Eukaryotic Initiation Factor 5A2 (EIF5A2) Contributes to Ovarian Tumor Growth and Metastasis

Ovarian cancer has the highest mortality rate among all gynecological malignancies due to lack of effective biomarkers for early diagnosis. The majority of ovarian cancer patients are already at an advanced stage when diagnosed. In addition, ovarian cancers often become chemoresistant and metastatic, and recur following initial chemotherapy

Energy conversion in Purple Bacteria Photosynthesis

The study of how photosynthetic organisms convert light offers insight not only into nature's evolutionary process, but may also give clues as to how best to design and manipulate artificial photosynthetic systems -- and also how far we can drive natural photosynthetic systems beyond normal operating conditions, so that they can harvest energy for us under otherwise extreme conditions. In addition to its interest from a basic scientific perspective, therefore, the goal to develop a deep quantitative understanding of photosynthesis offers the potential payoff of enhancing our current arsenal of alternative energy sources for the future. In the following Chapter, we consider the trade-off between dynamics, structure and function of light harvesting membranes in Rps. Photometricum purple bacteria, as a model to highlight the priorities that arise when photosynthetic organisms adapt to deal with the ever-changing natural environment conditions.Comment: Chapter, to appear in Photosynthesis 2011, INTEC

Advances in the treatment of advanced melanoma with NRAS gene mutation

Oncogenic mutations are responsible for a majority of the malignancy of melanoma. Activating mutations of NRAS gene are found in 15%-20% melanoma cases, endowing the tumor cells with more aggressive phenotypes and greater difficulty to treat. The development of targeted inhibitor of mutant NRAS remains a big challenge since the mutation sites could hardly be druggable. Therefore, immune checkpoint inhibitors are currently recommended as the first-line therapy for NRAS mutant advanced melanoma albeit the response rate is still far from satisfaction. In recent years, the exploration of targeted therapy regimens has focused on the downstream pathway of NRAS, the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. A novel MEK1/2 inhibitor tunlametinib was reported to achieve an objective response rate (ORR) of 34.7% which is higher than the ORR of binimetinib in previous report. However, the phase Ⅰ trial of the pan-RAF inhibitor belvarafenib and the ERK inhibitor ulixertinib failed to show marked benefits. In the meanwhile, MEK inhibitor-based combination therapy has also achieved some progress: it was reported in the phase Ⅰb trial of the selective BRAF/CRAF inhibitor naporafenib (LXH254) combined with Trametinib in NRAS mutant melanoma that the ORR was 46.7%. The ORR of binetinib plus the cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 (CDK4/6) inhibitor, ribociclib, was 32.5% in patients with NRAS mutation with concurrent alterations of CDKN2A, CDK4, or CCND1. The response rate of the combination of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibitor, IN10018, and cobimetinib was 38.5%. On the other hand, only 27.2% of patients carrying NRAS mutation responded partially to the combined regimen of immune checkpoint inhibitor programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) monoclonal antibody durvalumab+trametinib. In addition, some preclinical findings have also shown translational potentials: for example, heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) inhibitor XL888 and serine/threonine protein kinase 19 (STK19) inhibitors were found to inhibit the growth of NRAS mutant melanoma in animal models. This article reviewed the oncogenic roles of NRAS mutation in melanoma and the cutting-edge clinical trials for the treatment of NRAS mutant melanoma, aiming to provide alterative treatment options for clinical practice and inspire novel combination regimen

Short-Wave Near-Infrared Spectrometer for Alcohol Determination and Temperature Correction

A multichannel short-wave near-infrared (SW-NIR) spectrometer module based on charge-coupled device (CCD) detection was designed. The design relied on a tungsten lamp enhanced by light emitting diodes, a fixed grating monochromator and a linear CCD array. The main advantages were high optical resolution and an optimized signal-to-noise ratio (0.24 nm and 500, resp.) in the whole wavelength range of 650 to 1100 nm. An application to alcohol determination using partial least squares calibration and the temperature correction was presented. It was found that the direct transfer method had significant systematic prediction errors due to temperature effect. Generalized least squares weighting (GLSW) method was utilized for temperature correction. After recalibration, the RMSEP found for the 25°C model was 0.53% v/v and errors of the same order of magnitude were obtained at other temperatures (15, 35 and 40°C). And an r2 better than 0.99 was achieved for each validation set. The possibility and accuracy of using the miniature SW-NIR spectrometer and GLSW transfer calibration method for alcohol determination at different temperatures were proven. And the analysis procedure was simple and fast, allowing a strict control of alcohol content in the wine industry