The Year in Cardiothoracic Transplant Anesthesia: Selected Highlights From 2022 Part I: Lung Transplantation.

These highlights focus on the research in lung transplantation (LTX) that was published in 2022 and includes the assessment and optimization of candidates for LTX, donor optimization, the use of organs from donation after circulatory death, and outcomes when using marginal or novel donors; recipient factors affecting LTX, including age, disease, the use of extracorporeal life support; and special situations, such as coronavirus disease2019, pediatric LTX, and retransplantation. The remainder of the article focuses on the perioperative management of LTX, including the perioperative risk factors for acute renal failure (acute kidney injury); the incidence and management of phrenic nerve injury, delirium, and pain; and the postoperative management of hyperammonemia, early postoperative infections, and the use of donor-derived cell-free DNA to detect rejection.

From data to discovery: AI-guided analysis of disease-relevant molecules in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

Spinal Muscular Atrophy is caused by partial loss of survival of motoneuron (SMN) protein expression. The numerous interaction partners and mechanisms influenced by SMN loss result in a complex disease. Current treatments restore SMN protein levels to a certain extent, but do not cure all symptoms.

Mining hidden knowledge: embedding models of cause-effect relationships curated from the biomedical literature.

Motivation: We explore the use of literature-curated signed causal gene expression and gene-function relationships to construct unsupervised embeddings of genes, biological functions and diseases. Our goal is to prioritize and predict activating and inhibiting functional associations of genes and to discover hidden relationships between functions. As an application, we are particularly interested in the automatic construction of networks that capture relevant biology in a given disease context.

The Coronavirus Network Explorer: mining a large-scale knowledge graph for effects of SARS-CoV-2 on host cell function.

Background: Leveraging previously identified viral interactions with human host proteins, we apply a machine learning-based approach to connect SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins to relevant host biological functions, diseases, and pathways in a large-scale knowledge graph derived from the biomedical literature. Our goal is to explore how SARS-CoV-2 could interfere with various host cell functions, and to identify drug targets amongst the host genes that could potentially be modulated against COVID-19 by repurposing existing drugs. The machine learning model employed here involves gene embeddings that leverage causal gene expression signatures curated from literature.

Bidirectional Text Messaging to Improve Adherence to Recommended Lipid Testing.

Background: Synergies between technology and health care in the United States are accelerating, increasing opportunities to leverage these technologies to improve patient care.

Methods: This study was a collaboration between an academic study team, a rural primary care clinic, and a local nonprofit informatics company developing tools to improve patient care through population management. Our team created a text messaging management tool, then developed methods for and tested the feasibility of bidirectional text messaging to remind eligible patients about the need for lipid testing.

Causal analysis approaches in Ingenuity Pathway Analysis.

Motivation: Prior biological knowledge greatly facilitates the meaningful interpretation of gene-expression data. Causal networks constructed from individual relationships curated from the literature are particularly suited for this task, since they create mechanistic hypotheses that explain the expression changes observed in datasets.

Results: We present and discuss a suite of algorithms and tools for inferring and scoring regulator networks upstream of gene-expression data based on a large-scale causal network derived from the Ingenuity Knowledge Base.

Coronary heart disease risk in volunteer firefighters in Victoria, Australia.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a major problem for firefighters, even when considering the healthy worker effect (HWE). Although volunteer firefighters outnumber paid personnel, previous research has focused on paid US firefighters. By contrast, no CHD data for Australian firefighters exist.

TFInfer: a tool for probabilistic inference of transcription factor activities.

Summary: TFInfer is a novel open access, standalone tool for genome-wide inference of transcription factor activities from gene expression data. Based on an earlier MATLAB version, the software has now been extended in a number of ways. It has been significantly optimised in terms of performance, and it was given novel functionality, by allowing the user to model both time series and data from multiple independent conditions.

The consistent delivery of negative pressure to wounds using reticulated, open cell foam and regulated pressure feedback.

Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) is used to manage wounds and promote wound healing. The most common form of NPWT utilizes reticulated, open cell foam (ROCF). Pressure is transferred to the wound by ROCF using T.

Accelerated preclinical testing using transplanted tumors from genetically engineered mouse breast cancer models.

Purpose: The use of genetically engineered mouse (GEM) models for preclinical testing of anticancer therapies is hampered by variable tumor latency, incomplete penetrance, and complicated breeding schemes. Here, we describe and validate a transplantation strategy that circumvents some of these difficulties.

Experimental Design: Tumor fragments from tumor-bearing MMTV-PyMT or cell suspensions from MMTV-PyMT, -Her2/neu, -wnt1, -wnt1/p53(+/-), BRCA1/p53(+/-), and C3(1)T-Ag mice were transplanted into the mammary fat pad or s.

VIP receptor antagonists inhibit mammary carcinogenesis in C3(1)SV40T antigen mice.

The effects of a vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) receptor antagonist on mammary carcinogenesis were investigated using the C3(1)SV40T antigen (ag) mice. Ten microg/day VIPhybrid (VIPhyb) administered daily subcutaneously increased significantly the survival of C3(1)SV40Tag mice. At 5.

Prostate development and carcinogenesis in prolactin receptor knockout mice.

Hyperprolactinemia results in prostatic hypertrophy and hyperplasia, but it is not known whether prolactin plays an essential role in these processes in the prostate. To address this question, we investigated prostate development, gene expression, and simian virus 40 (SV40)T-induced prostate carcinogenesis in prolactin receptor knockout mice. These animals showed a small increase in dorsolateral and ventral prostate weight but no change in the weight of the anterior prostate.

Suppression of mammary tumorigenesis in transgenic mice by the RXR-selective retinoid, LGD1069.

Retinoids have been used in the clinic for the prevention and treatment of human cancers. They regulate several cellular processes including growth, differentiation, and apoptosis. Previously, we demonstrated that a pan-agonist retinoid 9-cis retinoic acid was able to suppress mammary tumorigenesis in the C3(1)-SV40 T-antigen (Tag) transgenic mouse model.