This paper explores the accumulation of Indian astronomical knowledge within Chinese Buddhist scriptures and its dissemination across Chinese society through a comparative study of the Modengjia jing ...(Ch1 of the ZKA) and the Xiuyao jing (XYJ). The period from the Ch1 of ZKA to the XYJ was a time when Buddhism was in the midst of developing and maturing within China. The Ch1 of the ZKA is regarded as the first Buddhist scripture including a complete account of Indian nakṣatra astrology and translated from Sanskrit parallel text, rather than a native work codified by Buddhists in Ancient China. The XYJ is not a translation but rather an authoritative handbook of Indian astrological knowledge taught by Amoghavajra. A detailed comparison of the contents of the two texts shows that the knowledge contained within Ch1 of the ZKA belongs to the Vedic era and that the XYJ belongs to the post-Vedic era. Beginning with the Ch1 of the ZKA and ending with the XYJ, Buddhist astronomical knowledge steadily grew. Yang Jingfeng’s revision and explanation of the first fascicle of the Sutra reflects Ancient Chinese intellectuals’ acceptance, digestion, and recreation of Buddhist astronomical knowledge. His abandonment of the “Calculation of weekdays” reflects the influence of the Chinese mathematical and astronomical tradition and the calendar tradition upon his perspective; perhaps this is one of the reasons why China has accepted the weekday within daily life up to the modern era. Every civilization, in learning to assimilate other cultures, has a choice between foreignization and domestication, within which a tension is reflected. Learning from foreign cultures is about keeping up with the most advanced civilizations in the world and advancing with the times, while maintaining one’s own cultural identity and cultural characteristics is necessary for one’s own civilization; these two notions are complementary and should not be neglected.
Global exponential stability of a class of cellular neural networks with multi-proportional delays is investigated. New delay-dependent sufficient conditions ensuring global exponential stability for ...the system presented here are related to the size of the proportional delay factor, by employing matrix theory and Lyapunov functional, and without assuming the differentiability, boundedness and monotonicity of the activation functions. Two examples and their simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the obtained results.
The story of Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna consists of stories of the present life and past life. The former is about a girl from the low-caste Mātaṅga tribe who pursues Ananda, a disciple of the Buddha, but ...her pursuit ends in vain, and she eventually converts to Buddhism. The latter is about a low-caste king demonstrating his knowledge of the Vedas and astrology in a bid to marry the daughter of a great Brahmin for his son. The story could be seen in various Buddhist texts, such as the Divyavadāna from Nepal and the Mātaṅga Sutra in China. This paper studies the narration and logic of Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna stories, and it makes conclusions on the commonalities in the compilation of Buddhist narratives by analyzing the beginning and end of the story, as well as its narrator, narratee, and the four conflicts (i.e., the caste barriers, the violation of precepts, the use of incantations, and the use of expertise in seeking marriage).
Immunotherapy has ushered in a new era in cancer treatment, and cancer immunotherapy continues to be rejuvenated. The clinical goal of cancer immunotherapy is to prime host immune system to provide ...passive or active immunity against malignant tumors. Tumor infiltrating leukocytes (TILs) play an immunomodulatory role in tumor microenvironment (TME) which is closely related to immune escape of tumor cells, thus influence tumor progress. Several cancer immunotherapies, include immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), cancer vaccine, adoptive cell transfer (ACT), have shown great efficacy and promise. In this review, we will summarize the recent research advances in tumor immunotherapy, including the molecular mechanisms and clinical effects as well as limitations of immunotherapy.
Both 5-methylcytosine （5mC） and its oxidized form 5-hydroxymethylcytosine （5hmC） have been proposed to be involved in tumorigenesis. Because the readout of the broadly used 5mC mapping method, ...bisulfite sequencing （BS-seq）, is the sum of 5mC and 5hmC levels, the 5mC/5hmC patterns and relationship of these two modifications remain poorly understood. By profiling real 5mC （BS-seq corrected by Tet-assisted BS-seq, TAB-seq） and 5hmC （TAB-seq） levels simultaneously at single-nucleotide resolution, we here demonstrate that there is no global loss of 5mC in kidney tu- mors compared with matched normal tissues. Conversely, 5hmC was globally lost in virtually all kidney tumor tissues. The 5hmC level in tumor tissues is an independent prognostic marker for kidney cancer, with lower levels of 5hmC as- sociated with shorter overall survival. Furthermore, we demonstrated that loss of 5hmC is linked to hypermethylation in tumors compared with matched normal tissues, particularly in gene body regions. Strikingly, gene body hypermeth- ylation was significantly associated with silencing of the tumor-related genes. Downregulation of IDH1 was identified as a mechanism underlying 5hmC loss in kidney cancer. Restoring 5hmC levels attenuated the invasion capacity of tumor ceils and suppressed tumor growth in a xenograft model Collectively, our results demonstrate that loss of 5hmC is both a prognostic marker and an oncogenie event in kidney cancer by remodeling the DNA methylation pattern.
N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is the most prevalent RNA modification. While the role of m6A in prostate cancer remains unknown. We aim to measure the effects of m6A methylation regulatory genes during the ...development and progression of prostate cancer.
We collected transcriptome information and gene-level alteration data from The Cancer Genome Atlas datasets. The log-rank test and Cox regression model were used to examine the prognosis value of m6A methylation regulatory genes of prostate cancer.
We discovered that most of m6A methylation regulators were highly expressed in aggressive prostate cancer. Univariable and multivariable Cox regression results showed that the expression of Insulin-like growth factor 2 mRNA-binding protein 3 (IGF2BP3), Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins A2/B1 (HNRNPA2B1) and N6-adenosine-methyltransferase non-catalytic subunit (METTL14) and copy number variant of AlkB Homolog 5 (ALKBH5) were considerably associated with a recurrence-free survival of prostate cancer. Furthermore, a high level of m6A methylation in mRNA promotes the progression of prostate cancer via regulating subcellular protein localization.
Patients with a high level of mRNA methylation resulted from overexpression of reader proteins and methyltransferase complexes had poor survival benefits through influencing protein subcellular location in prostate cancer.
Accumulating evidences have indicated that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are potential biomarkers that play key roles in tumor development and progression. Differentiation antagonizing non-protein ...noding RNA (DANCR) is a novel lncRNA that acts as a potential biomarker and is involved in the development of cancers. However, the clinical significance and molecular mechanism of DANCR in bladder cancer is still unknown.
The relative expression level of DANCR was determined by Real-Time qPCR in a total of 106 patients with urothelial bladder cancer and in different bladder cancer cell lines. Loss-of-function experiments were performed to investigate the biological roles of DANCR on bladder cancer cell proliferation, migration, invasion and tumorigenicity. Comprehensive transcriptional analysis, RNA-FISH, dual-luciferase reporter assay and western blot were performed to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying the functions of DANCR.
In this study, we found that DANCR was significantly up-regulated in bladder cancer. Moreover, increased DANCR expression was positively correlated with higher histological grade and advanced TNM stage. Further experiments demonstrated that knockdown of DANCR inhibited malignant phenotypes and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of bladder cancer cells. Mechanistically, we found that DANCR was distributed mostly in the cytoplasm and DANCR functioned as a miRNA sponge to positively regulate the expression of musashi RNA binding protein 2 (MSI2) through sponging miR-149 and subsequently promoted malignant phenotypes of bladder cancer cells, thus playing an oncogenic role in bladder cancer pathogenesis.
This study is the first to demonstrate that DANCR plays a critical regulatory role in bladder cancer cell and DANCR may serve as a potential diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target of bladder cancer.
Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is one of the most malignant urological tumors. Currently, there is a lack of molecular markers for early diagnosis of RCC. The 5-year survival rate for early-stage RCC is ...generally favorable; however, the prognosis takes a significant downturn when the tumor progresses to distant metastasis. Therefore, the identification of molecular markers for RCC is crucial in enhancing early diagnosis rates. Exosomes are a type of extracellular vesicle (EV) typically ranging in size from 30 nm to 150 nm, which contain RNA, DNA, proteins, lipids, etc. They can impact neighboring receptor cells through the autocrine or paracrine pathway, influence cellular communication, and regulate the local immune cells, consequently shaping the tumor immune microenvironment and closely associating with tumor development. The clinical application of exosomes as tumor markers and therapeutic targets has ignited significant interest within the research community. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of the advancements in exosome research within the context of RCC.
Accumulating evidence indicates that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are potential biomarkers and key regulators of tumour development and progression. SOX2 overlapping transcript (SOX2OT) is a novel ...lncRNA that acts as a potential biomarker and is involved in the development of cancer and cancer stem cells. However, the clinical significance and molecular mechanism of SOX2OT in bladder cancer are still unknown.
The expression level of SOX2OT was determined by RT-qPCR in a total of 106 patients with urothelial bladder cancer and in different bladder cancer cell (BCC) lines. Bladder cancer stem cells (BCSCs) were isolated from BCCs using flow cytometry based on the stem cell markers CD44 and ALDH1. Loss-of-function experiments were performed to investigate the biological roles of SOX2OT in the stemness phenotype of BCSCs. Comprehensive transcriptional analysis, RNA FISH, dual-luciferase reporter assays and western blots were performed to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying the functions of SOX2OT.
SOX2OT was highly expressed in bladder cancer, and increased SOX2OT expression was positively correlated with a high histological grade, advanced TNM stage and poor prognosis. Further experiments demonstrated that knockdown of SOX2OT inhibited the stemness phenotype of BCSCs. Moreover, inhibition of SOX2OT delayed xenograft tumour growth and decreased metastases in vivo. Mechanistically, we found that SOX2OT was mainly distributed in the cytoplasm and positively regulated SOX2 expression by sponging miR-200c. Furthermore, SOX2 overexpression reversed the SOX2OT silencing-induced inhibition of the BCSC stemness phenotype.
This study is the first to demonstrate that SOX2OT plays an important regulatory role in BCSCs and that SOX2OT may serve as a potential diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target in bladder cancer.
Laryngopharyngeal reflux disease (LPRD) is a condition characterized by the regurgitation of stomach and duodenal contents into the laryngopharynx, with variable and non-specific symptoms. Therefore, ...developing an accurate symptom scale for different regions is essential. Notably, the symptoms of "dryness and burning sensation in the laryngopharynx or mouth" are prevalent among the Chinese population but are often omitted from conventional symptom assessment scales, such as the Reflux Symptom Index (RSI) and Reflux Symptom Score-12 (RSS-12) scales. To address this gap, our study incorporated the symptoms into the RSI and RSS-12 scales, developing the RSI-10/RSS-13 scales. Afterward, we assessed the role of the new scale's reliability (Cronbach's α and test-retest reliability), construct validity (confirmatory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis), and diagnostic efficiency. Our study encompassed 479 participants (average = 39.5 ± 13.4 years, 242 female) and 91 (average = 34.01 ± 13.50 years, 44 female) completed 24 h MII-pH monitoring. The Cronbach's α values of 0.80 and 0.82 for the RSI-10 and RSS-13 scales, respectively. RSI-10 and RSS-13 exhibited strong test-retest reliability (ICCs = 0.82-0.96) and diagnostic efficacy (AUC = 0.84-0.85). Furthermore, the factor analysis identified the RSS-13 and its three sub-scales (ear-nose-throat, digestive tract, respiratory tract) exhibited good to excellent structural validity (χ
/df = 1.95, P < 0.01; CFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMR = 0.05). The AUC optimal thresholds for the RSI-10 and RSS-13 in the Chinese population were 13 and 36, respectively. Besides, the inclusion of the new item significantly improved the diagnostic efficiency of the RSI scale (P = 0.04), suggesting that RSI-10 holds promise as a more effective screening tool for LPRD, and global validation is needed to demonstrate the impact of this new symptom on the diagnosis of LPRD.
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