Evaluation of a pig femoral head osteonecrosis model

Background A major cause of osteonecrosis of the femoral head is interruption of a blood supply to the proximal femur. In order to evaluate blood circulation and pathogenetic alterations, a pig femoral head osteonecrosis model was examined to address whether ligature of the femoral neck (vasculature deprivation) induces a reduction of blood circulation in the femoral head, and whether transphyseal vessels exist for communications between the epiphysis and the metaphysis. We also tested the hypothesis that the vessels surrounding the femoral neck and the ligamentum teres represent the primary source of blood flow to the femoral head. Methods Avascular osteonecrosis of the femoral head was induced in Yorkshire pigs by transecting the ligamentum teres and placing two ligatures around the femoral neck. After heparinized saline infusion and microfil perfusion via the abdominal aorta, blood circulation in the femoral head was evaluated by optical and CT imaging. Results An angiogram of the microfil casted sample allowed identification of the major blood vessels to the proximal femur including the iliac, common femoral, superficial femoral, deep femoral and circumflex arteries. Optical imaging in the femoral neck showed that a microfil stained vessel network was visible in control sections but less noticeable in necrotic sections. CT images showed a lack of microfil staining in the epiphysis. Furthermore, no transphyseal vessels were observed to link the epiphysis to the metaphysis. Conclusion Optical and CT imaging analyses revealed that in this present pig model the ligatures around the femoral neck were the primary cause of induction of avascular osteonecrosis. Since the vessels surrounding the femoral neck are comprised of the branches of the medial and the lateral femoral circumflex vessels, together with the extracapsular arterial ring and the lateral epiphyseal arteries, augmentation of blood circulation in those arteries will improve pathogenetic alterations in the necrotic femoral head. Our pig model can be used for further femoral head osteonecrosis studies

Kittenish Appearance: Western Fashion in Meiji Japan

This paper seeks to examine the degree to which Meiji era Japan adopted Western fashion. It uses written and photographic sources to understand the attitude of Meiji era Japanese towards the introduction of Western fashion into everyday life, and the changing of said attitudes throughout the Meiji era and its implication on Japan\u27s national identity

The H-index of a network node and its relation to degree and coreness

Identifying influential nodes in dynamical processes is crucial in understanding network structure and function. Degree, H-index and coreness are widely used metrics, but previously treated as unrelated. Here we show their relation by constructing an operator , in terms of which degree, H-index and coreness are the initial, intermediate and steady states of the sequences, respectively. We obtain a family of H-indices that can be used to measure a node’s importance. We also prove that the convergence to coreness can be guaranteed even under an asynchronous updating process, allowing a decentralized local method of calculating a node’s coreness in large-scale evolving networks. Numerical analyses of the susceptible-infected-removed spreading dynamics on disparate real networks suggest that the H-index is a good tradeoff that in many cases can better quantify node influence than either degree or coreness.This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11205042, 11222543, 11075031, 61433014). L.L. acknowledges the research start-up fund of Hangzhou Normal University under Grant No. PE13002004039 and the EU FP7 Grant 611272 (project GROWTHCOM). The Boston University work was supported by NSF Grants CMMI 1125290, CHE 1213217 and PHY 1505000. (11205042 - National Natural Science Foundation of China; 11222543 - National Natural Science Foundation of China; 11075031 - National Natural Science Foundation of China; 61433014 - National Natural Science Foundation of China; PE13002004039 - research start-up fund of Hangzhou Normal University; 611272 - EU FP7 Grant (project GROWTHCOM); CMMI 1125290 - NSF; CHE 1213217 - NSF; PHY 1505000 - NSF)Published versio

GSAE: an autoencoder with embedded gene-set nodes for genomics functional characterization

Bioinformatics tools have been developed to interpret gene expression data at the gene set level, and these gene set based analyses improve the biologists' capability to discover functional relevance of their experiment design. While elucidating gene set individually, inter gene sets association is rarely taken into consideration. Deep learning, an emerging machine learning technique in computational biology, can be used to generate an unbiased combination of gene set, and to determine the biological relevance and analysis consistency of these combining gene sets by leveraging large genomic data sets. In this study, we proposed a gene superset autoencoder (GSAE), a multi-layer autoencoder model with the incorporation of a priori defined gene sets that retain the crucial biological features in the latent layer. We introduced the concept of the gene superset, an unbiased combination of gene sets with weights trained by the autoencoder, where each node in the latent layer is a superset. Trained with genomic data from TCGA and evaluated with their accompanying clinical parameters, we showed gene supersets' ability of discriminating tumor subtypes and their prognostic capability. We further demonstrated the biological relevance of the top component gene sets in the significant supersets. Using autoencoder model and gene superset at its latent layer, we demonstrated that gene supersets retain sufficient biological information with respect to tumor subtypes and clinical prognostic significance. Superset also provides high reproducibility on survival analysis and accurate prediction for cancer subtypes.Comment: Presented in the International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM 2018) at Los Angeles, CA, USA and published in BMC Systems Biology 2018, 12(Suppl 8):14

CHPAMS Election Results and 1st CHPAMS Conference

Summer is up beating for everybody and for CHPAMS as well. To promote the potential collaborations among our members and make the professional network stronger, CHPAMS initiated a series of activities in summer 2015.Thank you all for your support! CHPAMS has successfully completed our first election for Board of Directors (2016-2018) from April 1 to April 15. To keep the election process as transparent as possible, the election result is attached for your review.  Based on the bylaws, it's required to have at least 10% of all members who registered before March 31, 2016 and the number of votes has passed that quorum. Moreover, all candidates passed 50% of the effective votes so they are officially elected and will start their duties on July 1, 2016. Congratulations to all newly elected board members! Moreover, CHPAMS will host the 1st conference: "Bridging the Minds in Health Policy" in Atlanta on May 13-15, 2016. As many of us have been virtually working together for a long time, this will be an excellent time to get together and know more from each other. More details are available here or visit www.chpams.org. Thank you so much for your support! Qi (Harry) Zhang, Ph.D.President (2014-2016)China Health Policy and Management Societ

Increasing Epidemic of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in China

Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) were virtually eliminated in China in 1964 after Chinese government illegalized commercial sex and implemented active prevention and treatment programs among former sex workers (Chen et al., 2000).  However, in the last three decades, the centralized economy in China made a transition to a more market-oriented economy, which brought significant changes in culture and social norms and dramatically influenced sexual attitude and behaviors among Chinese adults. One consequence of those changes is the significantly increasing prevalence of STDs in China(Abrams, 2001). The common STDs in China include gonorrhea, syphilis, AIDS, cervicitis, genital herpes, chancroid, lymphogranuloma venereum, and chlamydial infection

Memorable Summer: CHPAMS Activity Review in 2015

Summer is up beating for everybody and for CHPAMS as well. To promote the potential collaborations among our members and make the professional network stronger, CHPAMS initiated a series of activities in summer 2015. Dr. Lizheng Shi from Tulane University opened the scene of summer 2015 by organizing a CHPAMS reception at International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Annual International Meeting in Philadelphia on May 19, 2015. This event was well attended by over more than 40 scholars from industry, academia, and government agencies across the world. After the event, a special wechat group with more than 150 members was developed almost overnight, which shows a strong momentum of this excellent social network event. June is definitely a busy month for CHPAMS. Our members were actively participating in events in China and U.S. The Chinese Economists Society (CES) 2015 Conference in Chongqing, China was definitely a highlight for CHPAMS members. Dr. Lizheng Shi, the incumbent CES President and myself both served on the CES board to organize this significant event on June 13-14. We fortunately invited two Nobel Laureates, Kenneth Arrow, and Sir James Mirrlees, as keynote speakers. CHPAMS hosted a forum for junior scholars at the meeting and I chaired a round table which focused on Aging Population and Health Reform in China. Dr. Gordon Liu, Dr. Shuanglin Lin from Peking University, Dr. Yinyao Chen from Fudan University, and Dr. Hengjin Dong from Zhejiang University delivered excellent speeches at this roundtable and received warm responses from the audience. CHPAMS members also received several prestigious awards: Mr. HUANG Wei for Best CES Economics Student Award, Dr. HE Guojun for Gregory Chow Best Paper Award, and I’m so humble to receive the Best Service Award. All these activities and awards demonstrate the excellence CHPAMS and its members are pursuing.    Right after the CES conference, CHPAMS members joined the 2nd Westlake Youth Forum on June 15-18, 2015 in Hangzhou, China. The Westlake Youth Forum is a significant event organized by China Medical Board (CMB), Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and CHPAMS. The forum attracted over 50 attendees and CHPAMS members actively participated in the forums as presenters, moderators, and discussants. CHPAMS also held its reception on June 16, which had an unforgettable night for all attendees. Thanks to CMB’s generous support, the Westlake Youth Forum provides excellent educational and networking opportunities to junior public health and health policy scholars in China and overseas.                 Almost at the same time, a group of health services researchers attended CHPAMS’ reception at the 2015 AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (ARM) on June 15, 2015 in Minneapolis, MN. Approximately 20 current and new CHPAMS members participated and enjoyed the reception. This social event provided a delightful opportunity for Chinese researchers from all around the world to exchange ideas and collaborate in the future.    The China Health Policy and Management Society (CHPAMS) and its members actively participated in the International Health Economics Association (iHEA) 11th World Congress in Milan, Italy on July 13-15, 2015. CHPAMS was highlighted as one of the premier Chinese organizations in the Congress' program. CHPAMS members contributed to the biennial conference as scientific committee members, session chairs, and presenters. CHPAMS also hosted a reception for attending members with a memorable reunion in the summer of Milan.   Except for attending a variety of conferences in the summer, CHPAMS successfully hosted the 2nd Jump-Start Your Career (JSYC) Webinar on June 30, 2015. The Jump-Start Your Career is a series of webinars hosted by CHPAMS to facilitate the members’ career development in their own fields by introducing career opportunities in and out of China. CHPAMS hosted the 1st Jump-Start Your Career in May 2015 and we invited two premier speakers for this inaugural event from Peking University and Shandong University. The 2nd JSYC highlighted senior speakers from Zhejiang University and Fudan University, who introduced their institutions, job opportunities, benefits to recruit talented scholars. Several junior faculty members from each institution described their experience and lives as the returnees in China. The speakers interacted with CHPAMS members and answered questions from the participants during the live event. CHPAMS appreciated the following speakers who support the Jump-Start Your Career webinars. Peking University, School of Public Health Qingyue Meng, Dean, School of Public Health and Executive Director, PKU China Center for Health Development Studies Xiaoyun Liu, Associate Professor, PKU China Center for Health Development Studies Shandong University, School of Medicine and Health Management                   Qiang Sun, Deputy Dean, School of Medicine and Health Management and Executive Director, Center for Health Management and Policy                   Xiaojie Sun, Associate Professor, Center for Health Management and Policy Zhejiang University, School of Public Health & School of Medicine Shankuan ZHU, Associate Dean and Professor, Founding Director of Chronic Disease Institute, School of Public Health Hai YU, Professor, Center for Health Policy Studies, School of Medicine  Hengjin DONG, Professor, Associate Director of Department of Social Medicine , School of Public Health; Director of Center for Health Policy, School of Medicine Xiaoguang MA, Associate Professor, Secretary of Human Resource Committee, School of Public Health Fudan University, School of Public Health   Wen CHEN, Dean, Professor of Health Economics Yingyao CHEN, Associate Dean, Professor of Health Services Zhuohui ZHAO, Associate Professor of Environmental Health Yubin ZHANG, Associate Research Fellow of Occupational Health Min HU, Lecturer of Health Economics CHPAMS welcomes other institutions to conduct recruitment talks at the future Jump-Start Your Career webinar series. All these activities significantly enhanced the bondage of our members and the organization and received positive responses from all stakeholders. CHPAMS is determined to continue these efforts to provide more opportunities to our members. We thank the China Medical Board (CMB) and Beijing Office colleagues’ strong support to CHPAMS and the diverse activities in this summer. We will continue to roll out our activities into the Fall

Predicting drug response of tumors from integrated genomic profiles by deep neural networks

The study of high-throughput genomic profiles from a pharmacogenomics viewpoint has provided unprecedented insights into the oncogenic features modulating drug response. A recent screening of ~1,000 cancer cell lines to a collection of anti-cancer drugs illuminated the link between genotypes and vulnerability. However, due to essential differences between cell lines and tumors, the translation into predicting drug response in tumors remains challenging. Here we proposed a DNN model to predict drug response based on mutation and expression profiles of a cancer cell or a tumor. The model contains a mutation and an expression encoders pre-trained using a large pan-cancer dataset to abstract core representations of high-dimension data, followed by a drug response predictor network. Given a pair of mutation and expression profiles, the model predicts IC50 values of 265 drugs. We trained and tested the model on a dataset of 622 cancer cell lines and achieved an overall prediction performance of mean squared error at 1.96 (log-scale IC50 values). The performance was superior in prediction error or stability than two classical methods and four analog DNNs of our model. We then applied the model to predict drug response of 9,059 tumors of 33 cancer types. The model predicted both known, including EGFR inhibitors in non-small cell lung cancer and tamoxifen in ER+ breast cancer, and novel drug targets. The comprehensive analysis further revealed the molecular mechanisms underlying the resistance to a chemotherapeutic drug docetaxel in a pan-cancer setting and the anti-cancer potential of a novel agent, CX-5461, in treating gliomas and hematopoietic malignancies. Overall, our model and findings improve the prediction of drug response and the identification of novel therapeutic options.Comment: Accepted for presentation in the International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM 2018) at Los Angeles, CA, USA. Currently under consideration for publication in a Supplement Issue of BMC Genomic