Publications by authors named "Loucia K Y Chan"

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) plays a crucial role in biological research and clinical diagnosis, serving as the most commonly used method for identifying and visualizing tissue antigens. However, traditional IHC staining methods have limitations in distinguishing various subtypes of immune cells. This challenge has driven scientists to explore new technologies and methodologies for precise identification and differentiation of immune cell subtypes.

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Endometriosis is a chronic, painful disease whose etiology remains unknown. The development of novel therapies and diagnostic tools for endometriosis has been limited due in part to challenges in studying the disease. Recently, a few reports have shown that immunosuppressive cells, such as myeloid-derived suppressor cell (MDSC), may promote the progression of endometriosis.

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Over the centuries, influenza and its associated epidemics have been a serious public health problem. Although vaccination and medications (such as neuraminidase inhibitors) are the mainstay of pharmacological approaches to prevent and treat influenza, however, frequent mutations in the influenza genome often result in treatment failure and resistance to standard medications which limit their effectiveness. In recent years, green tea catechins have been evaluated as potential anti-influenza agents.

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Immunohistochemistry is the most commonly used method for the identification and visualization of tissue antigens in biological research and clinical diagnostics. It can be used to characterize various biological processes or pathologies, such as wound-healing, immune response, tissue rejection, and tissue-biomaterial interactions. However, the visualization and quantification of multiple antigens (especially for immune cells) in a single tissue section using conventional immunohistochemical (IHC) staining remains unsatisfactory.

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Thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) is an epithelial cell derived cytokine belonging to the IL-7 family and a key initiator of allergic inflammation. Two main isoforms of TSLP, classified as long- (lfTSLP) and short-form (sfTSLP), have been reported in human, but their expression patterns and role(s) in cancers are not yet clear. mRNA expression was examined by isoform-specific RT-PCR and RNA in situ hybridisation.

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Serval studies showed an increased uterine natural killer cell density in women with recurrent miscarriage. However, no study has previously investigated the density and clustering of major immune cells simultaneously in precisely timed endometrial specimen section of this group of women. This study aimed to investigate the profile of endometrial immune cells populations and clustering level simultaneously in women with recurrent miscarriage and compare the results to fertile controls.

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Emerging evidence shows that the efficacy of chemotherapeutic drugs is reliant on their capability to induce immunogenic cell death (ICD), thus transforming dying tumor cells into antitumor vaccines. We wanted to uncover potential therapeutic strategies that target ovarian cancer by having a better understanding of the standard-of-care chemotherapy treatment. Here, we showed in ovarian cancer that paclitaxel induced ICD-associated damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMP, such as CALR exposure, ATP secretion, and HMGB1 release) and elicited significant antitumor responses in tumor vaccination assays Paclitaxel-induced TLR4 signaling was essential to the release of DAMPs, which led to the activation of NF-κB-mediated CCL2 transcription and IkappaB kinase 2-mediated SNARE-dependent vesicle exocytosis, thus exposing CALR on the cell surface.

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Although the rates of cervical squamous cell carcinoma have been declining, the rates of cervical adenocarcinoma are increasing in some countries. Outcomes for advanced cervical adenocarcinoma remain poor. Precision mapping of genetic alterations in cervical adenocarcinoma may enable better selection of therapies and deliver improved outcomes when combined with new sequencing diagnostics.

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Background: The CHD5 gene located on 1p36 encodes a protein-chromodomain helicase DNA-binding protein 5. CHD5 has been shown to be a tumor suppressor gene candidate. This study investigated the involvement of CHD5 in ovarian cancer and its clinicopathological significance.

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The aim of this study was to find the optimal set of microsatellite markers for diagnosis of the microsatellite instability (MSI) phenotype in endometrial cancers. We compared the sensitivity, specificity and ease of use of a reference panel of five markers originally recommended by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for colorectal cancer and a panel of five quasi-monomorphic mononucleotide repeat markers (pentaplex PCR system). We used these panels for establishing the MSI status of a series of 80 sporadic endometrial adenocarcinomas by comparing the allelic profiles of the markers between tumor and matching germline DNA.

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An analysis of gene expression profiles obtained from cervical cancers was performed to find those genes most aberrantly expressed. Total RNA was prepared from 29 samples of cervical squamous cell carcinoma and 18 control samples, and hybridized to Affymetrix oligonucleotide microarrays with probe sets complementary to over 20,000 transcripts. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of the expression data readily distinguished normal cervix from cancer.

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Background: Maspin is a tumor suppressor gene whose expression is altered in neoplasia and malignancies of many tissues. In the human placenta, the maspin gene is expressed in trophoblastic cells and might act as an inhibitory regulator of trophoblastic invasion. Hence, in gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD), where there is increased propensity for invasion in the trophoblastic tissue, we hypothesized that maspin expression would be decreased.

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Purpose: The incidence and mortality rates of cervical cancer are declining in the United States; however, worldwide, cervical cancer is still one of the leading causes of death in women, second only to breast cancer. This disparity is at least partially explained by the absence of or comparatively ineffective screening programs in the developing world. Recent advances in expression genomics have enabled the use of DNA microarray to profile gene expression of various cancers.

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