Human Cancer and Platelet Interaction, a Potential Therapeutic Target

Cancer patients experience a four-fold increase in thrombosis risk, indicating that cancer development and progression are associated with platelet activation. Xenograft experiments and transgenic mouse models further demonstrate that platelet activation and platelet-cancer cell interaction are crucial for cancer metastasis. Direct or indirect interaction of platelets induces cancer cell plasticity and enhances survival and extravasation of circulating cancer cells during dissemination. In vivo and in vitro experiments also demonstrate that cancer cells induce platelet aggregation, suggesting that platelet-cancer interaction is bidirectional. Therefore, understanding how platelets crosstalk with cancer cells may identify potential strategies to inhibit cancer metastasis and to reduce cancer-related thrombosis. Here, we discuss the potential function of platelets in regulating cancer progression and summarize the factors and signaling pathways that mediate the cancer cell-platelet interaction

COVID-19 prevention and control measures and experiences during the 14th National Games of China: a qualitative interview study

BackgroundThe 14th National Games was the first sporting mass gathering to be held in China in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It may increase the risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 transmission. In order to reduce the spread of the virus during the 14th National Games, the Chinese government took a series of public health measures, and ultimately no confirmed cases were found in the 14th National Games venues.ObjectiveThis study aimed to discuss preventive and control measures used to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic during the 14th National Games.MethodsFive experts were selected for this study using a snowball sampling method, and semistructured and in-depth interviews were conducted. Based on grounded theory, the transcriptions were analysed and coded using Nvivo 12 software.ResultsA theoretical model of the COVID-19 prevention and control measures at the 14th National Games of China was constructed. The model contains seven main components: the health risks of mass gatherings, crowd management, emergency medical care, allocation of emergency medical resources, pandemic emergency drills, the pandemic prevention and control management platform (Quanyuntong app), and emergency response plans.ConclusionThe study showed that the deployment of emergency medical resources was the most important for mass gatherings. This study not only expanded the applications of grounded theory but also serves as a reference for future scholars when conducting more in-depth empirical studies on public health countermeasures for mass gatherings and can inform organizers when holding mass gatherings

Supranutritional supplementation of vitamin E influences mitochondrial proteome profile of post-mortem longissimus lumborum from feedlot heifers

Supplementation of vitamin E improves beef colour stability by minimizing lipid oxidation-induced myoglobin oxidation. Mitochondria affect myoglobin redox stability, and dietary vitamin E influences mitochondrial functionality in skeletal muscles. Nonetheless, the influence of vitamin E on the mitochondrial proteome of beef skeletal muscles has yet to be  investigated. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the effect of dietary vitamin E on mitochondrial proteome of post-mortem beef longissimus lumborum (LL) muscle. Beef LL muscle samples (24 hours post-mortem) were obtained from the carcasses of nine (n = 9) vitamin E-fed (VITE) (1000 IU vitamin E for 89 days) and nine (n = 9) control (CONT) (diet without supplemental vitamin E) heifers. The mitochondrial proteome was analysed using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry, and nine differentially abundant spots were identified. All the differentially abundant spots were over-abundant in CONT, and the proteins were electron transport chain enzymes (NADH dehydrogenase iron-sulphur protein 8, NADH dehydrogenase flavoprotein 2, and cytochrome c oxidase subunit 5B), metabolic enzymes (succinate-CoA ligase (ADP-forming) subunit beta; dihydrolipoyllysine-residue succinyltransferase component of 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase complex; pyruvate dehydrogenase protein X component), and enzymes involved in ATP regeneration (creatine kinase S-type). The low abundance of these proteins in VITE may decrease mitochondrial activity, resulting in low oxidative activity. These findings suggest that the strong antioxidant activity of vitamin E leads to less expression of mitochondrial oxidative enzymes in beef skeletal muscles.Keywords: Beef colour, lipid oxidation, mitochondrial enzyme

Hsp47 Promotes Cancer Metastasis by Enhancing Collagen-Dependent Cancer Cell-Platelet Interaction

Increased expression of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins in circulating tumor cells (CTCs) suggests potential function of cancer cell-produced ECM in initiation of cancer cell colonization. Here, we showed that collagen and heat shock protein 47 (Hsp47), a chaperone facilitating collagen secretion and deposition, were highly expressed during the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and in CTCs. Hsp47 expression induced mesenchymal phenotypes in mammary epithelial cells (MECs), enhanced platelet recruitment, and promoted lung retention and colonization of cancer cells. Platelet depletion in vivo abolished Hsp47-induced cancer cell retention in the lung, suggesting that Hsp47 promotes cancer cell colonization by enhancing cancer cell–platelet interaction. Using rescue experiments and functional blocking antibodies, we identified type I collagen as the key mediator of Hsp47-induced cancer cell–platelet interaction. We also found that Hsp47-dependent collagen deposition and platelet recruitment facilitated cancer cell clustering and extravasation in vitro. By analyzing DNA/RNA sequencing data generated from human breast cancer tissues, we showed that gene amplification and increased expression of Hsp47 were associated with cancer metastasis. These results suggest that targeting the Hsp47/collagen axis is a promising strategy to block cancer cell–platelet interaction and cancer colonization in secondary organs

The effects of social comparison and depressive mood on adolescent social decision-making

Background: Based on social comparison theory, two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of depression and social comparison on adolescents, using the ultimatum game (UG). Methods: Before the formal experiment began, a preliminary experiment tested the effectiveness of social comparison settings. This study used the UG paradigm to explore adolescents’ social decision-making in the context of gain and loss through two experiments. These experiments were designed as a 2 (group: depressive mood group, normal mood group) × 2 (social comparison: upward, downward) × 3 (fairness level: fair 5:5, unfair 3:7, extremely unfair 1:9) three-factor hybrid study. Results: (1) The fairer the proposal was, the higher the sense of fairness participants felt, and the higher their acceptance rate. (2) The acceptance rate of the participants for downward social comparison was significantly higher than that for upward social comparison, but there was no difference in fairness perception between the two social comparisons. (3) Under the context of gain, the acceptance rate of the depressive mood group was higher than that of the normal mood group, but there was no difference in the acceptance rate between the depressive mood group and the normal mood group under the loss context. Depressive mood participants had more feelings of unfairness in the contexts of both gain and loss. (4) The effects of depressive mood, social comparison and the fairness level of distribution on social decision-making interact. Conclusions: The interaction of social comparison, depressive mood and proposal type demonstrates that besides one’s emotion, cognitive biases and social factors can also have an effect on social decision-making. These findings indicate that behavioral decision boosting may provide an avenue for appropriate interventions in helping to guide adolescents to make social decisions

How Does Physical Exercise Affect Academic Performance? The Mediating Role of Non-Cognitive Abilities

Previous studies have found that good physical exercise can promote academic performance, but the underlying mechanism behind this lacks large-scale empirical data. Based on this, we used the 2020 Jiangsu Province academic quality monitoring data to construct an OLS regression. Then, the non-cognitive abilities variable was built with the NEO-FFI Theory, and the mediation effect diagram was drawn through the Amos22.0 software. The study found that: (i) Physical exercise brought academic improvement to elementary and middle school students. (ii) The influence mechanism of physical exercise was different between elementary school and middle school. Students at the elementary school were directly and indirectly affected. (iii) In non-cognitive specific dimensions, openness played a significant and great mediating role

Damage-Associated Molecular Patterns and Their Signaling Pathways in Primary Blast Lung Injury: New Research Progress and Future Directions

Primary blast lung injury (PBLI) is a common cause of casualties in wars, terrorist attacks, and explosions. It can exist in the absence of any other outward signs of trauma, and further develop into acute lung injury (ALI) or a more severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The pathogenesis of PBLI at the cellular and molecular level has not been clear. Damage-associated molecular pattern (DAMP) is a general term for endogenous danger signals released by the body after injury, including intracellular protein molecules (HMGB1, histones, s100s, heat shock proteins, eCIRP, etc.), secretory protein factors (IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α, VEGF, complements, etc.), purines and pyrimidines and their derived degradation products (nucleic acids, ATP, ADP, UDPG, uric acid, etc.), and extracellular matrix components (hyaluronic acid, fibronectin, heparin sulfate, biglycan, etc.). DAMPs can be detected by multiple receptors including pattern recognition receptors (PRRs). The study of DAMPs and their related signaling pathways, such as the mtDNA-triggered cGAS-YAP pathway, contributes to revealing the molecular mechanism of PBLI, and provides new therapeutic targets for controlling inflammatory diseases and alleviating their symptoms. In this review, we focus on the recent progress of research on DAMPs and their signaling pathways, as well as the potential therapeutic targets and future research directions in PBLI

A Medical Image Segmentation Method Based on Improved UNet 3+ Network

In recent years, segmentation details and computing efficiency have become more important in medical image segmentation for clinical applications. In deep learning, UNet based on a convolutional neural network is one of the most commonly used models. UNet 3+ was designed as a modified UNet by adopting the architecture of full-scale skip connections. However, full-scale feature fusion can result in excessively redundant computations. This study aimed to reduce the network parameters of UNet 3+ while further improving the feature extraction capability. First, to eliminate redundancy and improve computational efficiency, we prune the full-scale skip connections of UNet 3+. In addition, we use the attention module called Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) to capture more essential features and thus improve the feature expression capabilities. The performance of the proposed model was validated by three different types of datasets: skin cancer segmentation, breast cancer segmentation, and lung segmentation. The parameters are reduced by about 36% and 18% compared to UNet and UNet 3+, respectively. The results show that the proposed method not only outperformed the comparison models in a variety of evaluation metrics but also achieved more accurate segmentation results. The proposed models have lower network parameters that enhance feature extraction and improve segmentation performance efficiently. Furthermore, the models have great potential for application in medical imaging computer-aided diagnosis