CXCR7 activation evokes the anti-PD-L1 antibody against glioblastoma by remodeling CXCL12-mediated immunity.

The interaction between glioblastoma cells and glioblastoma-associated macrophages (GAMs) influences the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, leading to ineffective immunotherapies. We hypothesized that disrupting the communication between tumors and macrophages would enhance the efficacy of immunotherapies. Transcriptomic analysis of recurrent glioblastoma specimens indicated an enhanced neuroinflammatory pathway, with CXCL12 emerging as the top-ranked gene in secretory molecules.

The SMAC mimetic GDC-0152 is a direct ABCB1-ATPase activity modulator and BIRC5 expression suppressor in cancer cells.

Upregulation of the multidrug efflux pump ABCB1/MDR1 (P-gp) and the anti-apoptotic protein BIRC5/Survivin promotes multidrug resistance in various human cancers. GDC-0152 is a DIABLO/SMAC mimetic currently being tested in patients with solid tumors. However, it is still unclear whether GDC-0152 is therapeutically applicable for patients with ABCB1-overexpressing multidrug-resistant tumors, and the molecular mechanism of action of GDC-0152 in cancer cells is still incompletely understood.

Intravoxel Incoherent Motion-Diffusion-Weighted MRI for Investigation of Delayed Graft Function Immediately after Kidney Transplantation.

Purpose: A non-invasive way of assessing post-transplant renal graft function has been needed. This study aimed to assess the micro-structural and micro-functional status of graft kidneys by using intravoxel incoherent motion- (IVIM-) diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to investigate delayed graft function (DGF) immediately after transplantation.

Method: A prospective study was conducted on 37 patients, 14 with early graft function (EGF) and 23 with DGF (9 with complication, 14 without) who underwent IVIM-DWI, most often within 1-7 days after kidney transplantation.

Development of a cancer cells self‑activating and miR‑125a‑5p expressing poly‑pharmacological nanodrug for cancer treatment.

Cancer cells can acquire resistance to targeted therapeutic agents when the designated targets or their downstream signaling molecules develop protein conformational or activity changes. There is an increasing interest in developing poly‑pharmacologic anticancer agents to target multiple oncoproteins or signaling pathways in cancer cells. The microRNA 125a‑5p (miR‑125a‑5p) is a tumor suppressor, and its expression has frequently been downregulated in tumors.

A comparison of attentional neural network architectures for modeling with electronic medical records.

Objective: Attention networks learn an intelligent weighted averaging mechanism over a series of entities, providing increases to both performance and interpretability. In this article, we propose a novel time-aware transformer-based network and compare it to another leading model with similar characteristics. We also decompose model performance along several critical axes and examine which features contribute most to our model's performance.

Quantitative Measurement of Breast Tumors Using Intravoxel Incoherent Motion (IVIM) MR Images.

Breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is currently a widely used clinical examination tool. Recently, MR diffusion-related technologies, such as intravoxel incoherent motion diffusion weighted imaging (IVIM-DWI), have been extensively studied by breast cancer researchers and gradually adopted in clinical practice. In this study, we explored automatic tumor detection by IVIM-DWI.

Sex-Specific Temporal Trends in Overweight and Obese Among Schoolchildren From 2009 to 2018: An Age Period Cohort Analysis.

Our study examined the age, period, and cohort effects on overweight and obesity in children using a 10-year dataset collected from schoolchildren in Hualien, Taiwan. We used data from the annual health checkup of a total of 94,661 schoolchildren in primary schools and junior high schools in Hualien from 2009 to 2018. Children were defined as overweight or obese by the gender- and age-specific norm of the body mass index.

Exploiting hierarchy in medical concept embedding.

Objective: To construct and publicly release a set of medical concept embeddings for codes following the ICD-10 coding standard which explicitly incorporate hierarchical information from medical codes into the embedding formulation.

Materials And Methods: We trained concept embeddings using several new extensions to the Word2Vec algorithm using a dataset of approximately 600,000 patients from a major integrated healthcare organization in the Mid-Atlantic US. Our concept embeddings included additional entities to account for the medical categories assigned to codes by the Clinical Classification Software Revised (CCSR) dataset.

Comparison of Growth Velocity Among School Age Children With Different Body Mass Index From Childhood Into Early Adolescence in Hualien County, Taiwan: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

This study aimed to investigate the contribution of high body mass index (BMI) to growth velocity among school-aged children who remained in the same BMI categories for a 6-year period. This retrospective cohort study included children who enrolled in the school year 2009 and remained in the same BMI categories during their 1st, 4th, and 7th grades (6-7, 9-10, 12-13 years of age). Annual linear growth velocity and weight gain were calculated and compared between sexes, BMI groups, and different times.

YM155 and BIRC5 downregulation induce genomic instability via autophagy-mediated ROS production and inhibition in DNA repair.

Activation of autophagy plays a critical role in DNA repair, especially for the process of homologous recombination. Despite upregulation of autophagy promotes both the survival and the death of cells, the pathways that govern the pro-cell death effects of autophagy are still incompletely understood. YM155 is originally developed as an expression suppressant of BIRC5 (an anti-apoptotic molecule) and it has reached Phase I/II clinical trials for the treatment of variety types of cancer.

Socio-Demographic Factors Affect the Prevalence of Hematuria and Proteinuria Among School Children in Hualien, Taiwan: A Longitudinal Localization-Based Cohort Study.

Child hematuria/proteinuria is a risk factor for chronic kidney disease (CKD) in later life, and mass urinary screening could detect asymptomatic glomerulonephritis at an early stage. This study aimed to evaluate the longitudinal prevalence of hematuria/proteinuria and its association with socio-demographic factors among school children in Hualien, Taiwan. The study cohort consisted of first and fourth graders enrolled from 2008 to 2015 in Hualien.

Tamoxifen Rechallenge Decreases Metastatic Potential but Increases Cell Viability and Clonogenicity in a Tamoxifen-Mediated Cytotoxicity-Resistant Subline of Human Breast MCF7 Cancer Cells.

Background: Drug resistance is frequently found in estrogen receptor-positive (ER) breast cancer patients during and after prolonged tamoxifen treatment. Although tamoxifen rechallenge has been proposed for treating recurrent breast tumors, the clinical benefit of this treatment is still controversial. The aims of this study are to identify the possible tamoxifen cytotoxicity-resistant subpopulation of MCF7 cells and to determine the effects of tamoxifen rechallenge on these cells.

The SMAC mimetic LCL161 is a direct ABCB1/MDR1-ATPase activity modulator and BIRC5/Survivin expression down-regulator in cancer cells.

Upregulation of ABCB1/MDR1 (P-gp) and BIRC5/Survivin promotes multidrug resistance in a variety of human cancers. LCL161 is an anti-cancer DIABLO/SMAC mimetic currently being tested in patients with solid tumors, but the molecular mechanism of action of LCL161 in cancer cells is still incompletely understood. It is still unclear whether LCL161 is therapeutically applicable for patients with ABCB1-overexpressing multidrug resistant tumors.

Novel Automated Method for the Detection of White Matter Hyperintensities in Brain Multispectral MR Images.

Background: According to the Standards for Reporting Vascular Changes on Neuroimaging, White Matter Hyperintensities (WMHs) are cerebral white matter lesions that are characterized by abnormal tissues of variable sizes and appear hyperintense in T2-weighted Magnetic Resonance (MR) measurements without cavitation (i.e., their tissue signals differ from those of Cerebrospinal Fluid or CSF).

Anti-apoptotic proteins in the autophagic world: an update on functions of XIAP, Survivin, and BRUCE.

X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein (XIAP), survivin, and BRUCE are members of the inhibitor-of-apoptosis protein (IAP) family known for their inhibitory effects on caspase activity and dysregulation of these molecules has widely been shown to cause embryonic defects and to promote tumorigenesis in human. Besides the anti-apoptotic functions, recent discoveries have revealed that XIAP, survivin, and BRUCE also exhibit regulatory functions for autophagy in cells. As the role of autophagy in human diseases has already been discussed extensively in different reviews; in this review, we will discuss the emerging autophagic role of XIAP, survivin, and BRUCE in cancer cells.

BIRC5/Survivin is a novel ATG12-ATG5 conjugate interactor and an autophagy-induced DNA damage suppressor in human cancer and mouse embryonic fibroblast cells.

Unlabelled: BIRC5/Survivin is known as a dual cellular functions protein that directly regulates both apoptosis and mitosis in embryonic cells during embryogenesis and in cancer cells during tumorigenesis and tumor metastasis. However, BIRC5 has seldom been demonstrated as a direct macroautophagy/autophagy regulator in cells. ATG7 expression and ATG12-ATG5-ATG16L1 complex formation are crucial for the phagophore elongation during autophagy in mammalian cells.

Breast Tumor Detection and Classification Using Intravoxel Incoherent Motion Hyperspectral Imaging Techniques.

Breast cancer is a main cause of disease and death for women globally. Because of the limitations of traditional mammography and ultrasonography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has gradually become an important radiological method for breast cancer assessment over the past decades. MRI is free of the problems related to radiation exposure and provides excellent image resolution and contrast.

Adolescent Inpatients With Eating Disorders: Comparison Between Acute and Chronic Malnutrition States on a Refeeding Protocol.

This study is a comparison of eating disorder patient outcomes on similar nutrition regimens regardless of degree of malnutrition. Acuity of symptoms in chronically and acutely malnourished patients were analyzed to determine the influence the duration of malnutrition has on refeeding syndrome. Patient outcomes did not differ based on chronicity of malnutrition and are compatible with previous studies in terms of weight gain, medical stabilization, and rate of electrolyte imbalance.

Cloning, expression, and purification of the recombinant pro-apoptotic dominant-negative survivin T34A-C84A protein in Escherichia coli.

Survivin is a well-known inhibitor-of-apoptosis proteins family member and a promising molecular target for anti-cancer treatment. However, it is widely accepted that survivin is only a "semi-druggable" target and development of survivin-specific small molecule inhibitors has shown to be difficult. In this study, we demonstrated that a histidine-tagged survivin T34A-C84A mutated protein (T34A-C84A-dNSur-His) can be produced using a bacterial recombinant protein expression system [E.

HDAC2 and HDAC5 Up-Regulations Modulate Survivin and miR-125a-5p Expressions and Promote Hormone Therapy Resistance in Estrogen Receptor Positive Breast Cancer Cells.

Intrinsic or acquired resistance to hormone therapy is frequently reported in estrogen receptor positive (ER) breast cancer patients. Even though dysregulations of histone deacetylases (HDACs) are known to promote cancer cells survival, the role of different HDACs in the induction of hormone therapy resistance in ER breast cancer remains unclear. Survivin is a well-known pro-tumor survival molecule and miR-125a-5p is a recently discovered tumor suppressor.

Predictors of Booster Response to Hepatitis B Vaccine at 15 years of age: A Cross-Sectional School-Based Study.

Background: The current consensus does not support the use of booster dose because of its anamnestic response in almost all children 15 years after universal infant hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination. However, in our clinical setting, numerous concerned parents request a booster administration for their children. We aimed to provide the possible predictors of booster response in adolescents before this booster administration.