Positive Intraoperative Bile Culture and Antibiotic Resistance Increase the Risk of Pancreatic Fistula in Patients After Pancreatoduodenectomy.

: A positive intraoperative bile culture (bacterobilia) is considered to be a risk factor for increased morbidity after pancreatoduodenectomy. The aim of our study was to describe the frequency of bacterobilia with a special emphasis on antibiotic resistance and to analyze the association of these findings with postoperative complications, in particular with postoperative pancreatic fistula. : From a prospective database, patients with available intraoperative bile cultures (n = 95) were selected and analyzed.

NMR and MD Simulations of Non-Ionic Surfactants.

Non-ionic surfactants are an important solvent in the field of green chemistry with tremendous application potential. Understanding their phase properties in bulk or in confined environments is of high commercial value. In recent years, the combination of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with multinuclear solid-state NMR spectroscopy and calorimetric techniques has evolved into the most powerful tool for their investigation.

Mechanistic insights into HPV-positivity in non-smokers and HPV-negativity in smokers with head and neck cancer.

Introduction: Several aspects of the involvement of HPV in the pathogenesis of HPV-associated diseases remain poorly understood including mechanistic aspects of infection and the question of why the majority of HPV-positive HNSCC-patients are non-smokers, whereas HPV-negatives are smokers. Our previous research, based on 1,100 patient samples, hypothesized an explanation for this phenomenon: Smoking induces upregulation of a mucosal protective protein (SLPI), which competes with HPV for binding to Annexin A2 (AnxA2), pivotal for HPV cell entry. Here we investigate the mechanistic aspects of our hypothesis using transfection assays.

Synthetic data in generalizable, learning-based neuroimaging.

Synthetic data have emerged as an attractive option for developing machine-learning methods in human neuroimaging, particularly in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-a modality where image contrast depends enormously on acquisition hardware and parameters. This retrospective paper reviews a family of recently proposed methods, based on synthetic data, for generalizable machine learning in brain MRI analysis. Central to this framework is the concept of domain randomization, which involves training neural networks on a vastly diverse array of synthetically generated images with random contrast properties.

BRAT1 - a new therapeutic target for glioblastoma.

Glioblastoma (GBM), the most malignant primary brain tumor in adults, has poor prognosis irrespective of therapeutic advances due to its radio-resistance and infiltrative growth into brain tissue. The present study assessed functions and putative druggability of BRCA1-associated ATM activator 1 (BRAT1) as a crucial factor driving key aspects of GBM, including enhanced DNA damage response and tumor migration. By a stable depletion of BRAT1 in GBM and glioma stem-like (GSC) cell lines, we observed a delay in DNA double-strand break repair and increased sensitivity to radiation treatment, corroborated by in vitro and in vivo studies demonstrating impaired tumor growth and invasion.