Electrospinning Nonspinnable Sols to Ceramic Fibers and Springs.

Electrospinning has been applied to produce ceramic fibers using sol gel-based spinning solutions consisting of ceramic precursors, a solvent, and a polymer to control the viscosity of the solution. However, the addition of polymers to the spinning solution makes the process more complex, increases the processing time, and results in porous mechanically weak ceramic fibers. Herein, we develop a coelectrospinning technique, where a nonspinnable sol (<10 mPa s) consisting of only the ceramic precursor(s) and solvent(s) is encapsulated inside a polymeric shell, forming core-shell precursor fibers that are further calcined into ceramic fibers with reduced porosity, decreased surface defects, uniform crystal packing, and controlled diameters.

Nanoscale Rheology: Dynamic Mechanical Analysis over a Broad and Continuous Frequency Range Using Photothermal Actuation Atomic Force Microscopy.

Polymeric materials are widely used in industries ranging from automotive to biomedical. Their mechanical properties play a crucial role in their application and function and arise from the nanoscale structures and interactions of their constitutive polymer molecules. Polymeric materials behave viscoelastically, i.

End-to-end prognostication in colorectal cancer by deep learning: a retrospective, multicentre study.

Background: Precise prognosis prediction in patients with colorectal cancer (ie, forecasting survival) is pivotal for individualised treatment and care. Histopathological tissue slides of colorectal cancer specimens contain rich prognostically relevant information. However, existing studies do not have multicentre external validation with real-world sample processing protocols, and algorithms are not yet widely used in clinical routine.

Transformer-based biomarker prediction from colorectal cancer histology: A large-scale multicentric study.

Deep learning (DL) can accelerate the prediction of prognostic biomarkers from routine pathology slides in colorectal cancer (CRC). However, current approaches rely on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and have mostly been validated on small patient cohorts. Here, we develop a new transformer-based pipeline for end-to-end biomarker prediction from pathology slides by combining a pre-trained transformer encoder with a transformer network for patch aggregation.

Oncomicrobial Community Profiling Identifies Clinicomolecular and Prognostic Subtypes of Colorectal Cancer.

Background & Aims: Dysbiosis of gut microbiota is linked to the development of colorectal cancer (CRC). However, microbiota-based stratification of CRC tissue and how this relates to clinicomolecular characteristics and prognosis remains to be clarified.

Methods: Tumor and normal mucosa from 423 patients with stage I to IV CRC were profiled by bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequencing.

Intermediate-phase engineering via dimethylammonium cation additive for stable perovskite solar cells.

Achieving the long-term stability of perovskite solar cells is arguably the most important challenge required to enable widespread commercialization. Understanding the perovskite crystallization process and its direct impact on device stability is critical to achieving this goal. The commonly employed dimethyl-formamide/dimethyl-sulfoxide solvent preparation method results in a poor crystal quality and microstructure of the polycrystalline perovskite films.

Survival prediction in triple negative breast cancer using multiple instance learning of histopathological images.

Computational pathology is a rapidly expanding area for research due to the current global transformation of histopathology through the adoption of digital workflows. Survival prediction of breast cancer patients is an important task that currently depends on histopathology assessment of cancer morphological features, immunohistochemical biomarker expression and patient clinical findings. To facilitate the manual process of survival risk prediction, we developed a computational pathology framework for survival prediction using digitally scanned haematoxylin and eosin-stained tissue microarray images of clinically aggressive triple negative breast cancer.

Characterisation of factors contributing to the performance of nonwoven fibrous matrices as substrates for adenovirus vectored vaccine stabilisation.

Adenovirus vectors offer a platform technology for vaccine development. The value of the platform has been proven during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although good stability at 2-8 °C is an advantage of the platform, non-cold-chain distribution would have substantial advantages, in particular in low-income countries.

Whole slide images based cancer survival prediction using attention guided deep multiple instance learning networks.

Traditional image-based survival prediction models rely on discriminative patch labeling which make those methods not scalable to extend to large datasets. Recent studies have shown Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) framework is useful for histopathological images when no annotations are available in classification task. Different to the current image-based survival models that limit to key patches or clusters derived from Whole Slide Images (WSIs), we propose Deep Attention Multiple Instance Survival Learning (DeepAttnMISL) by introducing both siamese MI-FCN and attention-based MIL pooling to efficiently learn imaging features from the WSI and then aggregate WSI-level information to patient-level.

Generation of High Dose Inhalable Effervescent Dispersions against Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilms.

Purpose: Novel particle engineering approach was used in this study to generate high dose inhalable effervescent particles with synergistic effects against Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms.

Methods: Spray dried co-amorphous salt of ciprofloxacin (CFX) and tartaric acid (TA) was prepared and coated with external layer of sodium bicarbonate and silica coated silver nanobeads. Design of experiments (DOE) was used to optimize physicochemical properties of particles for enhanced lung deposition.

Tumour infiltrating lymphocyte status is superior to histological grade, DNA mismatch repair and BRAF mutation for prognosis of colorectal adenocarcinomas with mucinous differentiation.

Mucinous colorectal adenocarcinoma (CRC) is conventionally defined by extracellular mucin comprising >50% of the tumour area, while tumours with ≤50% mucin are designated as having a mucinous component. However, these definitions are largely arbitrary and comparisons of clinico-molecular features and outcomes by proportion of mucinous component are limited. A cohort of 1643 patients with stage II/III cancer was examined for tumour mucinous component, DNA mismatch repair (MMR) status, BRAF mutation and tumour infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs).

Scarcity of Recurrent Regulatory Driver Mutations in Colorectal Cancer Revealed by Targeted Deep Sequencing.

Background: Genetic testing of cancer samples primarily focuses on protein-coding regions, despite most mutations arising in noncoding DNA. Noncoding mutations can be pathogenic if they disrupt gene regulation, but the benefits of assessing promoter mutations in driver genes by panel testing has not yet been established. This is especially the case in colorectal cancer, for which few putative driver variants at regulatory elements have been reported.

Evaluation of the transferability of survival calculators for stage II/III colon cancer across healthcare systems.

Adjuvant! Online Inc (A!O), the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), MD Anderson (MDA) and Mayo Clinic (MC) provide calculators to predict survival probabilities for patients with resected early-stage colon cancer, trained on data from United States (US) patient cohorts or patients enrolled in international clinical trials. Limited data exist on the transferability of calculators across healthcare systems. Calculator transferability to Australian community practice was evaluated for 1,401 stage II/III patients.

Differential Scanning Calorimetry of Native Silk Feedstock.

Native silk proteins, extracted directly from the silk gland prior to spinning, offer access to a naturally hydrated protein that has undergone little to no processing. Combined with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), it is possible to probe the thermal stability and hydration status of silk and thus investigate its denaturation and solidification, echoing that of the natural spinning process. It is found that native silk is stable between -10 °C and 55 °C, and both the high-temperature enthalpy of denaturation (measured via modulated temperature DSC) and a newly reported low-temperature ice-melting transition may serve as useful quality indicators in the future for artificial silks.

Mutation burden and other molecular markers of prognosis in colorectal cancer treated with curative intent: results from the QUASAR 2 clinical trial and an Australian community-based series.

Background: Molecular indicators of colorectal cancer prognosis have been assessed in several studies, but most analyses have been restricted to a handful of markers. We aimed to identify prognostic biomarkers for colorectal cancer by sequencing panels of multiple driver genes.

Methods: In stage II or III colorectal cancers from the QUASAR 2 open-label randomised phase 3 clinical trial and an Australian community-based series, we used targeted next-generation sequencing of 82 and 113 genes, respectively, including the main colorectal cancer drivers.

Haploinsufficiency Impairs Catalytic Activity of PARP1 and Promotes Chromosome Instability and Growth of Intestinal Tumors.

ADP-ribosylation is an important posttranslational protein modification that regulates diverse biological processes, controlled by dedicated transferases and hydrolases. Here, we show that frequent deletions (∼30%) of the mono-ADP-ribosylhydrolase locus in human colorectal cancer cause impaired PARP1 transferase activity in a gene dosage-dependent manner. haploinsufficiency alters DNA repair and sensitivity to DNA damage and results in chromosome instability.

Analysing the structure and glass transition behaviour of silks for archaeology and conservation.

Silk is an iconic material in many cultures. Silk archaeology and conservation is affected by silk production technology as well as subsequent environmental effects such as humidity, temperature, UV radiation and ageing The complex interactions and various effects on silk materials affect the practical use of silk, for example, in the conservation of ancient manuscripts. This study examines the various influences of silk provenance and processing, adhesive coatings and chemical treatments as well as natural and artificial ageing of the silk material.

Lymphocytic response to tumour and deficient DNA mismatch repair identify subtypes of stage II/III colorectal cancer associated with patient outcomes.

Objective: Tumour-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) response and deficient DNA mismatch repair (dMMR) are determinants of prognosis in colorectal cancer. Although highly correlated, evidence suggests that these are independent predictors of outcome. However, the prognostic significance of combined TIL/MMR classification and how this compares to the major genomic and transcriptomic subtypes remain unclear.

Pathogenic germline MCM9 variants are rare in Australian Lynch-like syndrome patients.

Lynch syndrome is a hereditary cancer syndrome caused by the autosomal dominant inheritance of loss-of-function mutations in DNA mismatch repair (MMR) genes. Approximately one quarter of clinically suspected cases have no identifiable germline mutation in any MMR gene, a condition known as Lynch-like syndrome (LLS). MCM9 was recently identified as the DNA helicase in the mammalian MMR complex and loss of helicase activity results in microsatellite instability.

Validation of specificity of antibodies for immunohistochemistry: the case of ROR2.

The Wnt signalling receptor receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 2 (ROR2) is implicated in numerous human cancers. However, there have been conflicting reports regarding ROR2 expression, some studies showing upregulation and others downregulation of ROR2 in the same cancer type. The majority of these studies used immunohistochemistry (IHC) to detect ROR2 protein, without validation of the used antibodies.

Integrated Genetic, Epigenetic, and Transcriptional Profiling Identifies Molecular Pathways in the Development of Laterally Spreading Tumors.

Unlabelled: Laterally spreading tumors (LST) are colorectal adenomas that develop into extremely large lesions with predominantly slow progression to cancer, depending on lesion subtype. Comparing and contrasting the molecular profiles of LSTs and colorectal cancers offers an opportunity to delineate key molecular alterations that drive malignant transformation in the colorectum. In a discovery cohort of 11 LSTs and paired normal mucosa, we performed a comprehensive and unbiased screen of the genome, epigenome, and transcriptome followed by bioinformatics integration of these data and validation in an additional 84 large, benign colorectal lesions.