Clinical characteristics and severity of beta and delta variants of SARS-CoV-2 and the effect of vaccine on delta variants.

Background: The Delta variant of concern (VOC) is rapidly becoming the dominant strain globally. We report the clinical characteristics and severity of hospitalized patients infected with Delta and Beta VOCs during the local outbreak in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China, and the effect of vaccines on the Delta variant.

Methods: We collected a total of 735 COVID-19 patients from the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, including 96 cases infected with the Delta VOC and 639 cases infected with the Beta VOC.

Low Expression of Rasal2 Promotes Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Metastasis through Ras/ERK Pathway.

The RAS protein activator like 2 (Rasal2) has been reported to be a tumor suppressor in variety of cancers; while an oncogenic protein in ovarian cancer and triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). However, the exact role of Rasal2 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is lacking. This study aimed to investigate the role of Rasal2 in NSCLC and the underlying mechanisms.

Pyoluteorin Induces Apoptosis and Autophagy in NSCLC Cells.

Pyoluteorin is a natural occurring antibiotic and its anti-tumor activity has rarely been reported. This study aims to investigate the anti-tumor effects of pyoluteorin on human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. The cell proliferation was measured by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay.

Accumulated Clinical Experiences from Successful Treatment of 1377 Severe and Critically Ill COVID-19 Cases.

In late December 2019, COVID-19 was firstly recognized in Wuhan, China and spread rapidly to all of the provinces of China. The West Campus of Wuhan Union Hospital, the designated hospital to admit and treat the severe and critically ill COVID-19 cases, has treated a large number of such patients with great success and obtained lots of valuable experiences based on the Chinese guideline (V7.0).

Lung myofibroblast transition and fibrosis is regulated by circ0044226.

Background And Purpose: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a life-threatening progressive disease characterized by aberrant fibroblast activation. This study aims to explore the role of the circ0044226 on fibroblast-to-myofibroblast transition (FMT).

Methods: Bleomycin and TGF-β1 were respectively used to induce the IPF mice model and human lung fibroblasts to myofibroblast differentiation.

LncRNA PICART1 suppressed non-small cell lung cancer cells proliferation and invasion by targeting AKT1 signaling pathway.

LncRNAs play significant roles in various cell biological processes. In the present study, we demonstrated that PICART1 expression was down-regulated in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tissues. Lower expression level of PICART1 was associated with advanced stage.

Inhibition of bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis by bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells might be mediated by decreasing MMP9, TIMP-1, INF-γ and TGF-β.

The study was aimed to investigate the mechanism and administration timing of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) in bleomycin (BLM)-induced pulmonary fibrosis mice. Thirty-six mice were divided into six groups: control group (saline), model group (intratracheal administration of BLM), day 1, day 3 and day 6 BMSCs treatment groups and hormone group (hydrocortisone after BLM treatment). BMSCs treatment groups received BMSCs at day 1, 3 or 6 following BLM treatment, respectively.

Effect of thoracic epidural blockade on hypoxia-induced pulmonary arterial hypertension in rats.

Objectives: The present study was aimed to investigate the influence of thoracic epidural blockade on hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension in rats.

Materials And Methods: Forty eight Wistar rats were randomly divided into 4 equal groups, named normoxia hypoxia hypoxia/ ropivacaine and hypoxia/saline. Animals were placed in a hypoxia chamber and instrumented with epidural catheters at the thoracic level.

Identification of 4438 novel lincRNAs involved in mouse pre-implantation embryonic development.

Long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) as a key group of non-coding RNAs have gained substantial attention. Though lincRNAs have been systematically explored in various mouse tissues and cell lines, large-scale identification of lincRNAs in mouse pre-implantation embryonic development (PED) process has not be documented previously. Therefore, it is important to identify and characterize novel lincRNAs that may be involved in PED.

miR-99a suppresses the metastasis of human non-small cell lung cancer cells by targeting AKT1 signaling pathway.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in the development and progression of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Recently, several studies have shown that miR-99a is downregulated in various cancers, which can affect tumor initiation and maintenance. Herein, we found that miR-99a was downregulated in NSCLC tissues and suppressed tumor metastasis of NSCLC cells.

DevMouse, the mouse developmental methylome database and analysis tools.

DNA methylation undergoes dynamic changes during mouse development and plays crucial roles in embryogenesis, cell-lineage determination and genomic imprinting. Bisulfite sequencing enables profiling of mouse developmental methylomes on an unprecedented scale; however, integrating and mining these data are challenges for experimental biologists. Therefore, we developed DevMouse, which focuses on the efficient storage of DNA methylomes in temporal order and quantitative analysis of methylation dynamics during mouse development.

Spatiotemporal expression of retrogene-host pair Mcts2/H13 in mouse embryo, and Mcts2 has no influence on H13 transcription pattern in NIH/3T3 cells.

Mcts2 and H13 comprise an imprinted retrogene-host gene pair. Imprinted genes have been proved to be closely related with embryo development. In order to understand its expression relationship during embryo development and influence of the retrogene on the host gene, we studied expression patterns in mouse embryos and transcriptional interference in a cell culture system.