correlation between EOC patients with lymph node metastasis and with ascites and smac positivity (P < 0.05)

Behavioral/Cognitive Acute and Long-Term Suppression of Feeding Behavior by POMC Neurons in the Brainstem and Hypothalamus, Respectively

POMC-derived melanocortins inhibit food intake. In the adult rodent brain, POMC-expressing neurons are located in the arcuate nucleus (ARC) and the nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS), but it remains unclear how POMC neurons in these two brain nuclei regulate feeding behavior and metabolism differentially. Using pharmacogenetic methods to activate or deplete neuron groups in separate brain areas, in the present study, we show that POMC neurons in the ARC and NTS suppress feeding behavior at different time scales. Neurons were activated using the DREADD (designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs) method. The evolved human M3-muscarinic receptor was expressed in a selective population of POMC neurons by stereotaxic infusion of Cre-recombinase–dependent, adenoassociated virus vectors into the ARC or NTS of POMC-Cre mice. After injection of the human M3-muscarinic receptor ligand clozapine-N-oxide (1 mg/kg, i.p.), acute activation of NTS POMC neurons produced an immediate inhibition of feeding behavior. In contrast, chronic stimulation was required for ARC POMC neurons to suppress food intake. Using adeno-associated virus delivery of the diphtheria toxin receptor gene, we found that diphtheria toxin–induced ablation of POMC neurons in the ARC but not the NTS, increased food intake, reduced energy expenditure, and ultimately resulted in obesity and metabolic and endocrine disorders. Our results reveal different behavioral functions of POMC neurons in the ARC and NTS, suggesting that POMC neurons regulate feeding and energy homeostasis by integrating long-term adiposity signals from the hypothalamus and short-term satiety signals from the brainstem

Increases in solar conversion efficiencies of the ZrO2 nanofiber-doped TiO2 photoelectrode for dye-sensitized solar cells

In this paper, in order to improve the efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells, we introduced zirconia [ZrO2] nanofibers into a mesoporous titania [TiO2] photoelectrode. The photoelectrode consists of a few weight percent of ZrO2 nanofibers and a mesoporous TiO2 powder. The mixed ZrO2 nanofibers and the mesoporous TiO2 powder possessed a larger surface area than the corresponding mesoporous TiO2 powder. The optimum ratio of the ZrO2 nanofiber was 5 wt.%. The 5 wt.% ZrO2-mixed device could get a short-circuit photocurrent density of 15.9 mA/cm2, an open-circuit photovoltage of 0.69 V, a fill factor of 0.60, and a light-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 6.5% under irradiation of AM 1.5 (100 mW/cm2)

Development of high-producing CHO cell lines through target-designed strategy

Productivity and stability are critical for the protein drug producing cell lines for manufacturing. Given that the integration sites of gene of interest (GOI) could contribute remarkable effect on the productivity and stability of GOI expression, we intended to develop a targeting-designed approach to generate the high-producing cell lines in a time-saving and less labor-intensive method through targeting the active and stable regions. To identify the active and stable regions located in CHO genome, two approaches were applied in our experiments. Firstly, the integration sites of GOI in cell clones developed by random integration were identified by whole genome sequencing. Secondly, we developed transposon-mediated low copy integration to discover novel active region located in CHO genome. It is interesting that the productivity per integrated GOI in cell clones developed by transposon system was more than two times to that in cell clones developed by random integration (random integration: 20-40 mg/L/copy; transposon-mediated integration: 40-140mg/L/copy). In addition, about 80% of cell clones developed by transposon system maintained the stability of antibody titer after culturing for 60 generations. These results implied that the potential active and stable integration region in the cell clones developed by transposon system. The identified integration regions could be applied for target integration. In order to verify the expression activity and stability of the integration sites, we employed CRISPR/Cas9 to specifically integrate the antibody gene into CHO genome for expression. Our data showed the cell pool generated by knock-in of expression vector into the IS1 integration site present higher expression titer than cell pools generated by integration into other sites or random integration. We further cultured the single cell clones derived from this cell pool by Clonepix and limiting dilution. These single cell clones have high expression titer ranging from 254 to 804 mg/L in batch culture of after 6 Days. A single cell clone(376 mg/L in batch culture) can reached 2 g/L in fed-batch culture. The stability analysis showed this clone maintain stable expression of GOI after 60 generation. Here, we demonstrated the generation of stable cell line with high protein expression by CRISPR/Cas9 mediated target integration. This approach will cost less time and labor than traditional method

Intelligent diagnostic scheme for lung cancer screening with Raman spectra data by tensor network machine learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) has brought tremendous impacts on biomedical sciences from academic researches to clinical applications, such as in biomarkers' detection and diagnosis, optimization of treatment, and identification of new therapeutic targets in drug discovery. However, the contemporary AI technologies, particularly deep machine learning (ML), severely suffer from non-interpretability, which might uncontrollably lead to incorrect predictions. Interpretability is particularly crucial to ML for clinical diagnosis as the consumers must gain necessary sense of security and trust from firm grounds or convincing interpretations. In this work, we propose a tensor-network (TN)-ML method to reliably predict lung cancer patients and their stages via screening Raman spectra data of Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath, which are generally suitable as biomarkers and are considered to be an ideal way for non-invasive lung cancer screening. The prediction of TN-ML is based on the mutual distances of the breath samples mapped to the quantum Hilbert space. Thanks to the quantum probabilistic interpretation, the certainty of the predictions can be quantitatively characterized. The accuracy of the samples with high certainty is almost 100$\%$. The incorrectly-classified samples exhibit obviously lower certainty, and thus can be decipherably identified as anomalies, which will be handled by human experts to guarantee high reliability. Our work sheds light on shifting the ``AI for biomedical sciences'' from the conventional non-interpretable ML schemes to the interpretable human-ML interactive approaches, for the purpose of high accuracy and reliability.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Observation of the application effect of low-volume polyethylene glycol electrolyte lavage solution (PEG-ELS) combined with ascorbic acid tablets in bowel preparation for colonoscopy in hospitalized patients

BackgroundThis study explored the effectiveness and safety of low-volume polyethylene glycol electrolyte lavage solution (PEG-ELS) combined with ascorbic acid tablets (PEG-ELS/Asc) in bowel preparation for a colonoscopy.MethodsA total of 240 hospitalized patients who underwent a colonoscopy in Wenzhou People’s Hospital, Wenzhou Third Clinical College of Wenzhou Medical University from July 2020 to June 2022 were randomly divided into two groups, with 120 patients each. All of the participants were given a low-residue or residue-free diet one day before the examination and fasted after dinner (completed before 18:00) the day before the examination. The 2-L PEG-ELS/Asc group took 2-L PEG-ELS plus 10 g ascorbic acid tablets once orally, while the 3-L PEG-ELS group took 3-L PEG orally on several occasions. The primary endpoint was the achievement of preparation adequacy and an overall colon cleansing score of ≥6, both assessed by blinded investigators using the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale (BBPS). The bowel cleansing effect, polyp detection rate, adverse reaction rate, oral drug tolerance rate, renal function, and electrolyte level changes were also compared between the two patient groups.ResultsThere were no significant differences in the success rate of bowel preparation, the detection rate of polyps, or the adverse reaction rate between the two groups (P &gt; 0.05). The tolerance rate of bowel preparation in the 2-L PEG-ELS/Asc group was significantly higher than that in the 3-L PEG-ELS group (93.3% vs. 80.23%) (P &lt; 0.05). The levels of creatinine, serum potassium, serum sodium, and serum chlorine of the two groups before and after bowel preparation were within the normal range. In addition, the intestinal cleaning effect of the two preparation schemes for the hospitalized patients with diabetes and constipation is worse than that of those without these conditions (P &lt; 0.05).ConclusionThe effectiveness and safety of using 2-L PEG-ELS/Asc in bowel preparation for a colonoscopy in hospitalized patients were not inferior to using 3-L PEG-ELS. For patients with diabetes and constipation, the cleansing effect of the two bowel preparation options was not very satisfactory, and further clinical research is needed in this regard

Comparison of coplanar and noncoplanar intensity-modulated radiation therapy and helical tomotherapy for hepatocellular carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To compare the differences in dose-volume data among coplanar intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), noncoplanar IMRT, and helical tomotherapy (HT) among patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and portal vein thrombosis (PVT).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Nine patients with unresectable HCC and PVT underwent step and shoot coplanar IMRT with intent to deliver 46 - 54 Gy to the tumor and portal vein. The volume of liver received 30Gy was set to keep less than 30% of whole normal liver (V30 < 30%). The mean dose to at least one side of kidney was kept below 23 Gy, and 50 Gy as for stomach. The maximum dose was kept below 47 Gy for spinal cord. Several parameters including mean hepatic dose, percent volume of normal liver with radiation dose at X Gy (Vx), uniformity index, conformal index, and doses to organs at risk were evaluated from the dose-volume histogram.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>HT provided better uniformity for the planning-target volume dose coverage than both IMRT techniques. The noncoplanar IMRT technique reduces the V10 to normal liver with a statistically significant level as compared to HT. The constraints for the liver in the V30 for coplanar IMRT vs. noncoplanar IMRT vs. HT could be reconsidered as 21% vs. 17% vs. 17%, respectively. When delivering 50 Gy and 60-66 Gy to the tumor bed, the constraints of mean dose to the normal liver could be less than 20 Gy and 25 Gy, respectively.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Noncoplanar IMRT and HT are potential techniques of radiation therapy for HCC patients with PVT. Constraints for the liver in IMRT and HT could be stricter than for 3DCRT.</p