AI-assisted diagnosis of vulvovaginal candidiasis using cascaded neural networks.

Unlabelled: Vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) is a prevalent fungal ailment affecting women globally. Timely and accurate diagnosis is crucial. Traditional methods, relying on clinical evaluation and manual microscopic examination, have limitations.

Primary tumor resection improves prognosis of unresectable carcinomas of the transverse colon including flexures with pulmonary metastasis: a cohort study.

Purpose: Studies of unresectable colorectal cancer pulmonary metastasis (CRPM) have rarely analyzed patient prognosis from the perspective of colonic subsites. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of primary tumor resection (PTR) on the prognosis of patients with unresectable pulmonary metastases of transverse colon cancer pulmonary metastasis (UTCPM), hepatic flexure cancer pulmonary metastasis (UHFPM), and splenic flexure cancer pulmonary metastasis (USFPM).

Methods: Patients were identified from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database between 2000 and 2018.

Fast CU Partition Algorithm for Intra Frame Coding Based on Joint Texture Classification and CNN.

High-efficiency video coding (HEVC/H.265) is one of the most widely used video coding standards. HEVC introduces a quad-tree coding unit (CU) partition structure to improve video compression efficiency.

Microfluidic Biosensor for Rapid Nucleic Acid Quantitation Based on Hyperspectral Interferometric Amplicon-Complex Analysis.

Nucleic acid detection plays a vital role in both biomedical research and clinical medicine. The temperature circulation changes of the widely used polymerase chain reaction technique are time-consuming and technically challenging for system development. Recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) is an isothermal method for rapid nucleic acid detection.

Numerical simulation flow dynamics of an intracranial aneurysm.

Background: Computational fluid dynamics provides a new method for the study of the blood flow characteristics of the formation and development of intracranial aneurysms.

Objective: To compare blood flow characteristics between the healthy internal carotid artery and normal intracranial aneurysms.

Methods: The internal carotid arteries were simulated to obtain hemodynamic parameters in one patient.

Label-Free and Quantitative Dry Mass Monitoring for Single Cells during In Situ Culture.

Quantitative measurement of single cells can provide in-depth information about cell morphology and metabolism. However, current live-cell imaging techniques have a lack of quantitative detection ability. Herein, we proposed a label-free and quantitative multichannel wide-field interferometric imaging (MWII) technique with femtogram dry mass sensitivity to monitor single-cell metabolism long-term in situ culture.

Single cell capture, isolation, and long-term in-situ imaging using quantitative self-interference spectroscopy.

Single cell research with microfluidic chip is of vital importance in biomedical studies and clinical medicine. Simultaneous microfluidic cell manipulations and long-term cell monitoring needs further investigations due to the lack of label-free quantitative imaging techniques and systems. In this work, single cell capture, isolation and long-term in-situ monitoring was realized with a microfluidic cell chip, compact cell incubator and quantitative self-interference spectroscopy.

Biomimetic Upconversion Nanoparticles and Gold Nanoparticles for Novel Simultaneous Dual-Modal Imaging-Guided Photothermal Therapy of Cancer.

Multimodal imaging-guided near-infrared (NIR) photothermal therapy (PTT) is an interesting and promising cancer theranostic method. However, most of the multimodal imaging systems provide structural and functional information used for imaging guidance separately by directly combining independent imaging systems with different detectors, and many problems arise when trying to fuse different modal images that are serially taken by inviting extra markers or image fusion algorithms. Further, most imaging and therapeutic agents passively target tumors through the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect, which leads to low utilization efficiency.

Fast and Parallel Detection of Four Ebola Virus Species on a Microfluidic-Chip-Based Portable Reverse Transcription Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification System.

Considering the lack of official vaccines and medicines for Ebola virus infection, reliable diagnostic methods are necessary for the control of the outbreak and the spread of the disease. We developed a microfluidic-chip-based portable system for fast and parallel detection of four Ebola virus species. The system is based on reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) and consists of four specific LAMP primers, a disc microfluidic chip, and a portable real-time fluorescence detector.

Double-Stranded DNA in Exosomes of Malignant Pleural Effusions as a Novel DNA Source for EGFR Mutation Detection in Lung Adenocarcinoma.

Exosomes are cell-derived vesicles and bear a specific set of nucleic acids including DNA (exoDNA). Thus, this study is to explore whether exoDNA in malignant pleural effusions (MPEs) could be a novel DNA source for mutation detection of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). In this study, 52 lung adenocarcinoma patients were enrolled, and EGFR mutation status was detected with tumor tissues as well as cell blocks and exosomes in MPEs.

Label-free tomography of living cellular nanoarchitecture using hyperspectral self-interference microscopy.

Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) is the most ideal method for achieving long-term cellular tomography because it is label free and quantitative. However, for current QPI instruments, interference signals from different layers overlay with each other and impede nanoscale optical sectioning. Integrated incubators and improved configurations also require further investigation for QPI instruments.

Enhanced expression of circ_0000267 in hepatocellular carcinoma indicates poor prognosis and facilitates cell progression by sponging miR-646.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly aggressive carcinoma worldwide. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been proved to be involved in the pathogenesis of several carcinomas. circ_0000267 was reported to be elevated in HCC tissue samples by circRNA microarray.

Circular RNA circPVT1 Promotes Proliferation and Invasion Through Sponging miR-125b and Activating E2F2 Signaling in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Background/aims: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are key regulators in the development and progression of human cancers, however its role in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tumorigenesis is not well understood. The aim of this study is to identify the expression level of circPVT1 in NSCLC and further investigated its functional relevance with NSCLC progression both in vitro and in vivo.

Methods: Quantative real-time PCR was used for the measurement of circPVT1 in NSCLC specimens and cell lines.

An interferometric imaging biosensor using weighted spectrum analysis to confirm DNA monolayer films with attogram sensitivity.

Interferometric imaging biosensors are powerful and convenient tools for confirming the existence of DNA monolayer films on silicon microarray platforms. However, their accuracy and sensitivity need further improvement because DNA molecules contribute to an inconspicuous interferometric signal both in thickness and size. Such weaknesses result in poor performance of these biosensors for low DNA content analyses and point mutation tests.

Effectiveness of circulating tumor DNA for detection of KRAS gene mutations in colorectal cancer patients: a meta-analysis.

Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) can be identified in the peripheral blood of patients and harbors the genomic alterations found in tumor tissues, which provides a noninvasive approach for detection of gene mutations. We conducted this meta-analysis to investigate whether ctDNA can be used for monitoring KRAS gene mutations in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library and Web of Science were searched for the included eligible studies in English, and data were extracted for statistical analysis according to the numbers of true-positive (TP), true-negative (TN), false-positive (FP) and false-negative (FN) cases.

Label-Free Method Using a Weighted-Phase Algorithm To Quantitate Nanoscale Interactions between Molecules on DNA Microarrays.

White light interference is used as a label-free method to detect nanoscale changes on surfaces. However, the signal-to-noise ratio of the white light interference method is very low, thus resulting in inaccurate results. In this paper, we report a corrected label-free method based on hyperspectral interferometry to overcome the shortcoming of the white light interference method.

A transcriptome profile in hepatocellular carcinomas based on integrated analysis of microarray studies.

Background: Despite new treatment options for hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC) recently, 5-year survival remains poor, ranging from 50 to 70%, which may attribute to the lack of early diagnostic biomarkers. Thus, developing new biomarkers for early diagnosis of HCC, is extremely urgent, aiming to decrease HCC-related deaths.

Methods: In the study, we conducted a comprehensive characterization of gene expression data of HCC based on a bioinformatics method.

Bone metabolism markers: Indicators of loading dose intravenous ibandronate treatment for bone metastases from breast cancer.

To investigate the changes in bone metabolism markers after second-line treatment with loading dose intravenous (i.v.) ibandronate in patients with bone metastases (BM) from breast cancer, 80 patients were enrolled in this study during January 2010 to April 2014.

A smart device for label-free and real-time detection of gene point mutations based on the high dark phase contrast of vapor condensation.

A smart device for label-free and real-time detection of gene point mutation-related diseases was developed based on the high dark phase contrast of vapor condensation. The main components of the device included a Peltier cooler and a mini PC board for image processing. Heat from the hot side of the Peltier cooler causes the fluid in a copper chamber to evaporate, and the vapor condenses on the surface of a microarray chip placed on the cold side of the cooler.

fM to aM nucleic acid amplification for molecular diagnostics in a non-stick-coated metal microfluidic bioreactor.

A sensitive DNA isothermal amplification method for the detection of DNA at fM to aM concentrations for pathogen identification was developed using a non-stick-coated metal microfluidic bioreactor. A portable confocal optical detector was utilized to monitor the DNA amplification in micro- to nanoliter reaction assays in real-time, with fluorescence collection near the optical diffraction limit. The non-stick-coated metal microfluidic bioreactor, with a surface contact angle of 103°, was largely inert to bio-molecules, and DNA amplification could be performed in a minimum reaction volume of 40 nL.

Robust adaptive control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with time-varying delay.

We present adaptive neural control design for a class of perturbed nonlinear MIMO time-varying delay systems in a block-triangular form. Based on a neural controller, it is obtained by constructing a quadratic-type Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional, which efficiently avoids the controller singularity. The proposed control guarantees that all closed-loop signals remain bounded, while the output tracking error dynamics converge to a neighborhood of the desired trajectories.

[Histone deacetylase inhibitor MS-275 treatment alters immune molecule content and categories in hepatocarcinoma exosomes].

Objective: To investigate the effects of the histone deacetylase inhibitor, MS-275, on the immune molecule content and categories in hepatocarcinoma exosomes.

Methods: Exosomes were isolated from the human hepatocarcinoma cell lines, HepG2 and Hep3b, and purified by a combination technique of ultrafiltration centrifugation and sucrose gradient ultracentrifugation. The expressions of heat shock protein (HSP)70, human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-I, HLA-DR, cluster of differentiation (CD) 80 and NY-ESO-1 on exosomes were analyzed with immunoelectron microscopy and Western blotting before and after MS-275 treatment.

[Advanced dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans treated with imatinib mesylate].

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy, side effects and toxicity of imatinib mesylate in the treatment of patients with locally advanced and/or metastatic dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP).

Methods: Twenty-four cases of advanced DFSP diagnosed by pathology and treated in our hospital from Nov. 2004 to Oct.

Effect of 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine on immune-associated proteins in exosomes from hepatoma.

Aim: To study the effect of 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-aza-CdR) on heat shock protein 70 (HSP70), human leucocyte antigen-I (HLA-I) and NY-ESO-1 proteins in exosomes produced by hepatoma cells, HepG2 and Hep3B.

Methods: Exosomes derived from HepG(2) and Hep3B cells treated with or without 5-aza-CdR were isolated and purified by ultrafiltration centrifugation and sucrose gradient ultracentrifugation. The number of exosomes was counted under electron microscope.