Identification and Characterization of the Isomeric Impurity of the Fungicide "Cyazofamid".

Identification and characterization of biproducts/ impurities present in agrochemicals are critical in view of their efficacy and safety towards public health. We herein present our study on identification and characterization of an impurity, 5-chloro-2-cyano-N,N-dimethyl-4-p-tolylimidazole-1-sulfonamide (2) present in the fungicide, "cyazofamid". Intermittent HPLC analysis of the reaction of substituted imidazole (1) with N,N-dimethylsulfamoyl chloride suggested that 2 is formed during the reaction.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the trends in corneal donor mortality data from Eye Bank records in India.

Purpose: To describe the causes and trends of corneal donor mortality from eye bank data in India during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Methods: This retrospective eye bank-based study included 13,529 donors who donated their cornea between January 2018 and December 2021. Donors in whom the cause of mortality was documented were included as cases.

Latency to First Event is Shorter in Psychogenic Non-epileptic Seizures than in Epileptic Seizures in an Epilepsy Monitoring Unit.

The objective was to study latency to first event among patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures compared (PNES) to epileptic seizures (ES) in an epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU). PNES are common imitators of ES. This study investigates latency to first event in patients with PNES compared to patients with ES.

A Rare Case of Malignant Mesothelioma Presenting with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Seropositivity: A Case Report and Review of Literature.

While malignant mesothelioma may initially present in a variety of ways, it is uncommon to present with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) seropositivity and thus obscuring its diagnosis. Our case involves a 75-year-old Caucasian male with a past medical history of essential hypertension, remote prostate cancer status post prostatectomy, and lifetime nontobacco use presenting with progressive shortness of breath over one month. After a negative cardiac assessment, a postcardiac catheterization chest X-ray (CXR) revealed a right-sided moderate-to-large pleural effusion that, on further workup, was found to be exudative.

Necrotizing Autoimmune myopathy: A case report on statin induced rhabdomyolysis requiring immunosuppressive therapy.

Statins can cause a wide spectrum of muscular adverse effects ranging from asymptomatic elevation of Creatine Kinase (CK), myalgia and exercise intolerance to rhabdomyolysis. Most of these effects generally resolve on stopping the medication. However, statins can be associated with a unique autoimmune myopathy wherein symptoms persist or even progress after statin discontinuation and require immunosuppressive therapy.

Genomic adaptation to polyphagy and insecticides in a major East Asian noctuid pest.

The tobacco cutworm, Spodoptera litura, is among the most widespread and destructive agricultural pests, feeding on over 100 crops throughout tropical and subtropical Asia. By genome sequencing, physical mapping and transcriptome analysis, we found that the gene families encoding receptors for bitter or toxic substances and detoxification enzymes, such as cytochrome P450, carboxylesterase and glutathione-S-transferase, were massively expanded in this polyphagous species, enabling its extraordinary ability to detect and detoxify many plant secondary compounds. Larval exposure to insecticidal toxins induced expression of detoxification genes, and knockdown of representative genes using short interfering RNA (siRNA) reduced larval survival, consistent with their contribution to the insect's natural pesticide tolerance.

Thymic Nurse Cells Participate in Heterotypic Internalization and Repertoire Selection of Immature Thymocytes; Their Removal from the Thymus of Autoimmune Animals May be Important to Disease Etiology.

Thymic nurse cells (TNCs) are specialized epithelial cells that reside in the thymic cortex. The initial report of their discovery in 1980 showed TNCs to contain up to 200 thymocytes within specialized vacuoles in their cytoplasm. Much has been reported since that time to determine the function of this heterotypic internalization event that exists between TNCs and developing thymocytes.

The Antigenic Determinant That Defines Thymic Nurse Cells Is Expressed by Thymic Epithelial Progenitor Cells.

Stromal thymic epithelial cells with the multicellular structure unique to thymic nurse cells (TNCs) express the pH91 antigen on their cell surfaces. The multicellular TNC-complexes develop through an intimate association between αβTCRCD4CD8 thymocytes and pH91-expressing cortical epithelial cells. TNCs participate in MHC-restriction and exhibit epithelial cell progenitor characteristics.

Development of the National Cancer Institute's patient-reported outcomes version of the common terminology criteria for adverse events (PRO-CTCAE).

The standard approach for documenting symptomatic adverse events (AEs) in cancer clinical trials involves investigator reporting using the National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE). Because this approach underdetects symptomatic AEs, the NCI issued two contracts to create a patient-reported outcome (PRO) measurement system as a companion to the CTCAE, called the PRO-CTCAE. This Commentary describes development of the PRO-CTCAE by a group of multidisciplinary investigators and patient representatives and provides an overview of qualitative and quantitative studies of its measurement properties.

Electronic toxicity monitoring and patient-reported outcomes.

Understanding the potential profile of adverse events associated with cancer treatment is essential in balancing safety versus benefits. Multiple stakeholders make use of this information for decision making, including patients, clinicians, researchers, regulators, and payors. Currently, adverse events are reported by clinical research staff, yet evidence suggests that this may contribute to underreporting of symptom events.

Thymic nurse cells exhibit epithelial progenitor phenotype and create unique extra-cytoplasmic membrane space for thymocyte selection.

Thymic nurse cells (TNCs) are epithelial cells in the thymic cortex that contain as many as 50 thymocytes within specialized cytoplasmic vacuoles. The function of this cell-in-cell interaction has created controversy since their discovery in 1980. Further, some skepticism exists about the idea that apoptotic thymocytes within the TNC complex result from negative selection, a process believed to occur exclusively within the medulla.

The cancer translational research informatics platform.

Background: Despite the pressing need for the creation of applications that facilitate the aggregation of clinical and molecular data, most current applications are proprietary and lack the necessary compliance with standards that would allow for cross-institutional data exchange. In line with its mission of accelerating research discoveries and improving patient outcomes by linking networks of researchers, physicians, and patients focused on cancer research, caBIG (cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid) has sponsored the creation of the caTRIP (Cancer Translational Research Informatics Platform) tool, with the purpose of aggregating clinical and molecular data in a repository that is user-friendly, easily accessible, as well as compliant with regulatory requirements of privacy and security.

Results: caTRIP has been developed as an N-tier architecture, with three primary tiers: domain services, the distributed query engine, and the graphical user interface, primarily making use of the caGrid infrastructure to ensure compatibility with other tools currently developed by caBIG.

caCORE version 3: Implementation of a model driven, service-oriented architecture for semantic interoperability.

One of the requirements for a federated information system is interoperability, the ability of one computer system to access and use the resources of another system. This feature is particularly important in biomedical research systems, which need to coordinate a variety of disparate types of data. In order to meet this need, the National Cancer Institute Center for Bioinformatics (NCICB) has created the cancer Common Ontologic Representation Environment (caCORE), an interoperability infrastructure based on Model Driven Architecture.

The CAP cancer protocols--a case study of caCORE based data standards implementation to integrate with the Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid.

Background: The Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) is a network of individuals and institutions, creating a world wide web of cancer research. An important aspect of this informatics effort is the development of consistent practices for data standards development, using a multi-tier approach that facilitates semantic interoperability of systems. The semantic tiers include (1) information models, (2) common data elements, and (3) controlled terminologies and ontologies.

The caCORE Software Development Kit: streamlining construction of interoperable biomedical information services.

Background: Robust, programmatically accessible biomedical information services that syntactically and semantically interoperate with other resources are challenging to construct. Such systems require the adoption of common information models, data representations and terminology standards as well as documented application programming interfaces (APIs). The National Cancer Institute (NCI) developed the cancer common ontologic representation environment (caCORE) to provide the infrastructure necessary to achieve interoperability across the systems it develops or sponsors.

Common data element (CDE) management and deployment in clinical trials.

The NCI provides the cancer Data Standards Repository (caDSR) to support development and deployment of CDEs in cancer research. The caDSR, part of the NCI caCORE infrastructure, supports data management workflow requirements and adherence to ISO/IEC 11179 metadata standards. CDEs are developed using standard terminology from caCORE vocabulary services, and are then deployed to multi-site clinical trials data management systems.

Androgen-induced expression of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response genes in prostate cancer cells.

Evaluations of androgen regulated gene (ARG) repertoire provide new insights into the androgen receptor (AR) mediated signaling at the transcriptional level. Definition of ARGs having critical functions in the biology of normal and malignant prostate should aid in identifying new bio-markers and therapeutic targets for prostate cancer (CaP). Using Affymetrix HuGene FL oligonucleotide arrays, temporal expression profiles of ARGs in widely used hormone responsive LNCaP cells, were analysed by hierarchical clustering methods and functional classification.

Effects of cigarette smoke on the immune response. II. Chronic exposure to cigarette smoke inhibits surface immunoglobulin-mediated responses in B cells.

We have previously reported that chronic exposure of rats to cigarette smoke inhibits the antibody-forming cell (AFC) response to both T-dependent and T-independent antigens and may reflect B cell dysfunction. In this communication we extend these studies to show that T cell functions are normal in chronically smoke-exposed rats (SM) as judged by their responses to mitogens and "nominal" or alloantigens. While B cells from SM respond significantly to the B cell mitogen lipopolysaccharide (LPS), they fail to proliferate in response to anti-IgM (anti-mu) or to produce significant AFC response to sheep red blood cells.

Cigarette smoke causes inhibition of the immune response to intratracheally administered antigens.

Chronic inhalation of cigarette smoke in rats preferentially inhibited the plaque-forming cell (PFC) response of lung-associated lymph nodes (LALN) to sheep red blood cells (SRBC), compared to anatomically distant lymph nodes. Inhibition of the antibody response in LALN of smoke-exposed animals was first detected at 21 weeks of smoke inhalation and was well established by the 27th week of smoke exposure. After prolonged exposure (greater than 34 weeks) to cigarette smoke, similar smoke-induced changes in PFC response took place in other lymphoid tissues as well.