Recent studies have demonstrated that SMG-1, a newly characterized member of the family of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-related protein kinases (PIKKs), is involved in tumorigenesis as a new tumor ...suppressor. However, its expression and significance in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remain obscure. The present study investigated SMG-1 expression in HCC tissue specimens, aimed at defining the association with clinicopathological significance. Both immunohistochemistry and qRT-PCR were employed to analyze SMG-1 expression in 157 HCC and corresponding distant normal tissue specimens. The results revealed that expression of SMG-1 was significantly lower in the HCC tissue specimens than that in the distant normal tissues. Moreover, a lower expression level of SMG-1 was significantly correlated with serum α-fetoprotein level (P=0.001), poorly differentiated tumors (P=0.009) and more advanced TNM stage (P<0.001). Further study showed that SMG-1 expression was exactly associated with tumor differentiation and clinical stage in HCC. Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that low SMG-1 expression was related to poor overall survival, and the prognostic impact of SMG-1 was further confirmed by stratified survival analysis. Importantly, multivariate analysis revealed that low SMG-1 expression was an independent prognostic marker for an unfavorable overall survival. We conclude that SMG-1 is downregulated in HCC and may represent a promising biomarker for predicting the prognosis of HCC, including the prognosis of early-stage patients.
Signaling networks process intra- and extracellular information to modulate the functions of a cell. Deregulation of signaling networks results in abnormal cellular physiological states and often ...drives diseases. Network responses to a stimulus or a drug treatment can be highly heterogeneous across cells in a tissue because of many sources of cellular genetic and non-genetic variance. Signaling network heterogeneity is the key to many biological processes, such as cell differentiation and drug resistance. Only recently, the emergence of multiplexed single-cell measurement technologies has made it possible to evaluate this heterogeneity. In this review, we categorize currently established single-cell signaling network profiling approaches by their methodology, coverage, and application, and we discuss the advantages and limitations of each type of technology. We also describe the available computational tools for network characterization using single-cell data and discuss potential confounding factors that need to be considered in single-cell signaling network analyses.
Background
Changes in body composition and systemic inflammation are important characteristics of cancer cachexia. This multi‐centre retrospective study aimed to explore the prognostic value of the ...combination of body composition and systemic inflammation in patients with cancer cachexia.
Methods
The modified advanced lung cancer inflammation index (mALI), which combines body composition and systemic inflammation, was defined as appendicular skeletal muscle index (ASMI) × serum albumin/neutrophil‐lymphocyte ratio. The ASMI was estimated according to a previously validated anthropometric equation. Restricted cubic splines were used to evaluate the relationship between mALI and all‐cause mortality in patients with cancer cachexia. Kaplan–Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazard regression analysis were used to evaluate the prognostic value of mALI in cancer cachexia. A receiver operator characteristic curve was used to compare the effectiveness of mALI and nutritional inflammatory indicators in predicting all‐cause mortality in patients with cancer cachexia.
Results
A total of 2438 patients with cancer cachexia were enrolled, including 1431 males and 1007 females. The sex‐specific optimal cut‐off values of mALI for males and females were 7.12 and 6.52, respectively. There was a non‐linear relationship between mALI and all‐cause mortality in patients with cancer cachexia. Low mALI was significantly associated with poor nutritional status, high tumour burden, and high inflammation. Patients with low mALI had significantly lower overall survival (OS) than those with high mALI (39.5% vs. 65.5%, P < 0.001). In the male population, OS was significantly lower in the low mALI group than in the high group (34.3% vs. 59.2%, P < 0.001). Similar results were also observed in the female population (46.3% vs. 75.0%, P < 0.001). mALI was an independent prognostic factor for patients with cancer cachexia (hazard ratio HR = 0.974, 95% confidence interval CI = 0.959–0.990, P = 0.001). For every standard deviation SD increase in mALI, the risk of poor prognosis for patients with cancer cachexia was reduced by 2.9% (HR = 0.971, 95%CI = 0.943–0.964, P < 0.001) in males and 8.9% (HR = 0.911, 95%CI = 0.893–0.930, P < 0.001) in females. mALI is an effective complement to the traditional Tumour, Lymph Nodes, Metastasis (TNM) staging system for prognosis evaluation and a promising nutritional inflammatory indicator with a better prognostic effect than the most commonly used clinical nutritional inflammatory indicators.
Conclusions
Low mALI is associated with poor survival in both male and female patients with cancer cachexia and is a practical and valuable prognostic assessment tool.
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a novel method for distinguishing extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) signals from radio frequency interference (RFI) by leveraging polarization features. We ...exploit the sinusoidal variation of the linearly polarized components of Stokes parameters with the parallactic angle as a characteristic signature of ETI signals, while such linearly polarized components remain relatively stable for terrestrial RFI. Typically, a minimum of 4–8 hr of observation time is required to detect these sinusoidal variations. The polarization approach in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence also enables us to study the radio stellar bursts emitted by M-type stars as ancillary science, which is relevant to assessing the habitability of exoplanets. Compared to the frequency drift method, the polarization method effectively reduces the required observation time for signal identification while improving the signal identification process.
While limited choice of emissive organic linkers with systematic emission tunability presents a great challenge to investigate energy transfer (ET) over the whole visible light range with designable ...directions, luminescent metal‐organic frameworks (LMOFs) may serve as an ideal platform for such study due to their tunable structure and composition. Herein, five Zr6 cluster‐based LMOFs, HIAM‐400X (X=0, 1, 2, 3, 4) are prepared using 2,1,3‐benzothiadiazole and its derivative‐based tetratopic carboxylic acids as organic linkers. The accessible unsaturated metal sites confer HIAM‐400X as a pristine scaffold for linker installation. Six full‐color emissive 2,1,3‐benzothiadiazole and its derivative‐based dicarboxylic acids (L) were successfully installed into HIAM‐400X matrix to form HIAM‐400X‐L, in which the ET can be facilely tuned by controlling its direction, either from the inserted linkers to pristine MOFs or from the pristine MOFs to inserted linkers, and over the whole range of visible light. The combination of the pristine MOFs and the second linkers via linker installation creates a powerful two‐dimensional space in tuning the emission via ET in LMOFs.
Tunable energy transfer with designable direction, from second linkers to pristine MOFs or from pristine MOFs to second linkers, was achieved in the whole visible spectrum via installing color‐full emissive second linkers into the full‐color emissive pristine MOFs.
Molecular tests revealed influenza D viruses of D/OK lineage widely circulating in farmed animal species in Guangdong Province, southern China. In particular, we found high levels of influenza D ...virus infection in goats and pigs. We also detected viral RNA in serum specimens and feces of animals with certain severe diseases.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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