Radionuclide-Based Cancer Imaging Targeting the Carcinoembryonic Antigen

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), highly expressed in many cancer types, is an important target for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Radionuclide-based imaging techniques (gamma camera, single photon emission computed tomography [SPECT] and positron emission tomography [PET]) have been extensively explored for CEA-targeted cancer imaging both preclinically and clinically. Briefly, these studies can be divided into three major categories: antibody-based, antibody fragment-based and pretargeted imaging. Radiolabeled anti-CEA antibodies, reported the earliest among the three categories, typically gave suboptimal tumor contrast due to the prolonged circulation life time of intact antibodies. Subsequently, a number of engineered anti-CEA antibody fragments (e.g. Fab’, scFv, minibody, diabody and scFv-Fc) have been labeled with a variety of radioisotopes for CEA imaging, many of which have entered clinical investigation. CEA-Scan (a 99mTc-labeled anti-CEA Fab’ fragment) has already been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for cancer imaging. Meanwhile, pretargeting strategies have also been developed for CEA imaging which can give much better tumor contrast than the other two methods, if the system is designed properly. In this review article, we will summarize the current state-of-the-art of radionuclide-based cancer imaging targeting CEA. Generally, isotopes with short half-lives (e.g. 18F and 99mTc) are more suitable for labeling small engineered antibody fragments while the isotopes with longer half-lives (e.g. 123I and 111In) are needed for antibody labeling to match its relatively long circulation half-life. With further improvement in tumor targeting efficacy and radiolabeling strategies, novel CEA-targeted agents may play an important role in cancer patient management, paving the way to “personalized medicine”

Anatomical and molecular imaging of skin cancer

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer types. It is generally divided into two categories: melanoma (∼ 5%) and nonmelanoma (∼ 95%), which can be further categorized into basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and some rare skin cancer types. Biopsy is still the gold standard for skin cancer evaluation in the clinic. Various anatomical imaging techniques have been used to evaluate different types of skin cancer lesions, including laser scanning confocal microscopy, optical coherence tomography, high-frequency ultrasound, terahertz pulsed imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, and some other recently developed techniques such as photoacoustic microscopy. However, anatomical imaging alone may not be sufficient in guiding skin cancer diagnosis and therapy. Over the last decade, various molecular imaging techniques (in particular single photon emission computed tomography and positron emission tomography) have been investigated for skin cancer imaging. The pathways or molecular targets that have been studied include glucose metabolism, integrin αvβ3, melanocortin-1 receptor, high molecular weight melanoma-associated antigen, and several other molecular markers. Preclinical molecular imaging is thriving all over the world, while clinical molecular imaging has not lived up to the expectations because of slow bench-to-bedside translation. It is likely that this situation will change in the near future and molecular imaging will truly play an important role in personalized medicine of melanoma patients

Incentivizing emerging market suppliers for responsible international supply chain: Revenue-sharing and government subsidy

Many emerging market suppliers of multinational enterprises (MNEs) have been exposed to social responsibility controversies. These incidents significantly affect MNEs’ operations and emerging economies’ sustainable development. This paper considers a two-tier transnational supply chain model to explore the impact of different participants’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagements on their profits and social welfare. We consider two incentive schemes that could enhance emerging market suppliers’ CSR activities: revenue sharing from their buyers and subsidies from their governments. Using the supplier Stackelberg game, we find: 1) transnational operation costs hinder MNEs’ incentive to invest in CSR; 2) suppliers’ CSR activities have a larger impact on the demand for final products and emerging market welfare than MNEs’ activities; 3) suppliers will voluntarily engage in CSR activities, but only at an insufficient level, whereas MNEs revenue-sharing with suppliers and government subsidies to suppliers can improve suppliers’ CSR level; 4) government subsidy improves suppliers’ CSR activities to a larger extent than MNEs’ revenue-sharing. Our study fills the gap in CSR activities along the international supply chain. We also provide critical managerial implications to MNEs and their emerging market suppliers on reducing CSR risk, and policy implications to emerging market governments on realizing sustainable development

Customized 2D Barcode Sensing for Anti-Counterfeiting Application in Smart IoT with Fast Encoding and Information Hiding

With the development of commodity economy, the emergence of fake and shoddy products has seriously harmed the interests of consumers and enterprises. To tackle this challenge, customized 2D barcode is proposed to satisfy the requirements of the enterprise anti-counterfeiting certification. Based on information hiding technology, the proposed approach can solve these challenging problems and provide a low-cost, difficult to forge, and easy to identify solution, while achieving the function of conventional 2D barcodes. By weighting between the perceptual quality and decoding robustness in sensing recognition, the customized 2D barcode can maintain a better aesthetic appearance for anti-counterfeiting and achieve fast encoding. A new picture-embedding scheme was designed to consider 2D barcode, within a unit image block as a basic encoding unit, where the 2D barcode finder patterns were embedded after encoding. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed customized barcode could provide better encoding characteristics, while maintaining better decoding robustness than several state-of-the-art methods. Additionally, as a closed source 2D barcode that could be visually anti-counterfeit, the customized 2D barcode could effectively prevent counterfeiting that replicate physical labels. Benefitting from the high-security, high information capacity, and low-cost, the proposed customized 2D barcode with sensing recognition scheme provide a highly practical, valuable in terms of marketing, and anti-counterfeiting traceable solution for future smart IoT applications

Static and dynamical properties of the spin-5/2 nearly ideal triangular lattice antiferromagnet Ba3MnSb2O9

We study the ground state and spin excitation in Ba3MnSb2O9, an easy-plane S = 5/2 triangular lattice antiferromagnet. By combining single-crystal neutron scattering, electric spin resonance (ESR), and spin wave calculations, we determine the frustrated quasi-two-dimensional spin Hamiltonian parameters describing the material. While the material has a slight monoclinic structural distortion, which could allow for isosceles triangular exchanges and biaxial anisotropy by symmetry, we observe no deviation from the behavior expected for spin waves in the in-plane 120o state. Even the easy-plane anisotropy is so small that it can only be detected by ESR in our study. In conjunction with the quasi-two-dimensionality, our study establishes that Ba3MnSb2O9 is a nearly ideal triangular lattice antiferromagnet with the quasi-classical spin S = 5/2, which suggests that it has the potential for an experimental study of Z- or Z2-vortex excitations