Neoplasms of Central Nervous System: A Diagnostic Approach

Neoplasms of central nervous system accounts for approximately 1% of tumors of the human body, and they can be primary or secondary (metastatic), benign or malignant, and intra-axial or extra-axial. This chapter includes some most common brain and spinal cord tumors, like pituitary adenomas, meningiomas and gliomas, with their clinical, imaging, and histological characteristics for the diagnosis purpose, with additional treatment options and prognosis

Malignant adenohypophysis spindle cell oncocytoma with repeating recurrences and a high Ki-67 index

Abstract Adenohypophysis spindle cell oncocytoma (ASCO) is a rare tumor recently reported by Roncaroli et al in 2002. This tumor is considered a grade I tumor by the World Health Organization. We report a rare case of malignant ASCO with repeating recurrences and a high Ki-67 index—a challenging diagnosis guided by clinical presentations, radiological signs, and postoperative pathological tests. We represent a 30-year-old man who had suffered from headaches, diplopia, and impaired visual field and acuity. His magnetic resonance imaging revealed an abnormal sellar mass and was originally misdiagnosed as a pituitary macroadenoma. We present detailed analysis of the patient's disease course and review relevant literature. When surgically treated, the specimen revealed a typical histopathology pattern of ASCO. The tumor recurred for several times and the patient underwent 3 surgeries and 1 γ-knife treatment, which was accompanied by a continuously increasing Ki-67 index. This is the first reported case of malignant ASCO (WHO III–IV grade). Despite its rarity, ASCO should be considered in the differential diagnosis of sellar lesions that mimic pituitary adenomas

Soft Tissue Tumors: Molecular Pathology and Diagnosis

Tumors of mesenchymal origin, also called soft tissue tumors, include tumor from muscle, fat, fibrous tissue, vessels and nerves, which are a group of heterogeneous neoplasms, and accounts for about 1% of all malignant tumors. They are uncommon tumors in routine practice, with complex tumorigenesis. Due to the recent advance in molecular pathology, we got a major achievement in the understanding of these tumors at the gene level, which makes the diagnosis and prognosis of this type of tumor more accurate and comfortable. This chapter will cover some molecular pathology and diagnosis of soft tissue and bone tumors

The Successful Diagnosis and Typing of Systemic Amyloidosis Using A Microwave-Assisted Filter-Aided Fast Sample Preparation Method and LC/MS/MS Analysis.

Laser microdissection followed by mass spectrometry has been successfully used for amyloid typing. However, sample contamination can interfere with proteomic analysis, and overnight digestion limits the analytical throughput. Moreover, current quantitative analysis methods are based on the spectrum count, which ignores differences in protein length and may lead to misdiagnoses. Here, we developed a microwave-assisted filter-aided sample preparation (maFASP) method that can efficiently remove contaminants with a 10-kDa cutoff ultrafiltration unit and can accelerate the digestion process with the assistance of a microwave. Additionally, two parameters (P- and D-scores) based on the exponentially modified protein abundance index were developed to define the existence of amyloid deposits and those causative proteins with the greatest abundance. Using our protocol, twenty cases of systemic amyloidosis that were well-typed according to clinical diagnostic standards (training group) and another twenty-four cases without subtype diagnoses (validation group) were analyzed. Using this approach, sample preparation could be completed within four hours. We successfully subtyped 100% of the cases in the training group, and the diagnostic success rate in the validation group was 91.7%. This maFASP-aided proteomic protocol represents an efficient approach for amyloid diagnosis and subtyping, particularly for serum-contaminated samples

General Physical Properties of Fermi Blazars

We study the general physical properties of Fermi blazars using the Fermi fourth source catalog data (4FGL-DR2). The quasi-simultaneous multiwavelength data of Fermi blazars are fitted by using the one-zone leptonic model to obtain some physical parameters, such as jet power, magnetic field, and Doppler factor. We study the distributions of the derived physical parameters as a function of black hole mass and accretion disk luminosity. The main results are as follows. (1) For a standard thin accretion disk, the jet kinetic power of most flat-spectrum radio quasars can be explained by the Blandford–Payne (BP) mechanism. However, the jet kinetic power of most BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) cannot be explained by either the Blandford–Znajek mechanism or the BP mechanism. The BL Lacs may have advection-dominated accretion flows surrounding their massive black holes. (2) After excluding the redshift, there is a moderately strong correlation between the jet kinetic power and jet radiation power and the accretion disk luminosity for Fermi blazars. These results confirm a close connection between jet and accretion. The jet kinetic power is slightly larger than the accretion disk luminosity for Fermi blazars. (3) There is a significant correlation between jet kinetic power and gamma-ray luminosity and radio luminosity for Fermi blazars, which suggests that gamma-ray luminosity and radio luminosity can be used to indicate the jet kinetic power

Partially charged single-atom Ru supported on ZrO2 nanocrystals for highly efficient ethylene hydrosilylation with triethoxysilane

Homogeneous noble metal catalysts used in alkene hydrosilylation reactions to manufacture organosilicon compounds commercially often suffer from difficulties in catalyst recovering and recycling, undesired disproportionation reactions, and energy-intensive purification of products. Herein, we report a heterogeneous 0.5Ru(delta+)/ZrO2 catalyst with partially charged single-atom Ru (0.5 wt.% Ru) supported on commercial ZrO2 nanocrystals synthesized by the simple impregnation method followed by H-2 reduction. When used in the ethylene hydrosilylation with triethoxysilane to produce the desired ethyltriethoxysilane, 0.5Ru(delta+)/ZrO2 showed excellent catalytic performance with the maximum Ru atom utilization and good recyclability, even superior to homogeneous catalyst (RuCl3 center dot H2O). Structural characterizations and density functional theory calculations reveal the atomic dispersion of the active Ru species and their unique electronic properties distinct from the homogeneous catalyst. The reaction route over this catalyst is supposed to follow the typical Chalk-Harrod mechanism. This highly efficient and supported single-atom Ru catalyst has the potential to replace the current homogeneous catalyst for a greener hydrosilylation industry

Fast Classification of Thyroid Nodules with Ultrasound Guided-Fine Needle Biopsy Samples and Machine Learning

A rapid classification method was developed for the malignant and benign thyroid nodules with ultrasound guided-fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) samples. With probe electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, the mass-scan data of FNAB samples were used as datasets for machine learning. The patients were marked as malignant (98 patients), benign (110 patients) or undetermined (42 patients) by experienced doctors in terms of ultrasound, the B-Raf (BRAF) gene, and cytopathology inspections. Pairwise coupling was performed on 163 ions to generate 3630 ion ratios as new features for classifier training. With the new features, the performance of the multilayer perception (MLP) classifier is much better than that with the 163 ions as features directly. After training, the accuracy of the MLP classifier is as high as 92.0%. The accuracy of the single-blind test is 82.4%, which proved the good generalization ability of the MLP classifier. The overall concordance is 73.0% between prediction and six-month follow-up for patients in the undetermined group. Especially, the classifier showed high accuracy for the undetermined patients with suspicious for papillary carcinoma diagnosis (90.9%). In summary, the machine learning method based on FNAB samples has potential for real clinical applications

Highly Efficient Hydrosilylation of Ethyne over Pt/ZrO2 Catalysts with Size-Dependent Metal-Support Interactions

Replacing homogeneous noble-metal catalysts with supported catalysts in hydrosilylation reactions can overcome the difficulties of catalyst recovery and regeneration. Here, we report the scalable synthesis of heterogeneous Pt/ZrO2 catalysts with 1-5 wt % Pt supported on commercial ZrO2 nanocrystals. Pt/ZrO2 can effectively catalyze the hydrosilylation of triethoxysilane (TES) with ethyne to high-value triethoxyvinylsilane, even superior to the common homogeneous catalyst (H2PtCl6). Intensive characterizations indicate that the coating of ZrOx on Pt greatly depends on the size of Pt, with more ZrOx overlayers on smaller Pt metal particles. Among all the catalysts, 2Pt/ZrO2 exhibits the highest activity, optimal selectivity, and reusability toward hydrosilylation of TES with ethyne. The unusual catalytic properties of 2Pt/ZrO2 can be attributed to its more abundant surface PtOx species and the electron transfer between Pt and ZrO2. This change in local electronic properties promotes catalytic activity, which is also supported by the corresponding theoretical calculation. This work advances the understanding of metal-support interactions and provides a powerful approach to designing environmentally friendly heterogeneous catalysts for the industrially important hydrosilylation process

MS typing results of patients in the validation group.

<p>Case 3 failed in diagnosis because the D-score was lower than 0.3.</p><p>Case 11 failed in subtyping because the P-score was lower than 5.0.</p><p>*Cases 1–4 with superscripts were Congo red–negative tissues that were adjacent to the Congo red-positive region of cases 21–24.</p><p>C, constant region.</p><p>MS typing results of patients in the validation group.</p