Publications by authors named "Kam T"

The application of extracellular vesicles (EVs) as vehicles for anti-Parkinson's agents represents a significant advance, yet their clinical translation is hampered by challenges in efficient brain delivery and complex blood-brain barrier (BBB) targeting strategies. In this study, we engineered dopamine onto the surface of adipose-derived stem cell EVs (Dopa-EVs) utilizing a facile, two-step cross-linking approach. This engineering enhanced neuronal uptake of the EVs in primary neurons and neuroblastoma cells, a process shown to be competitively inhibited by dopamine pretreatment and dopamine receptor antibodies.

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α-Synuclein misfolds into pathological forms that lead to various neurodegenerative diseases known collectively as α-synucleinopathies. In this Review, we provide a comprehensive overview of pivotal advances in α-synuclein research. We examine structural features and physiological functions of α-synuclein and summarize current insights into key post-translational modifications, such as nitration, phosphorylation, ubiquitination, sumoylation and truncation, considering their contributions to neurodegeneration.

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  • There is increased interest in using high-resolution T2 (hrT2) imaging for vestibular schwannoma (VS) and cochlea research, due to fewer side effects compared to contrast-enhanced T1 (ceT1) imaging.
  • The challenge lies in a lack of annotated hrT2 data, which is crucial for developing effective segmentation models.
  • The proposed solution is a target-aware unsupervised domain adaptation framework that focuses on the unique visual characteristics and sizes of these objects, improving image translation and preserving the quality of small structures.
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  • Research indicates that DNA repair and mitochondrial health pathways are linked to HD, with study findings showing elevated DNA damage even before the disease manifests.
  • Findings reveal that mutation carriers have lower levels of poly ADP-ribose (PAR) in their cerebrospinal fluid, and while wild-type HTT boosts PARP1 activity, the mutant form does not, highlighting potential pathways for developing early preventive treatments for HD.
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Natural products contribute substantially to anticancer therapy; the plant kingdom provides an important source of molecules. Conofolidine is a novel bisindole alkaloid isolated from the Malayan plant . Herein, we report conofolidine's broad-spectrum anticancer activity together with that of three other bisindoles-conophylline, leucophyllidine, and bipleiophylline-against human-derived breast, colorectal, pancreatic, and lung carcinoma cell lines.

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Context: Dyspnea, a prevalent and debilitating symptom in patients with advanced lung cancer, negatively affects symptom burden and prognosis. Physical activity has emerged as a promising non-pharmacological intervention for managing dyspnea.

Objectives: This study compared the effectiveness of two widely-recognized physical activity modalities, namely Tai Chi (TC) and aerobic exercise (AE) for treating dyspnea in patients with advanced lung cancer.

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Purpose: Cancer-related cognitive impairment is prevalent in metastatic lung cancer survivors. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of aerobic exercise and Tai Chi on perceived cognitive function and the mediating role of psychoneurological symptoms with perceived cognitive impairment.

Methods: In a subgroup of a parent randomized clinical trial, participants who reported cognitive impairment underwent a 16-week aerobic exercise (n = 49), Tai Chi (n = 48), and control (n = 54) groups.

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Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) has gained attention as a reliable technique for investigating the intrinsic function patterns of the brain. It facilitates the extraction of functional connectivity networks (FCNs) that capture synchronized activity patterns among regions of interest (ROIs). Analyzing FCNs enables the identification of distinctive connectivity patterns associated with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

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Molecular property prediction has gained substantial attention due to its potential for various bio-chemical applications. Numerous attempts have been made to enhance the performance by combining multiple molecular representations (1D, 2D, and 3D). However, most prior works only merged a limited number of representations or tried to embed multiple representations through a single network without using representation-specific networks.

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  • Most existing fMRI diagnostic techniques rely on a single brain atlas, limiting their ability to fully understand the complex brain networks related to MDD.
  • The authors propose a new multi-atlas fusion method that captures relationships within and between different brain atlases, enhancing MDD diagnosis accuracy and showing better performance than previous methods using public fMRI datasets.
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The global prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity is a major concern due to its association with chronic diseases and long-term health risks. Artificial intelligence technology has been identified as a potential solution to accurately predict obesity rates and provide personalized feedback to adolescents. This study highlights the importance of early identification and prevention of obesity-related health issues.

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Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) is a commonly used functional neuroimaging technique to investigate the functional brain networks. However, rs-fMRI data are often contaminated with noise and artifacts that adversely affect the results of rs-fMRI studies. Several machine/deep learning methods have achieved impressive performance to automatically regress the noise-related components decomposed from rs-fMRI data, which are expressed as the pairs of a spatial map and its associated time series.

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Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a pervasive disorder affecting millions of individuals, presenting a significant global health concern. Functional connectivity (FC) derived from resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rs-fMRI) serves as a crucial tool in revealing functional connectivity patterns associated with MDD, playing an essential role in precise diagnosis. However, the limited data availability of FC poses challenges for robust MDD diagnosis.

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Importance: Sleep disturbances prevalent among patients with advanced lung cancer can aggravate physical and psychological symptoms, contributing to decreased quality of life and survival.

Objective: To compare the effectiveness of 2 physical activities of different modalities and intensities, namely aerobic exercise (AE) and tai chi (TC), on subjective sleep quality, physical and psychological outcomes, and survival in patients with advanced lung cancer.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This assessor-blinded, randomized clinical trial was conducted in 3 public hospitals in Hong Kong between December 19, 2018, and September 7, 2022.

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The first asymmetric total synthesis of the monoterpenoid indole alkaloid arboduridine has been accomplished. The tricyclic A/B/D ring system was constructed by an enantioselective Michael reaction followed by intramolecular nucleophilic addition. Intramolecular α-amination of a ketone forged the piperidine ring, while a Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons (HWE) reaction was used to form the pyrrolidine ring.

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ZNF746 was identified as parkin-interacting substrate (PARIS). Investigating its pathophysiological properties, we find that PARIS undergoes liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) and amorphous solid formation. The N-terminal low complexity domain 1 (LCD1) of PARIS is required for LLPS, whereas the C-terminal prion-like domain (PrLD) drives the transition from liquid to solid phase.

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Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ coactivator-1α (PGC-1α) is a master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis. Reduced PGC-1α abundance is linked to skeletal muscle weakness in aging or pathological conditions, such as neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes; thus, elevating PGC-1α abundance might be a promising strategy to treat muscle aging. Here, we performed high-throughput screening and identified a natural compound, farnesol, as a potent inducer of PGC-1α.

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Neuroinflammation through enhanced innate immunity is thought play a role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods for monitoring neuroinflammation in living patients with PD are currently limited to positron emission tomography (PET) ligands that lack specificity in labeling immune cells in the nervous system. The colony stimulating factor 1 receptor (CSF1R) plays a crucial role in microglial function, an important cellular contributor to the nervous system's innate immune response.

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  • The brain-computer interface (BCI) enables control of external devices using neural signals, specifically through a method called motor imagery (MI), which relies on imagining movements to generate these signals.
  • Electroencephalography (EEG) is commonly used to capture these signals due to its non-invasive nature, but challenges like noise and variability between individuals necessitate effective feature selection for better performance.
  • This study introduces a layer-wise relevance propagation (LRP) method for selecting EEG features that improves MI classification across different deep learning models and datasets, suggesting its potential for broader applications in research.
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  • This study addresses the challenge of BCI illiteracy, where variations in EEG data between individuals make it hard for some users to effectively use brain-computer interfaces for controlling devices.
  • The authors introduce a novel method called the subject-to-subject semantic style transfer network (SSSTN), which transforms EEG data into images and uses style transfer techniques to improve classification performance for users who struggle with BCIs.
  • Results show that SSSTN enhances classification accuracy, particularly for BCI illiterate users, and experiments confirm its effectiveness in transferring meaningful features between subjects.
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Impaired activities and abnormally enlarged structures of endolysosomes are frequently observed in Alzheimer disease (AD) brains. However, little is known about whether and how endolysosomal dysregulation is triggered and associated with AD. Here, we show that vacuolar ATPase (V-ATPase) is a hub that mediates proteopathy of oligomeric amyloid beta (Aβ) and hyperphosphorylated MAPT/Tau (p-MAPT/Tau).

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Background: In tauopathies, brain regions with tau accumulation strongly correlate with clinical symptoms, and spreading of misfolded tau along neural network leads to disease progression. However, the underlying mechanisms by which tau proteins enter neurons during pathological propagation remain unclear.

Methods: To identify membrane receptors responsible for neuronal propagation of tau oligomers, we established a cell-based tau uptake assay and screened complementary DNA expression library.

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Arginine-rich dipeptide repeat proteins (R-DPRs), abnormal translational products of a GGGGCC hexanucleotide repeat expansion in , play a critical role in -related amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the most common genetic form of the disorders (c9ALS/FTD). R-DPRs form liquid condensates in vitro, induce stress granule formation in cultured cells, aggregate, and sometimes coaggregate with TDP-43 in postmortem tissue from patients with c9ALS/FTD. However, how these processes are regulated is unclear.

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Physical activity provides clinical benefit in Parkinson's disease (PD). Irisin is an exercise-induced polypeptide secreted by skeletal muscle that crosses the blood-brain barrier and mediates certain effects of exercise. Here, we show that irisin prevents pathologic α-synuclein (α-syn)-induced neurodegeneration in the α-syn preformed fibril (PFF) mouse model of sporadic PD.

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