Isolation of C-29 oxygenated oleanane triterpenoids and a (+)-muurolene type sesquiterpenoid from the fruiting bodies of Fuscoporia torulosa and their bioactivities.

Basidiomycetes with a wide variety of skeletons of secondary metabolites can be expected to be the source of new interesting biological compounds. During our research on basidiomycetes, two new C-29 oxygenated oleanane-type triterpenes (1 and 2) and torulosacid (3), a muurolene type sesquiterpenoid with a five-membered ether ring along with nine known compounds (4-12), were isolated from the MeOH extract of the fruiting bodies of Fuscoporia torulosa. The structures of 1-3 were determined by NMR and HREIMS analysis.

Heat-related illness and dementia: a study integrating epidemiological and experimental evidence.

Background: Heat-related illness (HRI) is commonly considered an acute condition, and its potential long-term consequences are not well understood. We conducted a population-based cohort study and an animal experiment to evaluate whether HRI is associated with dementia later in life.

Methods: The Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database was used in the epidemiological study.

Compare the Quadriceps Activity between Mini-Midvastus and Mini-Medial Parapatellar Approach in Total Knee Arthroplasty with Electromyography.

The comparison between the mini-midvastus (mini-MV) and mini-parapatellar (mini-MPP) approach in total knee arthroplasty (TKA) remains a subject of debate. The present study compared quadriceps activation, pain levels, and clinical outcomes between the two approaches; quadricep activation was assessed using surface electromyography (sEMG). This retrospective cross-sectional study comprised a total of 78 patients aged between 50 and 85 years with primary osteoarthritis.

PET/MRI in Endometrial Cancer: Imaging Biomarkers are Associated with Disease Progression and Overall Survival.

Rationale And Objectives: To evaluate the association between positron emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) biomarkers and survival outcomes in patients with endometrial cancer.

Materials And Methods: Between April 2014 and April 2016, 88 patients with newly diagnosed endometrial cancer participated this prospective study and underwent [F] fluorodeoxyglucose PET/MRI. Sixty-nine patients with measurable tumors on PET/MRI were included in the image analysis.

Ultrasonography Facilitates the Diagnosis of Traumatic Iliopsoas Hemorrhage: A Report of Two Cases with Different Patterns.

We report two cases of traumatic iliopsoas hemorrhage, without hemoperitoneum, initially detected by ultrasound. Flexion hip contracture in the first case and incomplete femoral nerve palsy in the second case alerted the sonographer to the possibility of traumatic iliopsoas hemorrhage. The first case involved a 54-year-old man who complained of progressive right flank pain and difficulty in walking after falling to the ground.

Bayesian hierarchical models for adaptive basket trial designs.

Basket trials evaluate a single drug targeting a single genetic variant in multiple cancer cohorts. Empirical findings suggest that treatment efficacy across baskets may be heterogeneous. Most modern basket trial designs use Bayesian methods.

Novel Electrospun Polycaprolactone/Calcium Alginate Scaffolds for Skin Tissue Engineering.

After decades of research, fully functional skin regeneration is still a challenge. Skin is a multilayered complex organ exhibiting a cascading healing process affected by various mechanisms. Specifically, nutrients, oxygen, and biochemical signals can lead to specific cell behavior, ultimately conducive to the formation of high-quality tissue.

Phototoxicity effects of NIR-irradiated cesium tungsten oxide (CsWO) nanoparticles on zebrafish embryos: A direct immersion study.

Nanoparticles (NPs) with feature sizes ranging between 1 nm and 100 nm have increasingly gained momentum for their versatile functionality as the pharmaceutical agents in many branches of biomedical research and clinical experiments. However, NPs' inherent material toxicity and the concomitant adverse effects of their function, such as photo-physical properties, often remain a major concern over the issues of environmental safety and human health, and require a thorough assessment before a wide-spread usage can be complied. This research herein investigates the intrinsic and photothermal toxicity of CsWO NPs solution in zebrafish larvae through a direct immersion method.

Overexpression of transmembrane protein 102 implicates poor prognosis and chemoresistance in epithelial ovarian carcinoma patients.

Most ovarian cancer patients experience disease recurrence and chemotherapeutic resistance, and the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Identifying relevant pathways could reveal new therapeutic targets. Here we examined expression of transmembrane protein 102 (TMEM102), a biomarker of prognosis and chemoresistance, in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), and assessed its role in inhibiting tumor cell apoptosis.

Develop companion radiopharmaceutical YKL40 antibodies as potential theranostic agents for epithelial ovarian cancer.

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is usually diagnosed at an advanced stage and has poor prognosis. Theranostic agents are the current trend in drug development, but are lacking in EOC. YKL40 is predominantly expressed and involved in tumorigenesis in EOC.

Origin and Evolution of Nitrogen Fixation in Prokaryotes.

The origin of nitrogen fixation is an important issue in evolutionary biology. While nitrogen is required by all living organisms, only a small fraction of bacteria and archaea can fix nitrogen. The prevailing view is that nitrogen fixation first evolved in archaea and was later transferred to bacteria.

A DNA Damage Response Gene Panel for Different Histologic Types of Epithelial Ovarian Carcinomas and Their Outcomes.

DNA damage response (DDR) is important for maintaining genomic integrity of the cell. Aberrant DDR pathways lead to accumulation of DNA damage, genomic instability and malignant transformations. Gene mutations have been proven to be associated with epithelial ovarian cancer, and the majority of the literature has focused on .

Increased risk of second primary malignancies among endometrial cancer survivors receiving surgery alone: A population-based analysis.

Background: Women with endometrial cancer (EC) have favorable prognoses, leaving them vulnerable to the development of second primary cancers (SPCs). We investigated the SPC risk and survival outcomes among EC patients treated with surgery alone in order to exclude the impact of adjuvant treatment on the results.

Methods: Data from the Taiwan Cancer Registry from 1995 to 2013 were analyzed.

Operational Experiences in China and Statistical Issues on the Conduct of Clinical Trials During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 outbreak is impacting clinical trials in many ways, such as patient recruitment, data collection and data analysis. To proceed in this difficult time, the adoption of new technologies and new approaches for conducting clinical trials needs to be accelerated. Simultaneously, regulatory agencies such as the US FDA and EMA have issued guidance to help the pharmaceutical industry conduct clinical trials of medical products during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Devising Hyperthermia Dose of NIR-Irradiated CsWO Nanoparticles for HepG2 Hepatic Cancer Cells.

Hyperthermia is one of the most patient-friendly methods to cure cancer diseases owing to its noninvasiveness, minimally induced side-effects and toxicity, and easy implementation, prompting the development of novel therapeutic methods like photothermally triggering dose system. This research herein interrogates the variables of photothermal effects of CsWO nanoparticles (NPs), the duration of irradiation, optical power density and NP concentration, upon HepG2 liver cancer cell line in vitro, leading to the formulation of a near-infrared (NIR)-irradiated thermal dose. Expressly, the NPs with particulate feature sizes of 120 nm were synthesized through a series of oxidation-reduction (REDOX) reaction, thermal annealing and wet-grinding processes, and the subsequent characterization of physical, compositional, optical, photothermal properties were examined using dynamic light scattering (DLS), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), scanning and tunneling electron microscopies (SEM and TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and visible-near-infrared (VIS-NIR) photospectroscopy.

Discovering unknown human and mouse transcription factor binding sites and their characteristics from ChIP-seq data.

Transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) are essential for gene regulation, but the number of known TFBSs remains limited. We aimed to discover and characterize unknown TFBSs by developing a computational pipeline for analyzing ChIP-seq (chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing) data. Applying it to the latest ENCODE ChIP-seq data for human and mouse, we found that using the irreproducible discovery rate as a quality-control criterion resulted in many experiments being unnecessarily discarded.

Real-World Evaluation of Modern Adjuvant Radiotherapy in Women with Stage IB Endometrial Cancer.

The optimal adjuvant treatment for stage IB endometrial cancer remains undefined. We investigated the benefit of modern adjuvant radiotherapy for women with stage IB endometrial cancer. We retrospectively reviewed patients with surgically staged, pure stage IB endometrioid adenocarcinoma (2010 to 2018).

Identifying Primate ACE2 Variants That Confer Resistance to SARS-CoV-2.

SARS-CoV-2 infects humans through the binding of viral S-protein (spike protein) to human angiotensin I converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). The structure of the ACE2-S-protein complex has been deciphered and we focused on the 27 ACE2 residues that bind to S-protein. From human sequence databases, we identified nine ACE2 variants at ACE2-S-protein binding sites.

PET/MRI in Cervical Cancer: Associations Between Imaging Biomarkers and Tumor Stage, Disease Progression, and Overall Survival.

Background: Positron emission tomography (PET)/MRI biomarkers have been shown to have prognostic significance in patients with cervical cancer. Their associations with progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) merit further investigation.

Purpose: To evaluate the association between PET/MRI biomarkers and tumor stage, PFS, and OS in patients with cervical cancer.

Use of tolerance intervals for assessing biosimilarity.

A biosimilar is a biological product that is highly similar to an existing approved reference drug and has no clinically meaningful difference from it. Biosimilars are composed of or derived from living cells or organisms. Therefore, they are often sensitive to slight variations in the manufacturing process.

BTLA blockade enhances Cancer therapy by inhibiting IL-6/IL-10-induced CD19 B lymphocytes.

Background: The standard treatment for epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) is surgery followed by platinum/paclitaxel-based chemotherapy, but the overall survival rate is poor. The purpose of this study was to investigate the therapeutic potential of chemotherapy combined with inhibition of B and T lymphocyte attenuator (BTLA) for clinical use to treat EOC.

Methods: Initially, we evaluated the potential application of chemotherapy combined with anti-BTLA antibody in an animal model.

Blockade of PD-L1 Enhances Cancer Immunotherapy by Regulating Dendritic Cell Maturation and Macrophage Polarization.

The immuno-inhibitory checkpoint PD-L1, regulated by tumor cells and antigen-presenting cells (APCs), dampened the activation of T cells from the PD-1/PD-L1 axis. PD-L1-expressing APCs rather than tumor cells demonstrated the essential anti-tumor effects of anti-PD-L1 monotherapy in preclinical tumor models. Using the murine tumor model, we investigated whether anti-PD-L1 antibody increased the antigen-specific immune response and anti-tumor effects induced by the antigen-specific protein vaccine, as well as the possible mechanisms regarding activation of APCs.

Logistic Regression Method for Ligand Discovery.

Protein-based virtual screening is integral to the modern drug discovery process. Most protein-based virtual screening experiments are performed using docking programs. The accuracy of a docking program strongly relies on the incorporated scoring function used, which is based on various energy terms.

Impact of Adjuvant Modalities on Survival in Patients with Advanced Stage Endometrial Carcinoma: A Retrospective Analysis from a Tertiary Medical Center.

Adjuvant treatment in advanced-stage (stages III /IV) endometrial carcinomas in terms of tumor grades has not yet been explored. We retrospectively analyzed 194 patients with advanced-stage endometrioid endometrial carcinoma who received surgery, followed by adjuvant therapy, at National Taiwan University Hospital between January 1, 2000 and August 31, 2017. Adjuvant therapies included radiation (RT), chemotherapy alone (CT), and combined modality treatment (CMT: radiation and chemotherapy).