Publications by authors named "Andrew S Lee"

Article Synopsis
  • - TFEB and TFE3 (TFEB/3) are important for lysosomal function and autophagy, and their roles vary depending on cell types, particularly in peripheral nerve repair. - The study shows that TFEB/3 is essential for converting Schwann cells into progenitor-like cells after nerve injury; without it, nerve repair is significantly impaired in knock-out mice. - Despite the presence of another regulator, TFEB/3 deficiency hinders the activation of repair-related genes, leading to poor nerve regrowth and recovery, although the breakdown of myelin remains unaffected.
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  • The brain's ability to recover from cell loss during development varies based on the type of cells lost, making the effects of genetic mutations in those neurons unpredictable.
  • Research shows that removing excitatory cerebellar output neurons during embryonic development mainly affects motor coordination rather than learning or social behaviors.
  • In contrast, mutations in specific transcription factors (Engrailed1/2) in the cerebellum can lead to significant deficits in learning and memory, even if some excitatory neurons are still present, affecting overall motor learning and some non-motor functions.
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Bacteriophages Uzumaki and Argan infect B-2880 isolated from soil samples in Long Island, New York. These bacteriophages have lambda-like morphology with prolate capsid and share 97% gene content similarity. These traits place them in cluster AU6 with other related phages.

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The neurons of the three cerebellar nuclei (CN) are the primary output neurons of the cerebellum. The excitatory neurons (e) of the medial (m) CN (eCNm) were recently divided into molecularly defined subdomains in the adult; however, how they are established during development is not known. We define molecular subdomains of the mouse embryonic eCNm using single-cell RNA-sequencing and spatial expression analysis, showing that they evolve during embryogenesis to prefigure the adult.

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Background: Online physician reviews increase transparency in health care, helping patients make informed decisions about their provider. Language processing techniques can quantify this data and allow providers to better understand patients' experiences, perspectives, and priorities. The objective of this study was to assess patient satisfaction and understand the aspects of care that are valued by patients seeking refractive care using sentiment and word frequency analysis.

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Background: Acute lung injury (ALI) is a life-threatening respiratory condition characterized by severe inflammation and lung tissue damage, frequently causing rapid respiratory failure and long-term complications. The microRNA let-7a-5p is involved in the progression of lung injury, inflammation, and fibrosis by regulating immune cell activation and cytokine production. This study aims to use an innovative cellular electroporation platform to generate extracellular vesicles (EVs) carring let-7a-5p (EV-let-7a-5p) derived from transfected Wharton's jelly-mesenchymal stem cells (WJ-MSCs) as a potential gene therapy for ALI.

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Predicting the synthesizability of a new molecule remains an unsolved challenge that chemists have long tackled with heuristic approaches. Here, we report a new method for predicting synthesizability using a simple yet accurate thermochemical descriptor. We introduce , the energy difference between a molecule and its lowest energy constitutional isomer, as a synthesizability predictor that is accurate, physically meaningful, and first-principles based.

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This paper proposes a novel estimator for the purpose of fault detection and diagnosis. The interacting multiple model (IMM) strategy is effective for estimating the behaviour of systems with multiple operating modes. Each mode corresponds to a distinct mathematical model and is subject to a filtering process.

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Head and neck squamous-cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a disease with a generally poor prognosis; half of treated patients eventually develop recurrent and/or metastatic (R/M) disease. Patients with R/M HNSCC generally have incurable disease with a median survival of 10 to 15 months. Although immune-checkpoint blockade (ICB) has improved outcomes in patients with R/M HNSCC, identifying patients who are likely to benefit from ICB remains a challenge.

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The excitatory neurons of the three cerebellar nuclei (eCN) form the primary output for the cerebellar circuit. The medial eCN (eCNm) were recently divided into molecularly defined subdomains in the adult, however how they are established during development is not known. We define molecular subdomains of the eCNm using scRNA-seq and spatial expression analysis and show they evolve during embryogenesis to resemble the adult.

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Background: Pathogenic variants in can result in long QT syndrome type 3, a life-threatening genetic disease. Adenine base editors can convert targeted A T base pairs to G C base pairs, offering a promising tool to correct pathogenic variants.

Methods: We generated a long QT syndrome type 3 mouse model by introducing the T1307M pathogenic variant into the gene.

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Objective: We document the first successful transmastoid surgical treatment of facial nerve palsy for a patient with craniometaphyseal dysplasia (CMD), a rare genetic disease.

Patient: A 9-month-old girl with bilateral facial nerve palsies and conductive hearing loss. Genetic testing made a diagnosis of CMD, and imaging showed narrowing of the facial nerve canals and ossicular fixation.

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Article Synopsis
  • PDAC tumors have various genetic mutations and often don’t respond well to treatments, highlighting the need for better drug delivery systems.
  • Researchers developed a dual targeted extracellular vesicle (dtEV) that can carry high amounts of therapeutic RNA to effectively reduce large PDAC tumors in mice.
  • The dtEVs are engineered with a specific protein for targeting and, when combined with low-dose chemotherapy like Gemcitabine, significantly suppress tumor growth and improve survival in mouse models.
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The recent success of mRNA therapeutics against pathogenic infections has increased interest in their use for other human diseases including cancer. However, the precise delivery of the genetic cargo to cells and tissues of interest remains challenging. Here, we show an adaptive strategy that enables the docking of different targeting ligands onto the surface of mRNA-loaded small extracellular vesicles (sEVs).

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Regenerative medicine in tissue engineering often relies on stem cells and specific growth factors at a supraphysiological dose. These approaches are costly and may cause severe side effects. Herein, therapeutic small extracellular vesicles (t-sEVs) endogenously loaded with a cocktail of human vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) and human bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) mRNAs within a customized injectable PEGylated poly (glycerol sebacate) acrylate (PEGS-A) hydrogel for bone regeneration in rats with challenging femur critical-size defects are introduced.

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Objective: Simulation may be a valuable tool in training laryngology office procedures on unsedated patients. However, no studies have examined whether existing awake procedure simulators improve trainee performance in laryngology. Our objective was to evaluate the transfer validity of a previously published 3D-printed laryngeal simulator in improving percutaneous injection laryngoplasty (PIL) competency compared with conventional educational materials with a single-blinded randomized controlled trial.

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Background: Peripheral vascular disease remains a leading cause of vascular morbidity and mortality worldwide despite advances in medical and surgical therapy. Besides traditional approaches, which can only restore blood flow to native arteries, an alternative approach is to enhance the growth of new vessels, thereby facilitating the physiological response to ischemia.

Methods: The Actin/R26 Rainbow reporter mouse was used for unbiased in vivo survey of injury-responsive vasculogenic clonal formation.

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Recent human genetic studies have linked a variety of genetic variants in the and genes to neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. This is not surprising given the work from multiple laboratories using cell and animal models that have established that Ca1.2 and Ca1.

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Article Synopsis
  • Coronary artery disease (CAD) is now recognized not just as a lipid disorder but also as a condition marked by chronic inflammation, particularly involving immune cell activity in atherosclerotic plaques.
  • Researchers employed single-cell technology to explore the immune microenvironment of coronary plaques at various maturity stages, revealing a significant presence of activated αβ T cells alongside macrophages.
  • Findings indicated these T cells, which show clonal expansion and specificity to several viral epitopes, are likely involved in autoimmune responses contributing to the disease, with some exhibiting pro-inflammatory properties that may further encourage plaque progression.
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Targeted protein degradation methods offer a unique avenue to assess a protein's function in a variety of model systems. Recently, these approaches have been applied to mammalian cell culture models, enabling unprecedented temporal control of protein function. However, the efficacy of these systems at the tissue and organismal levels in vivo is not well established.

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Evidence for a cerebellar role during cardiopulmonary challenges has long been established, but studies of cerebellar involvement in eupneic breathing have been inconclusive. Here we investigated temporal aspects of eupneic respiration in the Atoh1-En1/2 mouse model of cerebellar neuropathology. Atoh1-En1/2 conditional knockout mice have conditional loss of the developmental patterning genes Engrailed1 and 2 in excitatory cerebellar nuclear neurons, which leads to loss of a subset of medial and intermediate excitatory cerebellar nuclear neurons.

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Although engaging in physical exercise has been shown to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular events, the molecular mechanisms by which exercise mediates these benefits remain unclear. Based on epidemiological evidence, reductions in traditional risk factors only accounts for 50% of the protective effects of exercise, leaving the remaining mechanisms unexplained. The objective of this study was to determine whether engaging in a regular exercise program in a real world clinical setting mediates cardiovascular protection via modulation of non-traditional risk factors, such as those involved in coagulation, inflammation and metabolic regulation.

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