Despite significant research efforts, only a few treatment approaches have been developed for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In recent years, immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-1, anti-PD-L1, and ...anti-CTLA-4 antibodies) have exhibited potential therapeutic effects for advanced HCC. With the development of gene-editing technologies, gene-sequencing technologies, big data strategies, and artificial intelligence algorithms, engineered immune cell infusion and personalized cancer vaccine therapy have emerged as important directions for anti-HCC treatment. Combining different immunotherapies or combining immunotherapies with conventional therapeutic approaches may provide synergistic effects and facilitate the development of personalized medicine. In this study, we provide an overview of the liver immunoanatomy, the potential immune mechanisms of HCC, and current (pre)clinical developments in this field.
•Introduce the role of liver immunoanatomy in HCC immunotherapy.•Summarize the clinical practice of immunotherapy in HCC.•Combining immunotherapies with conventional therapeutic approaches would play an important role in anti-HCC treatment.
Wireless communication has the advantages of high communication speed, high efficiency and good security. The establishment of a wireless communication information management system can not only ...bring great convenience to wireless information communication but also bring great challenges to managers. In order to ensure the security and stability of the system, a wireless communication information management system based on J2EE and AJAX technology has been designed in this paper, and the whole system architecture is discussed. Finally, the key technologies in the realisation of the system are studied in depth and the realisation of some functions of the system is briefly described.
Recent studies show that exosomes are involved in intercellular communication and that abundant circular RNAs (circRNAs) are present within exosomes. However, whether these exosomal circRNAs ...contribute to tumor invasion and metastasis remains unclear, as do their associated mechanisms.
Quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to measure the expression levels of circ-IARS in 85 pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) tissues, plasma exosomes, and Hs 766 T, Hs 766 T-L2 and human microvascular vein endothelial (HUVECs) cells. RhoA, ZO-1 and RhoA-GTP levels were detected by qRT-PCR and western blotting (WB); RhoA activity analysis was also performed. Transwell assays were performed to examine changes in endothelial monolayer permeability, and immunofluorescence and WB were employed to evaluate F-actin expression and focal adhesion. Finally, an animal experiment was performed to detect the contribution of circ-IARS to cancer metastasis.
circ-IARS expression was up-regulated in pancreatic cancer tissues and in plasma exosomes of patients with metastatic disease. Circ-IARS was found to enter HUVECs through exosomes and promote tumor invasion and metastasis. Circ-IARS expression was positively correlated with liver metastasis, vascular invasion, and tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage and negatively correlated with postoperative survival time. Overexpression of circ-IARS significantly down-regulated miR-122 and ZO-1 levels, up-regulated RhoA and RhoA-GTP levels, increased F-actin expression and focal adhesion, enhanced endothelial monolayer permeability, and promoted tumor invasion and metastasis.
circ-IRAS accesses HUVECs via exosomes derived from pancreatic cancer cells followed by increased endothelial monolayer permeability. Furthermore, this process promotes tumor invasion and metastasis. The results of this study suggest that the presence of circRNAs in exosomes may be important indicator for early diagnosis and prognostic prediction in PDAC.
Circular RNA (circ-RNA) and exosomes have recently been shown to play important roles in different tumors. However, the functions and regulatory mechanisms of exosomal circ-RNA in pancreatic ductal ...adenocarcinoma (PDAC) tumor progression remain unclear. Here, we identified a circular RNA (circ-PDE8A) from liver-metastatic PDAC cells by microarray analysis, detected its expression levels in clinical tissues and found that high circ-PDE8A expression was correlated with lymphatic invasion, TNM stage and a poor survival rate of PDAC patients. Further study revealed that circ-PDE8A promotes the invasive growth of PDAC cells via upregulating MET. Circ-PDE8A acts as a ceRNA for miR-338 to regulate MACC1 and stimulates invasive growth via the MACC/MET/ERK or AKT pathways. We further imaged the exosome communication between tumor cells and identified the tumor secreted exosomes in blood circulation. Finally, we analyzed the circ-PDE8A expression in plasma exosomes of PDAC patients and found that exosomal circ-PDE8A was associated with progression and prognosis in PDAC patients. Thus, circ-PDE8A may play an important role in tumor invasion, and exosomal circ-PDE8A may be a useful marker of PDAC diagnosis or progression.
•High level of circ-PDE8A is associated with tumor progression and prognosis.•Circ-PDE8A promotes the invasive growth via miR-338/MACC1/MET pathway.•Tumor released exosomes could enter into blood circulation and be detected.•Plasma exosomal circ-PDE8A is correlated to tumor invasion of PDAC patients.
Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) or exosomes have recently been shown to play vital regulatory or communication roles in cancer biology. However, the roles and mechanisms of exosomal lncRNAs in tumor ...invasion or metastasis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remain unknown. In this study, we aimed to investigate the detailed roles and mechanisms of tumor-generated exosomes in progression and metastasis of PDAC in vitro and in vivo. We identified a lncRNA-Sox2ot from exosomes of highly invasive PDAC cells, and analyzed the expression of Sox2ot in the plasma samples and found that the plasma exosomal Sox2ot expression was high and correlated with TNM stage and overall survival rate of PDAC patients. Further research showed that Sox2ot promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and stem cell like properties by regulating Sox2 expression. Sox2ot competitively binds to the miR-200 family to regulate the expression of Sox2, thus promoting invasion and metastasis of PDAC. We also confirmed the transmission of the exosomes from producer cells to recipient PDAC cells, exosomal Sox2ot can promote tumor invasion and metastasis in vitro and in vivo. We further confirmed tumor generated exosomes could excrete to tumor cell or blood circulation in vivo condition. Finally, we observed a decreased exosomal Sox2ot expression in postoperative blood samples of PDAC patients. The exosomal lncRNA Sox2ot plays important roles in tumor progression and may be a useful maker for pancreatic cancer prognosis.
Background & Aims The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) with surgical resection (RES) in the treatment of small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods A ...total of 168 patients with small HCC with nodular diameters of less than 4 cm and up to two nodules were randomly divided into RES (n = 84) and RFA groups (n = 84). Outcomes were carefully monitored and evaluated during the 3-year follow-up period. Results The 1-, 2-, and 3-year survival rates for the RES and RFA groups were 96.0%, 87.6%, 74.8% and 93.1%, 83.1%, 67.2%, respectively. The corresponding recurrence-free survival rates for the two groups were 90.6%, 76.7%, 61.1% and 86.2%, 66.6%, 49.6%, respectively. There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in overall survival rate ( p = 0.342) or recurrence-free survival rate ( p = 0.122). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that the independent risk factors associated with survival were multiple occurrences of tumors at different hepatic locations (relative risk of 2.696; 95% CI: 1.189–6.117; p = 0.018) and preoperative indocyanine green retention rate at 15 min (ICG-15) (relative risk of 3.853; 95% CI: 1.647–9.015; p = 0.002). Conclusions In patients with small hepatocellular carcinomas, percutaneous RFA may provide therapeutic effects similar to those of RES. However, percutaneous RFA is more likely to be incomplete for the treatment of small HCCs located at specific sites of the liver, and open or laparoscopic surgery may be the better choice.
With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the protection of patient medical image privacy and security has become a critical concern in current research on image privacy ...protection. However, traditional methods for encrypting medical images have faced criticism due to their limited flexibility and inadequate security. To overcome these limitations, this study proposes a novel chaotic medical image encryption method, called AT-ResNet-CM, which incorporates the attention mechanism fused with the ResNet model.
The proposed method utilizes the ResNet model as the underlying network for constructing the encryption and decryption framework. The ResNet's residual structure and jump connections are employed to effectively extract profound information from medical images and expedite the model's convergence. To enhance security, the output of the ResNet model is encrypted using a logistic chaotic system, introducing randomness and complexity to the encryption process. Additionally, an attention mechanism is introduced to enhance the model's response to the region of interest within the medical image, thereby strengthening the security of the encrypted network.
Experimental simulations and analyses were conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms alternative models in terms of encryption effectiveness, as indicated by a horizontal correlation coefficient of 0.0021 and information entropy of 0.9887. Furthermore, the incorporation of the attention mechanism significantly improves the encryption performance, reducing the horizontal correlation coefficient to 0.0010 and increasing the information entropy to 0.9965. These findings validate the efficacy of the proposed method for medical image encryption tasks, as it offers enhanced security and flexibility compared to existing approaches.
In conclusion, the AT-ResNet-CM method presents a promising solution to address the limitations of traditional encryption techniques in protecting patient medical images. By leveraging the attention mechanism fused with the ResNet model, the method achieves improved security and flexibility. The experimental results substantiate the superiority of the proposed method in terms of encryption effectiveness, horizontal correlation coefficient, and information entropy. The proposed method not only addresses the shortcomings of traditional methods but also provides a more robust and reliable approach for safeguarding patient medical image privacy and security.
•The effect of SP with different intensities on HCF life of a spring steel with various strength is revealed.•SP treatment can deteriorate the HCF life of the spring steel with lower strength.•SP ...treatment is beneficial to the improvement in HCF life of the spring steel with higher strength.•Increasing SP intensity is not beneficial to the further improvement in HCF life of HT specimens.•A new parameter, Rsp-HCF, is defined to analyze the effect of SP on the fatigue property of a spring steel.
Shot peening (SP) treatment is a common and useful method that can affect the fatigue life of metallic components. In this work, the high-cycle fatigue (HCF) lives of 50CrMnMoVNb spring steels with different SP intensities and conditions were investigated. Meanwhile, the differences in the microstructures and crack initiation sites were compared. The fatigue life of the investigated steels is greatly improved via suitable heat treatment. Furthermore, SP treatment is beneficial to the improvement of the fatigue life of heat-treated specimens with higher strength, and the optimal SP intensity is 0.15 ∼ 0.25 mmA. However, SP deteriorates the HCF life of the as-received specimens with lower strength. This study can enrich the fundamental knowledge on how to improve the HCF life of spring steels and provide new ideas about the influence of different SP intensities on the surface layer and fatigue properties.
Organic−inorganic metal halide ABX3 perovskite materials have stimulated great interest because of their superior photoelectronic properties and potential solar cell applications. However, the most ...widely used CH3NH3PbI3 suffers from its poor stability and inclusion of toxic lead. In order to screen potential ABX3 candidate materials for solar cell applications, first-principles calculations have been performed for 90 organic-inorganic ABX3 perovskites with A cation to be one of CH3NH3, CH3CH2NH3 and CH2(NH2)2 molecules, B cation from Cd, Cu, Ge, Mg, Ni, Pb, Sn, Ti, V and Zn, and the X monovalent anion from Cl, Br and I. Some potential absorber materials with a 3D perovskite structure have been identified by using the calculated decomposition enthalpies, band gaps, and optimized atomic structures. The structural factor screening is found to be not decisive since the electronic effects are not taken into account. Furthermore, by doping at the B or X sites with a proper concentration, it is possible to improve the stability and optimize the band gap of perovskite materials. Since the present calculations are conducted for small monovalent organic molecules and the tetragonal perovskites, the present theoretical results should provide a useful guidance for designing the organic−inorganic perovskite solar cell absorbers.
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•Ninety tetragonal organic-inorganic perovskites have been systemically investigated by DFT and structural factor analyses.•The calculated decomposition enthalpies and band gaps, and optimized final atomic structure are employed for screening .•Seventeen organic-inorganic perovskites are found to satisfy all the three screening criteria.•Mixing of two different ABX3 perovskites is a promising way to improve the properties of the mixed system.
In this paper, we consider a fully discrete interpolated coefficient mixed finite element method for semilinear time fractional reaction–diffusion equations. The classic L1 scheme based on graded ...meshes and new mixed finite element based on triangulation is used for the temporal and spatial discretization, respectively. The interpolation coefficient technique is used to deal with the semilinear term, and the discrete nonlinear system is solved by a Newton-like iterative method. Stability and convergence results for both the original variable and its flux are derived. Numerical experiments confirm our theoretical analysis.
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