In Vitro Cell Dev Biol Anim
September 2018
T cells have been successfully applied to cancer immunotherapy. However, a challenge is an expansion of T cells from cynomolgus monkey, which is a valuable non-human primate model for T cell therapy transferring to the clinic. Here, we compared several strategies to expand cynomolgus monkey T cell and developed an appropriate method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSensors (Basel)
August 2018
In the field of indoor pedestrian positioning, the improved Quasi-Static magnetic Field (iQSF) method has been proposed to estimate gyroscope biases in magnetically perturbed environments. However, this method is only effective when a person walks along straight-line paths. For other curved or more complex path patterns, the iQSF method would fail to detect the quasi-static magnetic field.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is known to play important roles in key brain functions such as pain perception, cognition, and emotion. Different forms of homosynaptic plasticity such as long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression have been studied in ACC synapses. However, heterosynaptic plasticity such as synaptic tagging has not been reported.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe myosin regulatory light chain (RLC) proteins play an important role in cellular processes, especially in muscle contraction. The planarian intestine is a fascinating system for studying the organogenesis during regeneration. In this paper, A homolog gene of Rlc, DjRlc, was identified and characterized in Dugesia japonica.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study is aimed at exploring the optimal ELISA standard curve fitting process for reducing measurement uncertainty. Using an ELISA kit for measuring cyanobacterial toxin (microcystin), we show that uncertainty associated with the estimated microcystin concentrations can be reduced by defining the standard curve as a four-parameter logistic function on the natural log concentration scale, instead of the current approach of defining the curve on the concentration scale. The model comparison method is outlined in this paper, allowing it to be transferable to test different statistical models for other ELISA test kits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe discovery of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)‑sensitive mutations in non‑small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and the successful clinical application of EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) have changed the regimen of lung cancer therapy from traditional cytotoxic chemotherapy to molecular‑targeted cancer therapy. However, the main limitation of EGFR‑TKI therapy is the heterogeneity of lung cancer harboring EGFR‑sensitive mutations. In addition, the synergistic effect of the administration of chemotherapy and EGFR‑TKIs, combined with tumor heterogeneity, on NSCLC remains unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDetecting and quantifying environmental thresholds is frequently an important step in understanding ecological responses to environmental stressors. We discuss two statistical issues often encountered in threshold detection and quantification when statistical null hypothesis testing is used as a main analytical tool. The hidden multiple-comparison trap (leading to a much higher risk of a false detection) and Raven's paradox (rendering a "detection" meaningless) are often obscured when statistical hypothesis testing is used as part of a more elaborate model, especially models based on computer-intensive methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA scalable and reconfigurable on-chip optical true time delay line consisting of Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) switches and delay waveguides is proposed and demonstrated with the ultra-low-loss silica waveguide platform. The MZI switches provide the reconfiguration of the light traveling paths and hence different delays. Our proposed structure can be easily scaled to an M bit delay line with a slight increase in dimensions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpinal sensory transmission is under descending biphasic modulation, and descending facilitation is believed to contribute to chronic pain. Descending modulation from the brainstem rostral ventromedial medulla (RVM) has been the most studied, whereas little is known about direct corticospinal modulation. Here, we found that stimulation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) potentiated spinal excitatory synaptic transmission and this modulation is independent of the RVM.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Manage
August 2018
We use basic characteristics of statistical significance test to argue the abandonment of hypothesis testing in environmental standard (or criterion) compliance assessment. The typical sample size used for environmental assessment is small, and the natural variation of many water quality constituent concentrations is high. These conditions lead to low statistical power of the hypothesis tests used in the assessment process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Background The enhanced expression of cytokines in the pathological states suggests that they have important roles in the initiation or maintenance of disease states.
Findings: To determine the involvement of cytokines in chronic neuropathic pain, the expression of cytokines in the anterior cingulate cortex neurons in the ligation of the common peroneal nerve mice was investigated. We utilized a cytokine enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay plate array to detect 23 cytokines in total eight mice including a female, and no significant differences were found in those cytokines between the common peroneal nerve model and sham surgery mice.
Purpose: To compare sunitinib vs sorafenib plus transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) for inoperable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients.
Methods: From January 2010 to December 2016, 104 patients with inoperable stage III HCC were included and randomly divided into two groups. Patients in the sunitinib+TACE (SU+TACE) group received sunitinib orally 37.
Pain associates both sensory and emotional aversive components, and often leads to anxiety and depression when it becomes chronic. Here, we characterized, in a mouse model, the long-term development of these sensory and aversive components as well as anxiodepressive-like consequences of neuropathic pain and determined their electrophysiological impact on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC, cortical areas 24a/24b). We show that these symptoms of neuropathic pain evolve and recover in different time courses following nerve injury in male mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith the approval of the first therapeutic cancer vaccine by US Food and Drug Administration, numerous therapeutic cancer vaccines have been under clinical trials with an inspiring antitumor immune response in cancer patients. Though there is no therapeutic cancer vaccine showing clinical efficacy in phase III trials, recent advances in personalized cancer vaccine based on neoantigens have emerged as an efficient way to induce tumor regression. In this review, we discuss the selection methods of tumor specific antigen and mainly focus on the development of therapeutic cancer vaccine strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe low elastic modulus and time-consuming formation process represent the major challenges that impede the penetration of nanoparticle superstructures into daily life applications. As observed in the molecular or atomic crystals, more effective interactions between adjacent nanoparticles would introduce beneficial features to assemblies enabling optimized mechanical properties. Here, a straightforward synthetic strategy is showed that allows fast and scalable fabrication of 2D Ag-mercaptoalkyl acid superclusters of either hexagonal or lamellar topology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtending the notion of "the culture of migration," we propose and elaborate the concept of "the culture of remittances" to examine the flow of remittances in the immigrant-sending province of Fujian, China. We argue that the culture of remittances influences two important variables in the study of remittances: amount of remittances and whether they are used for public projects for the community. A careful statistical analysis using data from Fujian province supports our two major predictions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The effects of nutrients on stream conditions within individual streams or small areas have been studied extensively, but the same effects over a large region have rarely been examined due to the difficulty of applying large-scale manipulative experiments. In this study, we estimated the causal effects of nutrients within the Western United States on invertebrate richness, an important biological indicator of stream conditions, by using observational data.
Methods: We used the generalized propensity score method to avoid the common problem of statistical inference using observational data, i.
The tree shrew, as a primate-like animal model, has been used for studying high brain functions such as social emotion and spatial learning memory. However, little is known about the excitatory synaptic transmission in cortical brain areas of the tree shrew. In the present study, we have characterized the excitatory synaptic transmission and intrinsic properties of pyramidal neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of the adult tree shrew, a key cortical region for pain perception and emotion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSurface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a trace detection technique that extends even to single molecule detection. Its potential application to the noninvasive recognition of lung malignancies by detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that serve as biomarkers would be a breakthrough in early cancer diagnostics. This application, however, is currently limited by two main factors: (1) most VOC biomarkers exhibit only weak Raman scattering; and (2) the high mobility of gaseous molecules results in a low adsorptivity on solid substrates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs the most common histologic subtype of lung cancer, lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) contributes to a majority of cancer-related deaths worldwide annually. In order to find specific biomarkers of LUAD that are able to distinguish LUAD from other types of cancer so as to improve the early diagnostic and prognostic power in LUAD, we analyzed 10098 tumor tissue samples across 27 TCGA cancer types and identified 112 specific expressed genes in LUAD. Meantime, 8240 LUAD dysregulated genes in tumor and normal samples were identified.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSelecting the available treatment for each cancer patient from genomic context is a core goal of precision medicine, but innovative approaches with mechanism interpretation and improved performance are still highly needed. Through utilizing in vitro chemotherapy response data coupled with gene and miRNA expression profiles, we applied a network-based approach that identified markers not as individual molecules but as functional groups extracted from the integrated transcription factor and miRNA regulatory network. Based on the identified chemoresponse communities, the predictors of drug resistance achieved high accuracy in cross-validation and were more robust and reproducible than conventional single-molecule markers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFragile X syndrome is an inheritable form of intellectual disability caused by loss of fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP, encoded by the FMR1 gene). Absence of FMRP caused overexpression of progranulin (PGRN, encoded by GRN), a putative tumour necrosis factor receptor ligand. In the present study, we found that progranulin mRNA and protein were upregulated in the medial prefrontal cortex of Fmr1 knock-out mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeterministic assembly of nanoparticles with programmable patterns is a core opportunity for property-by-design fabrication and large-scale integration of functional materials and devices. The wet-chemical-synthesized colloidal nanocrystals are compatible with solution assembly techniques, thus possessing advantages of high efficiency, low cost, and large scale. However, conventional solution process suffers from tradeoffs between spatial precision and long-range order of nanocrystal assembly arising from the uncontrollable dewetting dynamics and fluid flow.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudy Objectives: The correlated activation of pre- and postsynaptic neurons is essential for the NMDA receptor-mediated Ca2+ influx by removing Mg2+ from block site and NMDA receptors have been implicated in phase resetting of circadian clocks. So we assessed rest:activity rhythms in Mg2+ block defective animals.
Methods: Using Drosophila locomotor monitoring system, we checked circadian rest:activity rhythms of different mutants under constant darkness (DD) and light:dark (LD) conditions.
Summary: As a promising field of individualized therapy, non-coding RNA pharmacogenomics promotes the understanding of different individual responses to certain drugs and acts as a reasonable reference for clinical treatment. However, relevant information is scattered across the published literature, which is inconvenient for researchers to explore non-coding RNAs that are involved in drug resistance. To address this, we systemically identified validated and predicted drug resistance-associated microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs through manual curation and computational analysis.
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