Dietary Restriction of Amino Acids for Cancer Therapy

Biosyntheses of proteins, nucleotides and fatty acids, are essential for the malignant proliferation and survival of cancer cells. Cumulating research findings show that amino acid restrictions are potential strategies for cancer interventions. Meanwhile, dietary strategies are popular among cancer patients. However, there is still lacking solid rationale to clarify what is the best strategy, why and how it is. Here, integrated analyses and comprehensive summaries for the abundances, signalling and functions of amino acids in proteomes, metabolism, immunity and food compositions, suggest that, intermittent fasting or intermittent dietary lysine restriction with normal maize as an intermittent staple food for days or weeks, might have the value and potential for cancer prevention or therapy. Moreover, dietary supplements were also discussed for cancer cachexia including dietary immunomodulatory.Comment: 4 figure

Effect of fucoidan on B16 murine melanoma cell melanin formation and apoptosis

Background：Fucoidan is a complex sulfated polysaccharide extracted from brown seaweed and has a wide variety of biological activities. It not only inhibits cancer cell growth but also inhibits tyrosinase in vitro. Therefore, it is of interest to investigate the effect of fucoidan on B16 murine melanoma cells as the findings may provide new insights into the underlying mechanism regarding the inhibition of melanin formation by fucoidan. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the anti-melanogenic effect of fucoidan and its inhibitory effect on B16 cells.Materials and Methods: The influence of fucoidan on B16 melanoma cells and cellular tyrosinase was examined. Cell viability was examined by the cell counting kit-8 assay. Cellular tyrosinase activity and melanin content were determined using spectrophotometric methods and protein expression was analyzed by immunoblotting. Morphological changes in B16 melanoma cells were examined by phase contrast microscopy and apoptosis was analyzed by flow cytometry.Results: In vitro studies were performed using cell viability analysis and showed that fucoidan significantly decreased viable cell number in a dose-response manner with an IC50 of 550 ±4.3 μg/mL. Cell morphology was altered and significant apoptosis was induced when cells were exposed to 550 μg/mL fucoidan for 48 h.Conclusion: This study provides substantial evidence to show that fucoidan inhibits B16 melanoma cell proliferation and cellular tyrosinase activity. Fucoidan may be useful in the treatment of hyperpigmentation and as a skin-whitening agent in the cosmetics industry.Keywords: B16 melanoma cells, Fucoidan, Melanogenesis, Tyrosinas

Abnormal diastolic function underlies the different beneficial effects of cardiac resynchronization therapy on ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathy

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the association between diastolic function and the different beneficial effects of cardiac resynchronization therapy in patients with heart failure due to different causes. METHODS: The 104 enrolled patients were divided into an ischemic cardiomyopathy group (n=27) and a non-ischemic cardiomyopathy group (n=77) according to the cause of heart failure. Before implantation, left ventricular diastolic function was evaluated in all patients using echocardiography. After six months of follow-up, the beneficial effects of cardiac resynchronization therapy were evaluated using a combination of clinical symptoms and echocardiography parameters. RESULTS: The ischemic cardiomyopathy group included significantly more patients with restrictive filling than the non-ischemic cardiomyopathy group. The response rate after the implantation procedure was significantly higher in the non-ischemic cardiomyopathy group than in the ischemic cardiomyopathy group. Degrees of improvement in echocardiography parameters were significantly greater in the non-ischemic cardiomyopathy group than in the ischemic cardiomyopathy group. Multivariate regression analysis showed that a restrictive filling pattern was an independent factor that influenced responses to cardiac resynchronization therapy. CONCLUSIONS: This study again confirmed that the etiology of heart failure affects the beneficial effects of cardiac resynchronization therapy and a lower degree of improvement in ventricular systolic function and remodelling was observed in ischemic cardiomyopathy patients than in non-ischemic cardiomyopathy patients. In addition, systolic heart failure patients with severe diastolic dysfunction had poor responses to cardiac resynchronization therapy. Ischemic cardiomyopathy patients exhibited more severe diastolic dysfunction than non-ischemic cardiomyopathy patients, which may be a reason for the reduced beneficial effect of cardiac resynchronization therapy

Dynamic Capture Using a Traplike Soft Gripper With Stiffness Anisotropy

Dynamic capture is a common skill that humans have practiced extensively but is a challenging task for robots in which sensing, planning, and actuation must be tightly coordinated to deal with targets of diverse shapes, sizes, and velocity. In particular, the impact force may cause serious damage to a rigid gripper and even its carrier, e.g., a robotic arm. Existing soft grippers suffer from low speed and force to actively respond to capturing dynamic targets. In this article, we propose a soft gripper capable of efficient capture of dynamic targets, taking inspiration from the biological structures of multitentacled animals or plants. The presented gripper uses a cluster of tentacles to achieve an omnidirectional envelope and high tolerance to dynamic target during the capturing process. In addition, a stiffness anisotropy property is implemented to the tentacle structure to form a “trap” making it easy for the targets to enter yet difficult to escape. We also present an analytical model for the tentacle structure to describe its deformation during the collision with a target. In experiments, we construct a robotic prototype and demonstrate its ability to capture dynamic targets