Yang-Dan-Tang, Identified from 15 Chinese Herbal Formulae, Inhibits Human Lung Cancer Cell Proliferation via Cell Cycle Arrest

Lung cancer has long been one of the most deadly forms of cancer. The majority of lung cancers are of the non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) type. Here we used the non-small-cell lung carcinoma cell line A549 to screen 15 different traditional Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) formulae to explore the possible mechanisms of alternative medicine in lung cancer therapy. We identified three formulae (Formulae 3, 5, and 14) that substantially decreased the survival of A549 cells but did not affect MRC5 normal lung tissue cells. Formula 14, Yang-Dan-Tang, a modified decoction of Ramulus Cinnamomi Cassiae, was chosen for further characterization. Flow cytometry analysis showed that treatment of Formula 14 induced cell cycle arrest in G1 and G2 phase without causing significant cell death. These results were also confirmed by Western blot analysis, with decreased expression of G1/S and G2/M promoting cell cycle machinery including cyclin D3, cyclin B1, CDK4, and CDK6. This study provides further insight into the possible working mechanism of Yang-Dan-Tang in patients

Demonstration of intermodal four-wave mixing by femtosecond pulses centered at 1550 nm in an air-silica photonic crystal fiber

In this paper, we demonstrated experimentally the intermodal four-wave mixing effect by launching femtosecond pulses centered at 1550 nm into deeply normal dispersion region in the fundamental guided-mode of an air-silica photonic crystal fiber with two zero dispersion wavelengths. When intermodal phase-matching condition is satisfied, the energy of the pump waves at 1550 nm in the fundamental guided-mode is converted to the anti-Stokes waves around 1258 nm and Stokes waves around 2018 nm both in the second-order guided-mode. When femtosecond pulses at input average power Pav of 90 mW are propagated inside 22 cm long photonic crystal fiber, the conversion efficiencies ηas and ηs of the anti-Stokes and Stokes waves generated are 8.5 and 6.8%, respectively. We also observed that the influences of the fiber bending and walk-off effect between the fundamental and second-order guided-modes on intermodal four-wave mixing-based frequency conversion process are very small

Mid-infrared octave-spanning supercontinuum and frequency comb generation in a suspended germanium-membrane ridge waveguide

Stable octave-spanning supercontinuum (SC) in the mid-infrared (MIR) region finds extensive applications in spectroscopy, metrology, biochemistry, etc. The absorption of conventional silicon- or silicon oxide-dominated nonlinear media makes SC generation in MIR region technically challenging. In this paper, we propose ultra-broadband MIR-SC generation using a suspended germanium-membrane ridge waveguide. We theoretically showed that when pump pulses centered at 4.8 um with pulse width at 180 fs and peak power at 800 W are injected into a 4-mm long proposed ridge waveguide, the SC generated ranges from 1.96 ~ 12 um (about 2.6 octaves), extending deep into the “fingerprint” region. The first-order coherence is calculated to confirm the stability of the generated SC. The performance of the SC-based frequency comb is also investigated by assuming a 100-pulses pump source at a repetition rate of 100 KHz

CMOS-compatible 2-bit optical spectral quantization scheme using a silicon-nanocrystal-based horizontal slot waveguide

All-optical analog-to-digital converters based on the third-order nonlinear effects in silicon waveguide are a promising candidate to overcome the limitation of electronic devices and are suitable for photonic integration. In this paper, a 2-bit optical spectral quantization scheme for on-chip all-optical analog-to-digital conversion is proposed. The proposed scheme is realized by filtering the broadened and split spectrum induced by the self-phase modulation effect in a silicon horizontal slot waveguide filled with silicon-nanocrystal. Nonlinear coefficient as high as 8708 W−1/m is obtained because of the tight mode confinement of the horizontal slot waveguide and the high nonlinear refractive index of the silicon-nanocrystal, which provides the enhanced nonlinear interaction and accordingly low power threshold. The results show that a required input peak power level less than 0.4 W can be achieved, along with the 1.98-bit effective-number-of-bit and Gray code output. The proposed scheme can find important applications in on-chip all-optical digital signal processing system

Targeting cancer addiction for SALL4 by shifting its transcriptome with a pharmacologic peptide

Sal-like 4 (SALL4) is a nuclear factor central to the maintenance of stem cell pluripotency and is a key component in hepatocellular carcinoma, a malignancy with no effective treatment. In cancer cells, SALL4 associates with nucleosome remodeling deacetylase (NuRD) to silence tumor-suppressor genes, such as PTEN. Here, we determined the crystal structure of an amino-terminal peptide of SALL4(1-12) complexed to RBBp4, the chaperone subunit of NuRD, at 2.7 Å, and subsequent design of a potent therapeutic SALL4 peptide (FFW) capable of antagonizing the SALL4-NURD interaction using systematic truncation and amino acid substitution studies. FFW peptide disruption of the SALL4-NuRD complex resulted in unidirectional up-regulation of transcripts, turning SALL4 from a dual transcription repressor-activator mode to singular transcription activator mode. We demonstrate that FFW has a target affinity of 23 nM, and displays significant antitumor effects, inhibiting tumor growth by 85% in xenograft mouse models. Using transcriptome and survival analysis, we discovered that the peptide inhibits the transcription-repressor function of SALL4 and causes massive up-regulation of transcripts that are beneficial to patient survival. This study supports the SALL4-NuRD complex as a drug target and FFW as a viable drug candidate, showcasing an effective strategy to accurately target oncogenes previously considered undruggable

A comprehensive theoretical model for on-chip microring-based photonic fractional differentiators

Microring-based photonic fractional differentiators play an important role in the on-chip all-optical signal processing. Unfortunately, the previous works do not consider the time-reversal and the time delay characteristics of the microring-based fractional differentiator. They also do not include the effect of input pulse width on the output. In particular, it cannot explain why the microring-based differentiator with the differentiation order n>1 has larger output deviation than that with n1. In this paper, a comprehensive theoretical model is proposed. The critically-coupled microring resonator is modeled as an ideal first-order differentiator, while the under-coupled and over-coupled resonators are modeled as the time-reversed ideal fractional differentiators. Traditionally, the over-coupled microring resonators are used to form the differentiators with 1<n<2. However, we demonstrate that smaller fitting error can be obtained if the over-coupled microring resonator is fitted by an ideal differentiator with n<1. The time delay of the differentiator is also considered. Finally, the influences of some key factors on the output waveform and deviation are discussed. The proposed theoretical model is beneficial for the design and application of the microring-based fractional differentiators

On-chip integratable all-optical quantizer using strong cross-phase modulation in a silicon-organic hybrid slot waveguide

High performance all-optical quantizer based on silicon waveguide is believed to have significant applications in photonic integratable optical communication links, optical interconnection networks, and real-time signal processing systems. In this paper, we propose an integratable all-optical quantizer for on-chip and low power consumption all-optical analog-to-digital converters. The quantization is realized by the strong cross-phase modulation and interference in a silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) slot waveguide based Mach-Zehnder interferometer. By carefully designing the dimension of the SOH waveguide, large nonlinear coefficients up to 16,000 and 18,069 W−1/m for the pump and probe signals can be obtained respectively, along with a low pulse walk-off parameter of 66.7 fs/mm, and all-normal dispersion in the wavelength regime considered. Simulation results show that the phase shift of the probe signal can reach 8π at a low pump pulse peak power of 206 mW and propagation length of 5 mm such that a 4-bit all-optical quantizer can be realized. The corresponding signal-to-noise ratio is 23.42 dB and effective number of bit is 3.89-bit

Factors influencing the effectiveness of inventory management in manufacturing SMEs

Effectiveness of inventory management is a vital part in the manufacturing organization to be more competitive. The previous studies have indicated that there are several factors influencing the effectiveness of inventory management in the organization but there is lack of researchers who carried out the research in the manufacturing small medium enterprise in Johor. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to identify the problem of inventory management faced by the manufacturing small medium enterprise and also to determine the factors that will influence the effectiveness of inventory management. In completing this research, 80 employees were selected randomly from the manufacturing small medium enterprise in Batu Pahat, Johor and they were requested to complete questionnaires. The result have shown that the problems of inventory management faced by manufacturing organization were underproduction, overproduction, stock out situation, delays in the delivery of raw materials and discrepancy of records. The factors, documentation/store records, planning, knowledge of employees/staff skill have shown to significantly influence the effectiveness of inventory management while the funds have shown slightly significant influence on the inventory management in manufacturing small medium enterprises. This quantitative study is important to the manufacturing organization in Malaysia because it provides the guidelines to the employers of manufacturing small medium enterprises in Batu Pahat, Johor