Publications by authors named "Chen Ken"

Aims: There is a potential association between oxidative stress and the development of diabetic kidney disease (DKD). The Oxidative Balance Score (OBS), derived from dietary and lifestyle factors, acts as a comprehensive marker of oxidative stress. Research examining the relationship between OBS and DKD is scarce.

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Decoding cellular state transitions is crucial for understanding complex biological processes in development and disease. While recent advancements in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) offer insights into cellular trajectories, existing tools primarily study expressional rather than regulatory state shifts. We present CellTran, a statistical approach utilizing paired-gene expression correlations to detect transition cells from scRNA-seq data without explicitly resolving gene regulatory networks.

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The heat generation of the human body dramatically varies between resting and active status, so dynamic heat dissipation is required to ensure optimal thermal comfort. Herein, we propose a spectrally self-adaptive smart fabric (SSSF) by covering polyester fabric with silver nanowires, which autonomously adjusts its emissivity in response to the body's movement status from dry to wet states. During periods of inactivity, the SSSF maintains radiative heat insulation with a low emissivity state of 0.

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People with depression have increased premature mortality and elevated prevalence of diabetes-mellitus compared to general population. However, risk of mortality and diabetes-related complications among patients with depression and co-occurring diabetes is under-studied. This population-based propensity score-matched (1:10) cohort study identified 12,175 patients with pre-existing depression and incident-diabetes (depression-diabetes group) and 117,958 patients with incident-diabetes only (diabetes-only group) between 2002 and 2021 in Hong-Kong, using territory-wide medical-record database of public-healthcare services, to investigate whether depression increased the risk of overall mortality, complications and post-complication mortality in people with diabetes.

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Background: Gastric cancer (GC) is a highly prevalent gastrointestinal tract tumor. Several trials have demonstrated that the location of GC can affect patient prognosis. However, the factors determining tumor location remain unclear.

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How organisms age is a question with broad implications for human health. In mammals, DNA methylation is a biomarker for biological age, which may predict age more accurately than date of birth. However, limitations in mammalian models make it difficult to identify mechanisms underpinning age-related DNA methylation changes.

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  • Parametrically driven nonlinear resonators are important for quantum computing and sensing, showcasing interesting critical phenomena that occur independently of other quantum systems.! -
  • The study focuses on the ground state wavefunction, using the quantum ground state geometric tensor to create a phase diagram that shows a transition from normal to symmetry-breaking phases as the driving parameter ε increases, regardless of the phase ϕ.! -
  • The research confirms that the phase transition aligns with the quantum Rabi model's universality class and highlights that the quantum metric and Berry curvature exhibit diverging behaviors during the transition.!
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Background: Cardiac tamponade caused by coronary artery injury is an extremely rare postlobectomy complication. Herein, we present a case of cardiac tamponade due to coronary artery injury after a left upper lobectomy for lung cancer and discuss the possible cause of coronary artery injury.

Case Presentation: An 82-year-old man with atrial fibrillation, emphysema, chronic heart failure-associated cardiomegaly, and a history of aortic stenting for an abdominal aortic aneurysm underwent a left upper lobectomy without mediastinal nodal dissection for lung cancer.

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Temporal ordering of cellular events offers fundamental insights into biological phenomena. Although this is traditionally achieved through continuous direct observations, an alternative solution leverages irreversible genetic changes, such as naturally occurring mutations, to create indelible marks that enables retrospective temporal ordering. Using a multipurpose, single-cell CRISPR platform, we developed a molecular clock approach to record the timing of cellular events and clonality in vivo, with incorporation of cell state and lineage information.

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Mammalian retrotransposons constitute 40% of the genome. During tissue regeneration, adult stem cells coordinately repress retrotransposons and activate lineage genes, but how this coordination is controlled is poorly understood. Here, we observed that dynamic expression of histone methyltransferase SETDB1 (a retrotransposon repressor) closely mirrors stem cell activities in murine skin.

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The goal of therapeutic cancer vaccines and immune checkpoint therapy (ICT) is to promote T cells with anti-tumor capabilities. Here, we compared mutant neoantigen (neoAg) peptide-based vaccines with ICT in preclinical models. NeoAg vaccines induce the most robust expansion of proliferating and stem-like PD-1TCF-1 neoAg-specific CD8 T cells in tumors.

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  • - N-Glycosylation is a key process in modifying proteins, playing a major role in the function of cell surfaces and secreted proteins in humans, influenced by the complexity of N-glycan branches.
  • - The study focuses on enhancing the expression of human N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase-IVa (HsGnT-IVa) in E. coli by creating a shorter, more soluble version of the enzyme, which significantly increased its production levels.
  • - Characterization of the enzyme showed it has optimal activity at 37 °C with specific conditions and activators, providing a method for producing bioactive HsGnT-IVa for further research on complex N-glycans.
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  • The study investigates the effectiveness of the anti-EGFR monoclonal antibody panitumumab combined with carboplatin and paclitaxel for treating chemotherapy-resistant triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients.
  • It included 43 patients who had not sufficiently responded to prior doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide treatment, achieving a combined pathological complete response/residual cancer burden class I rate of 30.2%.
  • The results indicate that panitumumab shows promise as part of neoadjuvant therapy for TNBC, warranting further evaluation in larger clinical trials.
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Recognizing sleep posture is crucial for the monitoring of people with sleeping disorders. Existing contact-based systems might interfere with sleeping, while camera-based systems may raise privacy concerns. In contrast, radar-based sensors offer a promising solution with high penetration ability and the capability to detect vital bio-signals.

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Myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) belong to a continuous disease spectrum of myeloid malignancies with poor prognosis in the relapsed/refractory setting necessitating novel therapies. Natural killer (NK) cells from patients with myeloid malignancies display global dysfunction with impaired killing capacity, altered metabolism, and an exhausted phenotype at the single-cell transcriptomic and proteomic levels. In this study, we identified that this dysfunction was mediated through a cross-talk between NK cells and myeloid blasts necessitating cell-cell contact.

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The development of sequencing technology has promoted discovery of variants in the human genome. Identifying functions of these variants is important for us to link genotype to phenotype, and to diagnose diseases. However, it usually requires researchers to visit multiple databases.

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Somatic mutation phasing informs our understanding of cancer-related events, like driver mutations. We generated linked-read whole genome sequencing data for 23 samples across disease stages from 14 multiple myeloma (MM) patients and systematically assigned somatic mutations to haplotypes using linked-reads. Here, we report the reconstructed cancer haplotypes and phase blocks from several MM samples and show how phase block length can be extended by integrating samples from the same individual.

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Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive brain cancer with limited therapeutic options. Natural killer (NK) cells are innate immune cells with strong anti-tumor activity and may offer a promising treatment strategy for GBM. We compared the anti-GBM activity of NK cells engineered to express interleukin (IL)-15 or IL-21.

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  • Acute kidney injury (AKI) is caused by a sudden decline in kidney function, often linked to imbalances in reactive oxygen species and mitochondrial issues.
  • * Irisin, a protein released by muscles during exercise, may help reduce kidney damage by improving mitochondrial health and metabolism.
  • * A new type of nanocarrier has been created to deliver irisin effectively to injured kidneys, improving its targeting and circulation, and showing potential to treat AKI by protecting kidney cells during damage.
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Cancer cells with BRCA1/2 deficiencies are sensitive to poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors. We evaluated the efficacy of talazoparib in DNA-Damage Repair (DDR)-altered patients. In this phase II trial, patients were enrolled onto one of four cohorts based on molecular alterations: (1) somatic BRCA1/2, (2) other homologous recombination repair pathway, (3) PTEN and (4) germline BRCA1/2.

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With the rapid advancement of electronic technology, traditional textiles are challenged to keep up with the demands of wearable electronics. It is anticipated that multifunctional textile-based electronics incorporating energy storage, electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, and photothermal conversion are expected to alleviate this problem. Herein, a multifunctional cotton fabric with hierarchical array structure (PPy/NiCoAl-LDH/Cotton) is fabricated by the introduction of NiCoAl-layered double hydroxide (NiCoAl-LDH) nanosheet arrays on cotton fibers, followed by polymerization and growth of continuous dense polypyrrole (PPy) conductive layers.

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Objectives: Back pain subsequent to intervertebral disc injury is a common clinical problem. Previous work examining early molecular changes post injury mainly used a candidate marker approach. In this study, gene expression in the injured and intact mouse tail intervertebral discs was determined with a nonbiased whole transcriptome approach.

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Recent developments in immunotherapy, including immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) and adoptive cell therapy (ACT), have encountered challenges such as immune-related adverse events and resistance, especially in solid tumors. To advance the field, a deeper understanding of the molecular mechanisms behind treatment responses and resistance is essential. However, the lack of functionally characterized immune-related gene sets has limited data-driven immunological research.

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Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of nusinersen for the treatment of 5q-spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) among Chinese pediatric patients.

Methods: Using a longitudinal, multi-center registry, both prospective and retrospective data were collected from pediatric patients with 5q-SMA receiving nusinersen treatment across 18 centers in China. All patients fulfilling the eligibility criteria were included consecutively.

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