Photonic Wire Bonding as a Novel Technology for Photonic Chip Interfaces

To create photonic multi-chip modules, integrated photonic chips need to be connected internally and to external glass fibers. A novel approach to address this task is the concept of photonic wire bonding, where free-standing polymer waveguides are printed in-situ by two-photon polymerization. This book contains a detailed description of the methodology of photonic wire bonding together with a number of key experiments

Stage-based treatment for thymoma in due consideration of thymectomy: a single-center experience and comparison with the literature

BACKGROUND: Thymomas represent an uncommon and heterogeneous group of intrathoracic malignancies which require different treatments corresponding to their individual tumor stage. The objective of this study was to review the efficacy of our applied stage-based treatment for thymoma in due consideration of thymectomy. METHODS: This is a single-center, institutional review board-approved retrospective study of 50 consecutive patients with thymoma treated at our division within 10 years. RESULTS: There were 29 women (58 %) and 21 men (42 %), mean age 58.3 years. Twenty nine (58 %) had clinical symptoms and 14 (28 %) had myasthenia gravis. Forty-five patients (90 %) underwent thymectomy and complete resection was done in 42 cases (93.3 %). Histologic results were 6 subtype A, 5 AB, 8 B1, 12 B2, 12 B3, and 7 C. The Masaoka staging system revealed 20 stage I, 18 stage II, 6 stage III, and 6 stage IV. Two patients had neoadjuvant therapy and 25 received postoperative treatment. Five (11.1 %) had tumor recurrence, treated with re-resection. The 5-year disease-free survival was 91.5 %. Two patients died of tumor progression and three died of other causes (10 %). The 5-year overall survival was 82.3 % and the median survival time was 92.1 months. The 5-year survival rate after thymectomy was 87.2 % and the median survival was 92.1 months. CONCLUSIONS: Complete resection still remains the mainstay in the treatment of non-metastatic thymoma and should be performed whenever feasible. Close multidisciplinary teamwork is mandatory to optimize the neurologic outcome and to prolong postoperative survival

The prognostic long-term impact of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and postoperative mucostasis in patients with curatively resected non-small cell lung cancer

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) serves as risk factor for the development of lung cancer and seems to have a prognostic impact after surgery for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The aim was to investigate the impact of COPD and postoperative mucostasis on the long-term survival after resected NSCLC. We retrospectively reviewed the data from 342 patients with curatively resected NSCLC. The prognostic long-term impact of COPD and postoperative mucostasis on overall survival (OS), recurrence free survival (RFS) and cancer specific survival (CSS) was calculated using univariable and multivariable Cox regression analyses. We found that 52.3% suffered from COPD and 25.4% had postoperative mucostasis. COPD was significantly more common among smokers (59.9%) compared with non-smokers (21.3%), (p p = 0.006) and between smoking and mucostasis (p = 0.023). Patients with postoperative mucostasis had a significantly worse OS (p p = 0.009) and CSS (p = 0.008). The present analysis demonstrated that postoperative mucostasis, but not COPD, was associated with both worse short- and long-term outcomes for OS, RFS and CSS in curatively resected NSCLC

Hypoxia increases membrane metallo-endopeptidase expression in a novel lung cancer ex vivo model - role of tumor stroma cells

Background: Hypoxia-induced genes are potential targets in cancer therapy. Responses to hypoxia have been extensively studied in vitro, however, they may differ in vivo due to the specific tumor microenvironment. In this study gene expression profiles were obtained from fresh human lung cancer tissue fragments cultured ex vivo under different oxygen concentrations in order to study responses to hypoxia in a model that mimics human lung cancer in vivo.Methods: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) fragments from altogether 70 patients were maintained ex vivo in normoxia or hypoxia in short-term culture. Viability, apoptosis rates and tissue hypoxia were assessed. Gene expression profiles were studied using Affymetrix GeneChip 1.0 ST microarrays.Results: Apoptosis rates were comparable in normoxia and hypoxia despite different oxygenation levels, suggesting adaptation of tumor cells to hypoxia. Gene expression profiles in hypoxic compared to normoxic fragments largely overlapped with published hypoxia-signatures. While most of these genes were up-regulated by hypoxia also in NSCLC cell lines, membrane metallo-endopeptidase (MME, neprilysin, CD10) expression was not increased in hypoxia in NSCLC cell lines, but in carcinoma-associated fibroblasts isolated from non-small cell lung cancers. High MME expression was significantly associated with poor overall survival in 342 NSCLC patients in a meta-analysis of published microarray datasets.Conclusions: The novel ex vivo model allowed for the first time to analyze hypoxia-regulated gene expression in preserved human lung cancer tissue. Gene expression profiles in human hypoxic lung cancer tissue overlapped with hypoxia-signatures from cancer cell lines, however, the elastase MME was identified as a novel hypoxia-induced gene in lung cancer. Due to the lack of hypoxia effects on MME expression in NSCLC cell lines in contrast to carcinoma-associated fibroblasts, a direct up-regulation of stroma fibroblast MME expression under hypoxia might contribute to enhanced aggressiveness of hypoxic cancers

Multi-Chip Integration by Photonic Wire Bonding: Connecting Surface and Edge Emitting Lasers to Silicon Chips

We demonstrate coupling of surface and edge emitting InP lasers to silicon photonic chips using photonic wire bonding. We confirm that back-reflections from the silicon chip do not deteriorate the linewidth of the lasers

Single-laser 32.5 Tbit/s Nyquist WDM transmission

We demonstrate 32.5 Tbit/s 16QAM Nyquist WDM transmission over a total length of 227 km of SMF-28 without optical dispersion compensation. A number of 325 optical carriers are derived from a single laser and encoded with dual-polarization 16QAM data using sinc-shaped Nyquist pulses. As we use no guard bands, the carriers have a spacing of 12.5 GHz equal to the Nyquist bandwidth of the data. We achieve a high net spectral efficiency of 6.4 bit/s/Hz using a software-defined transmitter which generates the electrical modulator drive signals in real-time.Comment: (c) 2012 Optical Society of America. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modifications of the content of this paper are prohibite