Improving Non-autoregressive Machine Translation with Error Exposure and Consistency Regularization

Being one of the IR-NAT (Iterative-refinemennt-based NAT) frameworks, the Conditional Masked Language Model (CMLM) adopts the mask-predict paradigm to re-predict the masked low-confidence tokens. However, CMLM suffers from the data distribution discrepancy between training and inference, where the observed tokens are generated differently in the two cases. In this paper, we address this problem with the training approaches of error exposure and consistency regularization (EECR). We construct the mixed sequences based on model prediction during training, and propose to optimize over the masked tokens under imperfect observation conditions. We also design a consistency learning method to constrain the data distribution for the masked tokens under different observing situations to narrow down the gap between training and inference. The experiments on five translation benchmarks obtains an average improvement of 0.68 and 0.40 BLEU scores compared to the base models, respectively, and our CMLMC-EECR achieves the best performance with a comparable translation quality with the Transformer. The experiments results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method

Increased IL-10 mRNA expression in tumor-associated macrophage correlated with late stage of lung cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Monocyte recruited into the tumor and maturation to tumor-associated macrophage (TAM). <it>Interleukin-10(IL-10) </it>is a potent immunosuppressive cytokine, which can be secreted from both primary tumor and stromal cells. However, there are controversies regarding its role in the progression of cancer. So it is important to isolate TAM from tumor cells to study the role of <it>IL-10 </it>in the progress of cancer. The aim of our study was to determine whether <it>IL-10 </it>expressed by TAM correlated with clinicopathological factors in NSCLC.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>TAM in NSCLC was isolated by short-term culture in serum free medium with the modification to literature reports. The mRNA expression levels of <it>IL-10</it>, <it>cathepsin B</it>, <it>cathepsin S</it>, which were closely related with TAM according to the literatures, were evaluated by Quantitative real-time RT-PCR in 63 NSCLC. The relationships between their expression levels and clinicopathological features were investigated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We successfully achieved up to 95% purity of TAM, derived from 63 primary lung cancer tissues. TAM expressed high levels of <it>IL-10</it>, <it>cathepsin B </it>in NSCLC. High levels of <it>IL-10 </it>in TAM significantly correlated with stage, tumor size, lymph node metastasis, lymphovascular invasion or histologic poor differentiation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results revealed that TAM with high levels of <it>IL-10 </it>expression may play an important role in the progression of non-small cell lung cancer. The data also suggested that TAMs may involve in tumor immunosuppression through overexpressed <it>IL-10</it>. Additionally, the phenotype of isolated TAM can be potentially used to predict clinicopathological features as well.</p

A Renewable Tissue Resource of Phenotypically Stable, Biologically and Ethnically Diverse, Patient-Derived Human Breast Cancer Xenograft Models

Breast cancer research is hampered by difficulties in obtaining and studying primary human breast tissue, and by the lack of in vivo preclinical models that reflect patient tumor biology accurately. To overcome these limitations, we propagated a cohort of human breast tumors grown in the epithelium-free mammary fat pad of SCID/Beige and NOD/SCID/IL2γ-receptor null (NSG) mice, under a series of transplant conditions. Both models yielded stably transplantable xenografts at comparably high rates (~21% and ~19%, respectively). Of the conditions tested, xenograft take rate was highest in the presence of a low-dose estradiol pellet. Overall, 32 stably transplantable xenograft lines were established, representing 25 unique patients. Most tumors yielding xenografts were “triple-negative” (ER-PR-HER2+) (n=19). However, we established lines from three ER-PR-HER2+ tumors, one ER+PR-HER2−, one ER+PR+HER2− and one “triple-positive” (ER+PR+HER2+) tumor. Serially passaged xenografts show biological consistency with the tumor of origin, are phenotypically stable across multiple transplant generations at the histologic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and genomic levels, and show comparable treatment responses as those observed clinically. Xenografts representing 12 patients, including two ER+ lines, showed metastasis to the mouse lung. These models thus serve as a renewable, quality-controlled tissue resource for preclinical studies investigating treatment response and metastasis

Enhancement of biocontrol efficacy of Cryptococcus laurentii by cinnamic acid against Penicillium italicum in citrus fruit

Cinnamic acid was effective to control blue mold caused by Penicillium italicum in 'Orah' mandarins. The inhibition of fruit decay was positively correlated with cinnamic acid concentration. Cinnamic acid at 1.5 mM, in combination with the biocontrol yeast Cryptococcus laurentii at 1 x 10(7) cells/mL, provided synergistic effects against P. italicum. Population dynamic analysis demonstrated that the growth of C. laurentii in fruit rind wounds was not significantly influenced by cinnamic acid. C. laurentii multiplied rapidly, regardless of whether the yeast was used alone or combined with cinnamic acid. By contrast, spore germination and mycelial growth of P. italicum in the culture medium were markedly inhibited by cinnamic acid. By using propidium iodide fluorescent staining, loss of membrane integrity in P. italicum was observed after cinnamic acid treatment. Furthermore, cinnamic acid led to the leakage of cellular constituents including soluble proteins and carbohydrates from hyphae of P. italicum. These results indicated that the fungal pathogen P. italicum is more sensitive to cinnamic acid than the biocontrol yeast C. laurentii. Taken together, our data suggest that the enhancement in biocontrol efficacy of C. laurentii might be associated with the differential influence of cinnamic acid on the antagonistic yeast and the fungal pathogen