Co-existence of lung carcinoma metastasis and enchondroma in the femur of a patient with Ollier disease

Tumour-to-tumour metastasis is very unusual and has been defined as a tumour metastasis into another histologically different tumour. It is extremely rare in bone. We report a case of lung squamous cell carcinoma metastasized to an enchondroma in the femur of a patient with Ollier disease. A 60-year-old female had a history of a poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma of the lung. She underwent a video-assisted thoracoscopic lobectomy, and a follow-up MRI scan showed three lesions in the left distal femur and proximal tibia, which were initially interpreted as metastasis on radiology. Resection of the left proximal tibial lesion was performed, and the pathological findings were consistent with enchondroma with no evidence of metastasis. Subsequent curettage of lesions in the distal left femur revealed metastatic poorly differentiated carcinoma with foci of hyaline cartilage, which was most consistent with metastatic carcinoma in a pre-existing enchondroma. The MRI films were re-reviewed. Characteristic MRI features of enchondroma were found in the lesion in the left proximal tibia and one of the lesions in the left distal femur, while the features of the other lesion in the left distal femur included cortical destruction and extensive oedema in surrounding soft tissue, which were consistent with a malignant tumour. In addition, the enchondroma in the lateral condyle showed blurring and irregular inner margin and adjacent bone oedema, which likely represents a co-existing metastatic tumour and enchondroma. The difference in lineage was confirmed by immunohistochemistry. The final diagnosis was metastatic poorly differentiated carcinoma of the lung into a co-existent enchondroma. The diagnosis can be challenging and could be easily overlooked both radiologically and histologically. Thorough clinical and radiological information is critical for the diagnosis, and despite a very unusual event, awareness of the tumour-to-tumour metastasis phenomenon can avoid an inaccurate diagnosis by the pathologist, therefore preventing inappropriate clinical intervention

Development of a 3-dimensional model to study right heart dysfunction in pulmonary arterial hypertension: first observations

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) patients eventually die of right heart failure (RHF). Currently, there is no suitable pre-clinical model to study PAH. Therefore, we aim to develop a right heart dysfunction (RHD) model using the 3-dimensional engineered heart tissue (EHT) approach and cardiomyocytes derived from patient-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to unravel the mechanisms that determine the fate of a pressure-overloaded right ventricle. iPSCs from PAH and healthy control subjects were differentiated into cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs), incorporated into the EHT, and maintained for 28 days. In comparison with control iPSC-CMs, PAH-derived iPSC-CMs exhibited decreased beating frequency and increased contraction and relaxation times. iPSC-CM alignment within the EHT was observed. PAH-derived EHTs exhibited higher force, and contraction and relaxation times compared with control EHTs. Increased afterload was induced using 2x stiffer posts from day 0. Due to high variability, there were no functional differences between normal and stiffer EHTs, and no differences in the hypertrophic gene expression. In conclusion, under baseline spontaneous conditions, PAH-derived iPSC-CMs and EHTs show prolonged contraction compared with controls, as observed clinically in PAH patients. Further optimization of the hypertrophic model and profound characterization may provide a platform for disease modelling and drug screening.Therapeutic cell differentiatio

Dynamic protein methylation in chromatin biology

Post-translational modification of chromatin is emerging as an increasingly important regulator of chromosomal processes. In particular, histone lysine and arginine methylation play important roles in regulating transcription, maintaining genomic integrity, and contributing to epigenetic memory. Recently, the use of new approaches to analyse histone methylation, the generation of genetic model systems, and the ability to interrogate genome wide histone modification profiles has aided in defining how histone methylation contributes to these processes. Here we focus on the recent advances in our understanding of the histone methylation system and examine how dynamic histone methylation contributes to normal cellular function in mammals

Automatic Aircraft Recognition using DSmT and HMM

International audienceIn this paper we propose a new method for solving the Automatic Aircraft Recognition (AAR) problem from a sequence of images of an unknown observed aircraft. Our method exploits the knowledge extracted from a training image data set (a set of binary images of different aircrafts observed under three different poses) with the fusion of information of multiple features drawn from the image sequence using Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) coupled with Hidden Markov Models (HMM). The first step of the method consists for each image of the observed aircraft to compute both Hu's moment invariants (the first features vector) and the partial singular values of the outline of the aircraft (the second features vector). In the second step, we use a probabilistic neural network (PNN) based on the training image dataset to construct the conditional basic belief assignments (BBA's) of the unknown aircraft type within the set of a predefined possible target types given the features vectors and pose condition. The BBA's are then combined altogether by the Proportional Conflict Redistribution rule #5 (PCR5) of DSmT to get a global BBA about the target type under a given pose hypothesis. These sequential BBA's give initial recognition results that feed a HMM-based classifier for automatically recognizing the aircraft in a multiple poses context. The last part of this paper shows the effectiveness of this new Sequential Multiple- Features Automatic Target Recognition (SMF-ATR) method with realistic simulation results. This method is compliant with realtime processing requirement for advanced AAR systems

Numerical Simulation of Fatigue Damage and Shape Instability Behavior of Steel 40Cr by the Damage-Coupled Crystal Plastic Model

A representative volume element is developed based on the Voronoi tessellation to reveal the mechanism of shape instability behavior. In the model, a damage-coupled crystal plastic model is established to describe the shape instability behavior. The heterogeneity of materials is introduced into the model with the aim of simulating the microstructure of materials. The experimental and simulation results show that the fatigue damage in the elastic deformation stage with high cyclic stress level is the initial motivation of shape instability behavior. The cyclic softening and ratcheting properties of materials accelerate the plastic strain accumulated rate

Pattern-dependent tunable adhesion of superhydrophobic MnO 2 nanostructured film

10.1021/la104709dLangmuir2773224-3228LANG