An engineered IL-21 with half-life extension enhances anti-tumor immunity as a monotherapy or in combination with PD-1 or TIGIT blockade.

Interleukin-21 (IL-21) has exhibited anti-tumor activity in preclinical and clinical studies; however, its modest efficacy and short half-time has limited its therapeutic utility as a monotherapy. Therefore, we engineered a fusion protein (IL-21-αHSA) in which a nanobody targeting human serum albumin (HSA) was fused to the C-terminus of rhIL-21. The αHSA nanobody displayed broad species cross-reactivity and bound to a HSA epitope that does not overlap with the FcRn binding site, thus providing a strategic design for half-life extension.

Epigenetic regulation of putative tumor suppressor TGFBI in human leukemias.

Background: Both in vitro and in vivo data have demonstrated the TGFBI gene functions as a putative tumor suppressor and is frequently downregulated in human tumors of different histological types. The hypermethylation of the TGFBI promoter, as one of the main regulatory mechanisms, is associated with TGFBI silencing. In this study, we used a methylation-specific PCR (MSP) method to evaluate the methylation status of the TGFBI promoter in human leukemias.

[Endoscopic ligation in treatment of advanced schistosomiasis patients with esophageal variceal bleeding: a report of 68 cases].

Objective: To evaluate the therapeutic effect of endoscopic ligation in the treatment of advanced schistosomiasis patients with esophageal variceal bleeding.

Methods: A total of 130 advanced schistosomiasis patients with esophageal varices rupture and bleeding were divided into a ligation group (68 cases) and a control group (64 cases), and the patients of ligation group were treated with the emergency endoscopic ligation, and the patients of control group received the routine therapy. The rebleeding rate, hemostatic success rate, and varicose veins red color sign were observed.

Genetic algorithms for route discovery.

Packet routing in networks requires knowledge about available paths, which can be either acquired dynamically while the traffic is being forwarded, or statically (in advance) based on prior information of a network's topology. This paper describes an experimental investigation of path discovery using genetic algorithms (GAs). We start with the quality-of-service (QoS)-driven routing protocol called "cognitive packet network" (CPN), which uses smart packets (SPs) to dynamically select routes in a distributed autonomic manner based on a user's QoS requirements.