Publications by authors named "Che-Wei Chang"

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated the effectiveness of lenvatinib in treating unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and identified key factors influencing patient survival.
  • This involved analyzing data from 53 patients on lenvatinib monotherapy and 19 patients on a combination therapy of lenvatinib and immune checkpoint inhibitors.
  • The results showed that while the combination therapy had a higher response rate, there were no significant differences in progression-free survival or overall survival between the two groups, although specific patient criteria from the monotherapy group indicated better outcomes.
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Background: Differential counting (DC) of different cell types in bone marrow (BM) aspiration smears is crucial for diagnosing hematological diseases. However, a clinically applicable method for automatic DC has yet to be developed.

Objective: This study developed and validated an artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithm for identifying and classifying nucleated cells in BM smears.

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  • Phthalates, commonly found in plastics, may negatively impact kidney health, particularly through oxidative stress, but their link to kidney stones (urolithiasis) is not well established.
  • A case-control study with 285 patients who have calcium urolithiasis and 594 healthy controls examined urinary levels of phthalate metabolites and biomarkers for oxidative stress and early kidney injury.
  • Results showed that kidney stone patients had higher levels of phthalate metabolites and biomarkers of oxidative stress and injury, indicating a potential increased risk of urolithiasis linked to phthalate exposure.
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The current review described a 55-year woman using 28 months to finish her surgery-based radiation-free multimodality treatment journey to fight International Federation of Gynaecology & Obstetrics (FIGO) 2018 clinical stage IIA2 (cT2aN0M0) squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the cervix. She received six cycles of perioperative adjuvant therapy, including three cycles of neoadjuvant therapy (NAT) and three cycles of postoperative adjuvant therapy by using combination of dose-dense chemotherapy (CT, weekly paclitaxel 80 mg/m+triweekly cisplatin 40 mg/m), immunotherapy (IO, triweekly pembrolizumab 200 mg) and half-dose anti-angiogenic agent (triweekly bevacizumab 7.5 mg/kg) plus interval radical surgery (radical hysterectomy + bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy + bilateral pelvic lymph node dissection + para-aortic lymph node sampling) and following maintenance therapy with monthly 22 cycles of half-dose of IO (pembrolizumab 100 mg) and concomitant 4 cycles of single-agent CT (paclitaxel 175 mg/m) and 18 cycles of half-dose anti-angiogenic agent (bevacizumab 7.

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The WHO (World Health Organization) conducted an elimination of cervical cancer program using triple pillar intervention strategy to target 90%-70%-90% of women before the year 2030, including (1) a full vaccination of HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine to 90% of girls <15 years of age; (2) a high-performance screening procedure to 70% of women during the reproductive age (at the age of 35 and 45 years of age); and (3) an appropriate and adequate treatment to 90% of women with confirmed diagnosis of cervical lesions. Among the aforementioned three pillars, a full HPV vaccination has been introduced in our previous review, of which we have discussed the policy and strategy of HPV vaccination in the world and also reviewed the efficacy of HPV vaccination, with a successful reduction of over 90% of HPV-associated neoplasms. The aims of the current review will target another pillar-an appropriate and adequate treatment to 90% of women with confirmed diagnosis of cervical lesions.

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  • High dietary sugar (HDS) increases the risk of metabolic disorders and cancers, with phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase 1 (PEPCK1) being unexpectedly upregulated in tumors due to HDS.
  • Targeted knockdown of pepck1 in Drosophila significantly reduces HDS-induced tumor growth and improves survival rates in tumor-bearing models.
  • The study highlights PEPCK1's role in cancer progression linked to dietary sugar intake, suggesting it as a potential target for cancer prevention and treatment related to metabolic disorders.
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Coenzyme Q (CoQ), a quinone derivative from , has antitumor capabilities. This study investigated the antitumor effect of noncytotoxic CoQ, which included NLRP3 inflammasome inhibition, anti-EMT/metastasis, and metabolic reprogramming via HIF-1α inhibition, in HNSCC cells under normoxia and hypoxia. CoQ suppressed hypoxia-induced ROS-mediated HIF-1α expression in OECM-1 and SAS cells.

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The radical-radical reaction between OH and HO has been considered for a long time as an important reaction in tropospheric photochemistry and combustion chemistry. However, a significant discrepancy of an order of magnitude for rate coefficients of this reaction is found between two recent experiments. Herein, we investigate the reaction OH + HO via direct spectral quantification of both the precursor (HO) and free radicals (OH and HO) upon the 248 nm photolysis of HO using infrared two-color time-resolved dual-comb spectroscopy.

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Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has been used as an adjuvant treatment for crush injury because it can improve tissue hypoxia and stimulate wound healing. However, the actual role of HBOT in crush hand injury is still unknown. This study is to assess the efficacy of HBOT for crush hand patients, as well as the impact of HBOT initiation timing.

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The composite material-like extracellular matrix (ECM) in the sinoatrial node (SAN) supports the native pacemaking cardiomyocytes (PCMs). To test the roles of SAN ECM in the PCM phenotype and function, we engineered reconstructed-SAN heart tissues (rSANHTs) by recellularizing porcine SAN ECMs with hiPSC-derived PCMs. The hiPSC-PCMs in rSANHTs self-organized into clusters resembling the native SAN and displayed higher expression of pacemaker-specific genes and a faster automaticity compared with PCMs in reconstructed-left ventricular heart tissues (rLVHTs).

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Absolute line strengths of several transitions in the ν1 fundamental band of the hydroxyl radical (OH) have been measured by simultaneous determination of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and OH upon laser photolysis of H2O2. Based on the well-known quantum yield for the generation of OH radicals in the 248-nm photolysis of H2O2, the line strength of the OH radicals can be accurately derived by adopting the line strength of the well-characterized transitions of H2O2 and analyzing the difference absorbance time traces of H2O2 and OH obtained upon laser photolysis. Employing a synchronized two-color dual-comb spectrometer, we measured high-resolution time-resolved absorption spectra of H2O2 near 7.

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Background And Aims: Metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) has emerged as a valuable marker for identifying individuals at increased risk of metabolic dysfunction, liver-related complications, and cardiovascular disease. However, the association between MAFLD and testosterone deficiency (TD) in aging men remains poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate the association between MAFLD and the risk of TD in aging Taiwanese men, with a specific focus on those without metabolic syndrome (MetS).

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We introduce a unique soft lithographic operation that exploits stamp roof collapse-induced gaps to selectively remove an alkanethiol self-assembled monolayer (SAM) on Au to generate surface patterns that are orders of magnitude smaller than structures on the original elastomer stamp. The smallest achieved feature dimension is 5 nm using a micrometer-scale structured stamp in a chemical lift-off lithography (CLL) process. Molecular patterns retained in the gaps between stamp features and their circumscribed or inscribed circles follow mathematical predictions, and their sizes can be tuned by altering the stamp structure dimensions, including height, pitch, and shape.

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Pressure injuries are a common problem resulting in poor prognosis, long-term hospitalization, and increased medical costs in an aging society. This study developed a method to do automatic segmentation and area measurement of pressure injuries using deep learning models and a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) camera. We selected the finest photos of patients with pressure injuries, 528 in total, at National Taiwan University Hospital from 2016 to 2020.

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(1) Background: The current gold standard treatment of bladder cancer is conventional transurethral resection of the bladder tumor (CTURBT) using monopolar or bipolar resectoscopes. Laser en-bloc resection of the bladder tumor (LERBT) could achieve a higher quality of the specimen, reduce perioperative complications, and decrease the recurrence rate. Here, we compare the efficacy and safety of en-bloc Vela laser resection versus the conventional monopolar/bipolar resection; (2) Methods: A total of 100 clinically cT1-2 patients with bladder cancer were retrospectively reviewed in this study.

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Purpose: Accurate assessment of the percentage of total body surface area (%TBSA) burned is crucial in managing burn injuries. It is difficult to estimate the size of an irregular shape by inspection. Many articles reported the discrepancy of estimating %TBSA burned by different doctors.

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Exocytosis operates through two distinct modes. Full-fusion leads to rapid expulsion of the entire content of a vesicle; kiss-and-run leads to slow and partial expulsion. These two modes have important biological consequences for endocrine regulation and synaptic transmission.

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Microcellular injection molding technology (MuCell) using supercritical fluid (SCF) as a foaming agent offers many advantages, such as material and energy savings, low cycle time, cost-effectiveness, and the dimensional stability of products. MuCell has attracted great attention for applications in the automotive, packaging, sporting goods, and electrical parts industries. In view of the environmental issues, the shoe industry, particularly for midsole parts, is also seriously considering using physical foaming to replace the chemical foaming process.

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Background/purpose: Pressure ulcers are a common problem in hospital care and long-term care. Pressure ulcers are caused by prolonged compression of soft tissues, which can cause local tissue damage and even lead to serious infections. This study uses a deep learning algorithm to construct a system that diagnoses pressure ulcers and assists in making treatment decisions, thus providing additional reference for first-line caregivers.

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Intracellular accumulation of TAU aggregates is a hallmark of several neurodegenerative diseases. However, global genetic reduction of TAU is beneficial also in models of other brain disorders that lack such TAU pathology, suggesting a pathogenic role of nonaggregated TAU. Here, conditional ablation of TAU in excitatory, but not inhibitory, neurons reduced epilepsy, sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, overactivation of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase-AKT-mammalian target of rapamycin pathway, brain overgrowth (megalencephaly), and autism-like behaviors in a mouse model of Dravet syndrome, a severe epileptic encephalopathy of early childhood.

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Article Synopsis
  • A pressure ulcer is a skin injury that can complicate medical care access, a situation worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic; machine learning (ML) offers potential solutions.
  • Traditional ML methods require complex data processing, making them less applicable to diverse datasets, whereas deep learning (DL) can analyze larger datasets but needs extensive labeled training data, which is hard to obtain for pressure ulcer tissues.
  • The study introduces a superpixel-assisted method to label 2836 images for tissue classification and 2893 for wound segmentation, successfully training five DL models, with DeeplabV3 achieving the highest accuracy, and demonstrates the ability to monitor wound healing and suggest necessary medical interventions.
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Integrating the Kondo correlation and spin-orbit interactions, each of which have individually offered unprecedented means to manipulate electron spins, in a controllable way can open up new possibilities for spintronics. We demonstrate electrical control of the Kondo correlation by coupling the bound spin to leads with tunable Rashba spin-orbit interactions, realized in semiconductor quantum point contacts. We observe a transition from single to double peak zero-bias anomalies in nonequilibrium transport-the manifestation of the Kondo effect-indicating a controlled Kondo spin reversal using only spin-orbit interactions.

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Determining the extent of genetic variation that reflects local adaptation in crop-wild relatives is of interest for the purpose of identifying useful genetic diversity for plant breeding. We investigated the association of genomic variation with geographical and environmental factors in wild barley (Hordeum vulgare L. ssp.

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Polarization light microscopes are powerful tools for probing molecular order and orientation in birefringent materials. While a number of polarization microscopy techniques are available to access steady-state properties of birefringent samples, quantitative measurements of the molecular orientation dynamics on the millisecond time scale have remained a challenge. We propose polarized shearing interference microscopy (PSIM), a single-shot quantitative polarization imaging method, for extracting the retardance and orientation angle of the laser beam transmitting through optically anisotropic specimens with complex structures.

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