It was reported that tumor-expressed dickkopf-related (DKK) proteins affect micro-environment. However, the influence of DKK1 on colorectal cancer (CRC) liver oligometastases (CRCLOM) remains ...unclear.
CRC cases after resection of liver oligometastases were enrolled in Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center with intact clinical data. Serum DKK1 was detected by ELISA assay. Immunofluorescent staining examination for CD3 and CD8 in slices were also conducted.
Among 65 patients included, the recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) were significantly better in the low serum DKK1 group (RFS: P = 0.021; OS: P = 0.043). DKK1 was overexpressed in stage IV CRC patients in TCGA data. The number of CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in invasive margin of CRC liver oligometastases was significantly higher in low serum DKK1 group (P = 0.042).
Elevated serum DKK1 level was associated with poorer RFS and OS, and less CD8+ TILs in invasive margin in CRC liver oligometastases. DKK1 might serve as a supplementalprognostic factor for clinical risk score and a potential target for immunotherapy.
Due to their unique properties, dihydroazaindoles are important fragments of active pharmaceutical ingredients and are of great interest in the pharmaceutical industry. In this manuscript, a scalable ...and economical process for the synthesis of a complex (R)-2-(4-fluorophenyl)-2-methyl-2,3-dihydro-1H-pyrrolo2,3-bpyridine-5-carboxylic acid ( R )-1 on multikilogram scale is described. The synthesis was advanced through a second-generation synthetic strategy that did not rely on chiral Supercritical Fluid Chromatography separation, which was the highest cost driver. Through systematic screening of chemical resolution, we found that compound ( R )-1 can be isolated with high (>99%) enantiomeric excess. Furthermore, the mother liquor from the first resolution process was recyclable to racemize the S-isomer into ( R )-1 and ( S ) - 1 mixtures, which could be used for an additional chemical resolution process. The precious palladium (Pd) complexes could be reduced from 20 mol % to 1 mol %, and the long lead time building blocks were safely prepared in-house. Advanced intermediates were efficiently synthesized by reducing isolation steps through one-pot process development. The regulatory starting material compound ( R )-1·HCl was isolated with a high purity profile after di-p-toluoyl-d-tartaric acid salt breaking and HCl salt formation.
Purpose
To investigate the associations of ANLN expression with prognosis of breast cancer and clinical outcome of anthracycline-based chemotherapy.
Methods
This study enrolled 308 breast cancer ...patients in which 264 of them received anthracycline-based chemotherapy. Immunohistochemistry was used to detect ANLN expression level of the patients. Clinical characteristics of the patients were collected, and associations of ANLN expression with prognosis were analyzed.
Results
Our results showed that ANLN expression was associated with survival of breast cancer patients, and it was also related to clinical outcome of patients received anthracycline-based chemotherapy. Breast cancer patients with high expression of ANLN would have poor prognosis and poor clinical outcome to anthracycline-based chemotherapy.
Conclusion
ANLN could be an independent prognosis predictor for breast cancer, and its expression might be used to predict the anthracycline-based chemotherapy clinical outcome in breast cancer patients.
In this study, we design and fabricate a tank-track-shaped stator working in two torsional modes to form a traveling-wave (TW) linear ultrasonic motor (USM). The stator comprises two torsional ...transducers and two kidney-shaped vibrating bodies. When voltages with a certain phase are applied to the transducers, two in-phase TWs are excited on the vibrating bodies to frictionally drive the slider. Here, the torsional vibration guarantees strong electromechanical coupling, and meanwhile, the tank-track shape ensures plural driving points and low weight; these features may facilitate realizing high thrust force density and high power density of linear motors. To examine the feasibility, first, we constructed a stator prototype 116 mm in length, 91 mm in width, and 32 mm in thickness and explored its vibration properties. The minimal standing wave (SW) ratio reaches 1.21 and the small SW components are desirable for TW motors. Then, we measured the load characteristics and found that, at the working frequency of 54.34 kHz and the phase shift of −110°, the maximal thrust force and maximal output power were 96.1 N and 27.8 W, respectively. Moreover, the thrust force density and power density reached respectively 234.1 N/kg and 67.8 W/kg, relatively high compared to the values of most conventional linear motors. This study verifies the feasibility of our proposal and paves a new way of designing powerful linear USMs.
To investigate the reproducibility of computer-aided detection (CAD) for detection of pulmonary nodules and masses for consecutive chest radiographies (CXRs) of the same patient within a short-term ...period. A total of 944 CXRs (Chest PA) with nodules and masses, recorded between January 2010 and November 2016 at the Asan Medical Center, were obtained. In all, 1092 regions of interest for the nodules and mass were delineated using an in-house software. All CXRs were randomly split into 6:2:2 sets for training, development, and validation. Furthermore, paired follow-up CXRs (n = 121) acquired within one week in the validation set, in which expert thoracic radiologists confirmed no changes, were used to evaluate the reproducibility of CAD by two radiologists (R1 and R2). The reproducibility comparison of four different convolutional neural net algorithms and two chest radiologists (with 13- and 14-years' experience) was conducted. Model performances were evaluated by figure-of-merit (FOM) analysis of the jackknife free-response receiver operating curve and reproducibility rates were evaluated in terms of percent positive agreement (PPA) and Chamberlain's percent positive agreement (CPPA). Reproducibility analysis of the four CADs and R1 and R2 showed variations in the PPA and CPPA. Model performance of YOLO (You Only Look Once) v2 based eDenseYOLO showed a higher FOM (0.89; 0.85-0.93) than RetinaNet (0.89; 0.85-0.93) and atrous spatial pyramid pooling U-Net (0.85; 0.80-0.89). eDenseYOLO showed higher PPAs (97.87%) and CPPAs (95.80%) than Mask R-CNN, RetinaNet, ASSP U-Net, R1, and R2 (PPA: 96.52%, 94.23%, 95.04%, 96.55%, and 94.98%; CPPA: 93.18%, 89.09%, 90.57%, 93.33%, and 90.43%). There were moderate variations in the reproducibility of CAD with different algorithms, which likely indicates that measurement of reproducibility is necessary for evaluating CAD performance in actual clinical environments.
Short-chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs) are under review by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Currently, limited data are available about SCCPs in terrestrial organisms. In ...the present study, SCCP concentration in the muscles of seven terrestrial bird species (n = 38) inhabiting an e-waste recycling area in South China was determined. This concentration varied from 620 to 17,000 ng/g lipid. Resident birds accumulated significantly higher SCCP concentrations than migratory birds (p < 0.01). Trophic magnification was observed for migratory bird species but not for resident, which was attributed to high heterogeneity of SCCP in e-waste area. Two different homologue group patterns were observed in avian samples. The first pattern was found in five bird species dominated by C10 and C11 congeners, while the second was found in the remains, which show rather equal abundance of homologue groups. This may be caused by two sources of SCCPs (local and e-waste) in the study area.
•SCCPs in terrestrial bird species from an e-waste area are first reported.•Elevated SCCP level was found as compared with other regions.•Resident birds accumulated significantly higher SCCP levels than migratory birds.•Trophic magnification was observed for migratory but not for resident bird species.•Two homologue patterns were found among seven bird species.
SCCP concentration in terrestrial bird species inhabiting an e-waste site was first reported in this study.
Abstract We have synthesized two different polyacrylamide polymers with amide groups (polySBAA and polyHEAA) and two corresponding polyacrylate polymers without amide groups (polySBMA and polyHEA), ...with particular attention to the evaluation of the effect of amide group on the hydration and antifouling ability of these systems using both computational and experimental approaches. The influence of polymer architectures of brushes, hydrogels, and nanogels, prepared by different polymerization methods, on antifouling performance is also studied. SPR and ELISA data reveal that all polymers exhibit excellent antifouling ability to repel proteins from undiluted human blood serum/plasma, and such antifouling ability can be further enhanced by presenting amide groups in polySBAA and polyHEAA as compared to polySBMA and polyHEA. The antifouling performance is positively correlated with the hydration properties. Simulations confirm that four polymers indeed have different hydration characteristics, while all presenting a strong hydration overall. Integration of amide group with pendant hydroxyl or sulfobetaine group in polymer backbones is found to increase their surface hydration of polymer chains and thus to improve their antifouling ability. Importantly, we present a proof-of-concept experiment to synthesize polySBAA nanogels, which show a switchable property between antifouling and pH-responsive functions driven by acid–base conditions, while still maintaining high stability in undiluted fetal bovine serum and minimal toxicity to cultured cells. This work provides important structural insights into how very subtle structural changes in polymers can yield great improvement in biological activity, specifically the inclusion of amide group in polymer backbone/sidechain enables to obtain antifouling materials with better performance for biomedical applications.
Adenovirus is one of the most common causes of viral acute respiratory infections. To identify the types of human adenoviruses (HAdVs) causing respiratory illness in Beijing, a sentinel surveillance ...project on the viral aetiology of acute respiratory infection was initiated in 2011.
Through the surveillance project, 4617 cases of respiratory infections were identified during 2011-2013. Throat swabs (pharynx and tonsil secretions) were collected from all the patients, and 15 different respiratory viruses were screened by multiplex one-step PCR method. 45 were identified as adenovirus-positive from sporadic and outbreak cases of respiratory infection by a multiplex one-step RT-PCR method, and a total of 21 adenovirus isolates were obtained. Five HAdV types among three species, including HAdV-3 (species HAdV-B), HAdV-4 (species HAdV-E), HAdV-7 (species HAdV-B), HAdV-55 (species HAdV-B), and an undefined HAdV type (species HAdV-C) were identified. The comparison results of the penton base, hexon, and fiber gene sequences of the Beijing HAdV-3, HAdV-4, HAdV-7, and HAdV-55 strains in this study and those from the GenBank database indicated significant spatial and temporal conservation and stability of sequences within the genome; however, the phylogenetic relationship indicated that both strain BJ04 and strain BJ09 isolated in 2012 and 2013, respectively, may have recombined between HAdV-1 genome and HAdV-2 genome within species HAdV-C, indicating intraspecies recombination.
This study confirmed that at least 5 HAdV types including HAdV-3, HAdV-4, HAdV-7, HAdV-55 and an undefined HAdV type were co-circulating and were the causative agents of respiratory tract infections in recent years in Beijing. HAdV-3, HAdV-4, HAdV-7, and HAdV-55 showed the apparent stability of the genomes, while intraspecies recombination was identified in strain BJ04 and BJ09. The recombinants carrying penton base gene of HAdV-1 as well as hexon and fiber genes of HAdV-2 might be a novel type of HAdV worthy of further study.
This paper is concerned with the renormalized stochastic entropy solutions of stochastic scalar conservation law forced by a multiplicative noise on a bounded domain with a non-homogeneous boundary ...condition. We first introduce a notion of renormalized stochastic entropy solutions and then establish the existence and uniqueness of the renormalized stochastic entropy solutions for a general L1-data. Our results allow us to give a positive answer to an open problem posed by Bauzet, Vallet and Wittbold in 4.
Performance of CeO
2
-La
2
O
3
/ZSM-5 sorbents for sulfur removal was examined at temperature ranging from 500 oC to 700 oC. The sulfur capacity of 5Ce5La/ZSM-5 was much bigger than that of CeO
2
.../ZSM-5. H
2
had a negative impact on the sulfidation; however, CO had little influence on sulfur removal. The characterization results showed that CeO
2
and La
2
O
3
were well dispersed on ZSM-5 because of the intimate admixing of La
2
O
3
and CeO
2
, the major sulfidation products were Ce
2
O
2
S and La
2
O
2
S, the XRD and SEM results revealed that ZSM-5 structure could remain intact during preparation and sulfidation process, the H
2
-TPR showed that the reducibility of CeO
2
can be remarkably enhanced by addition of La.
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