Feasibility and safety of Taipei Veterans General Hospital Heavy Ion Therapy Center: The first carbon-ion irradiation facility in Taiwan.

Background: Unlike conventional photon radiotherapy, particle therapy has the advantage of dose distribution. Carbon-ion radiotherapy is also advantageous in terms of biological effectiveness and other radiobiological aspects. These benefits lead to a higher response probability for previously known radioresistant tumor types.

Stereotactic radiosurgery for anterior cranial fossa dural arteriovenous fistulas.

Objective: Anterior cranial fossa (ACF) dural arteriovenous fistulas (DAVFs) are notoriously malignant vascular abnormalities, and their drainage into the cortical vein poses a high risk of intracranial hemorrhage (ICH). Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is increasingly seen as an alternative to microsurgery or embolization for the treatment of DAVFs; however, researchers have yet to report on its applicability to ACF DAVFs. This paper summarizes the authors' experience in the use of SRS for ACF DAVFs.

Automated identification and quantification of metastatic brain tumors and perilesional edema based on a deep learning neural network.

Purpose: This paper presents a deep learning model for use in the automated segmentation of metastatic brain tumors and associated perilesional edema.

Methods: The model was trained using Gamma Knife surgical data (90 MRI sets from 46 patients), including the initial treatment plan and follow-up images (T1-weighted contrast-enhanced (T1cWI) and T2-weighted images (T2WI)) manually annotated by neurosurgeons to indicate the target tumor and edema regions. A mask region-based convolutional neural network was used to extract brain parenchyma, after which the DeepMedic 3D convolutional neural network was in the segmentation of tumors and edemas.

The effect of radiotherapy on patients with pathological stage IIB breast cancer after breast-conserving surgery or mastectomy: A cohort study.

Background: Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women, and treatment options include surgery, systemic therapies, and radiotherapy (RT). While postoperative RT plays an important role in reducing local recurrence rates and improving survival outcomes, its exact impact on patients with pathological stage IIB breast cancers remains unidentified.

Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, patients with newly diagnosed pathological stage IIB breast cancer who underwent surgery and postoperative RT were included.

Oxidative Stress and Natural Antioxidants: Back and Forth in the Neurological Mechanisms of Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by the progressive degeneration of neuronal cells. With the increase in aged population, there is a prevalence of irreversible neurodegenerative changes, causing a significant mental, social, and economic burden globally. The factors contributing to AD are multidimensional, highly complex, and not completely understood.

Association of radiation dose to cardiac substructures with major ischaemic events following breast cancer radiotherapy.

Background And Aims: Patients with left-sided breast cancer receive a higher mean heart dose (MHD) after radiotherapy, with subsequent risk of ischaemic heart disease. However, the optimum dosimetric predictor among cardiac substructures has not yet been determined.

Methods And Results: This study retrospectively reviewed 2158 women with breast cancer receiving adjuvant radiotherapy.

Effectiveness of Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy for Systemic Therapy Respondents with Inoperable Pulmonary Oligometastases and Oligoprogression.

Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) may improve survival in patients with inoperable pulmonary oligometastases. However, the impact of pulmonary oligometastatic status after systemic therapy on SABR outcomes remains unclear. Hence, we investigated the outcomes of SABR in 45 patients with 77 lung tumors and the prognostic value of pulmonary oligoprogression.

Microsatellite Instability, Epstein-Barr Virus, and Programmed Cell Death Ligand 1 as Predictive Markers for Immunotherapy in Gastric Cancer.

Immunotherapy benefits selected cases of gastric cancer (GC), but the correlation between biomarkers and prognosis is still unclear. Fifty-two patients with GC who underwent immunotherapy were enrolled from June 2016 to December 2020. Their clinical features and biomarkers-microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H), programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) combined positive score (CPS), and Epstein-Barr encoding region (EBER)-were analyzed.

Wafer-scale nanocracks enable single-molecule detection and on-site analysis.

Large-area surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) sensing platforms displaying ultrahigh sensitivity and signal uniformity have potentially enormous sensing applicability, but they are still challenging to prepare in a scalable manner. In this study, silver nanopaste (AgNPA) was employed to prepare a wafer-scale, ultrasensitive SERS substrate. The self-generated, high-density Ag nanocracks (NCKs) with small gaps could be created on Si wafers via a spin-coating process, and provided extremely abundant hotspots for SERS analyses with ultrahigh sensitivity-down to the level of single molecules (enhancement factor: ca.

Outcomes of intracranial germinoma-A retrospective multinational Asian study on effect of clinical presentation and differential treatment strategies.

Background: This multinational study was conducted to report clinical presentations and treatment strategies in patients with intracranial germinomas across selected Asian centers, including failure patterns, risk factors, and outcomes.

Methods: A retrospective data collection and analysis of these patients, treated between 1995 and 2015 from eight healthcare institutions across four countries was undertaken.

Results: From the results, 418 patients were analyzed, with a median follow-up of 8.

The Irradiated Brain Volume Within 12 Gy Is a Predictor for Radiation-Induced Changes After Stereotactic Radiosurgery in Patients With Unruptured Cerebral Arteriovenous Malformations.

Purpose: Our purpose was to determine whether the coverage of brain parenchyma within the 12 Gy radiosurgical volume (V12) correlates with the development of radiation-induced changes (RICs) in patients with unruptured cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVM) after undergoing stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS).

Methods And Materials: This study conducted regular follow-up examinations of 165 patients with unruptured AVMs who had previously undergone SRS. The RICs identified in T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans at any time point in the first 3 years after SRS were labeled "early RICs.

Effects of Erythropoietin Payment Policy on Cardiovascular Outcomes of Peritoneal Dialysis Patients: Observational Study.

Background: The change in the reimbursement policy of erythropoietin administration to patients receiving peritoneal dialysis by the Taiwan National Health Insurance (NHI) system provided a natural experimental venue to examine whether cardiovascular risk differs when maintaining the hematocrit (Hct) level below or above 30%.

Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of loosening the erythropoietin payment criteria for peritoneal dialysis patients on their cardiovascular outcomes.

Methods: Two cohorts of incident peritoneal dialysis patients were identified according to the time before and after relaxation of the NHI's erythropoietin payment criteria, designated cohort 1 (n=1759) and cohort 2 (n=2981), respectively.

Effectiveness of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma unsuitable for transarterial chemoembolization.

Background: Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) can deliver tumoricidal doses and achieve long-term control in early hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, limited studies have investigated the safety and effectiveness of SABR in patients with advanced diseases that is unsuitable for transarterial chemoembolization (TACE).

Methods: In this observational study, we reviewed the medical records of patients with Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage C disease treated with linear accelerator-based SABR between 2008 and 2016.

Fungal Hydrophobins and Their Self-Assembly into Functional Nanomaterials.

In recent years, much attention has focused on incorporating biological and bio-inspired nanomaterials into various applications that range from functionalising surfaces and enhancing biomolecule binding properties, to coating drugs for improved bioavailability and delivery. Hydrophobin proteins, which can spontaneously assemble into amphipathic layers at hydrophobic:hydrophilic interfaces, are exciting candidates for use as nanomaterials. These unique proteins, which are only expressed by filamentous fungi, have been the focus of increasing interest from the biotechnology industry, as evidenced by the sharply growing number of hydrophobin-associated publications and patents.

Approval of modified-release products by FDA without clinical efficacy/safety studies: A retrospective survey from 2008 to 2017.

In principle, approval of a modified-release (MR) drug product is based on evidence from pharmacokinetic (PK) and/or pharmacodynamic studies and clinical efficacy/safety studies. The purpose of this survey is (i) to explore the number of new drug applications (NDAs) of MR drug products, approved by the FDA, employ the PK study as a bridge to already-approved immediate-release drug products without conducting their own clinical efficacy/safety studies; and (ii) to understand the type of PK studies are required for such NDAs. To this end, we surveyed the approved records of MR drug products from 2008 to 2017 from the Drug@FDA website, and filtered pertinent information from FDA's assessment reports.

Definitive Radiotherapy for Older Patients with Prostate Cancer: Experience of a Medical Center in Taiwan.

Whether age predicts treatment outcome of prostate cancer remains controversial. With the aging of the world population, properly understanding the effect of age may facilitate both treatment decision-making and defining the natural history of prostate cancer. Consecutive 581 patients with locally-confined adenocarcinoma of the prostate who received radical definitive radiotherapy(RT) (76-78 Gy) between 2004 and 2015 at a medical center in Taiwan were reviewed retrospectively.

The in vitro antioxidant properties of alcalase hydrolysate prepared from silkie fowl (Gallus gallus) blood protein.

Two types of proteins including blood plasma protein and blood cell protein were isolated from silkie fowl (Gallus gallus) blood and hydrolyzed using alcalase for 0, 2, 4 and 6 h. The blood plasma protein hydrolysate (BPH) and blood cell protein hydrolysate (BCH) were analyzed for pH value, peptide content and antioxidative properties. The significantly higher peptide contents were observed in BPH than that of BCH, which showed that blood plasma protein was more suitable to hydrolysis by alcalase than blood cell protein.

Can mixed pure hepatocellular carcinoma and germinoma arise together in the brain?

Intracranial germ-cell tumors (GCTs) represent 10-15% of all pediatric brain tumors in East Asia. There is a wide histopathological spectrum of intracranial GCTs. Germinomas and nongerminomatous GCTs are the two major classifications.