同型半胱氨酸、维生素D、C、E、B12及叶酸与胃癌关系的研究进展北大核心

胃癌作为临床最常见的肿瘤之一,常因确诊疾病较晚而影响治疗效果,胃镜活检后的病理虽然作为确诊的金标准,但是由于此方式过程痛苦,操作复杂,费用较高,且具有侵入性,可能会导致患者拒绝操作而难普及于临床,因此积极找寻胃癌有效的监测指标十分必要。近年来,很多学者研究维生素与胃癌的相关关系,并试图通过摄取某些维生素降低胃癌发生率,延缓病情及改善预后,也有通过检测血清中维生素的水平给早期胃癌的诊断提供帮助。本文就同型半胱氨酸、维生素D、维生素C、维生素E、维生素B12及叶酸在胃癌中的作用机制,及其在血清中水平与胃癌关系的相关研究进展进行简要综述,为临床胃癌诊疗提供新思路。     

The CC ligand chemokine family members CCL17/CCL22 predict the survival and response to immune checkpoint blockade therapy of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is considered an immunosuppressive malignancy. Cross-talk between cancer cells and immune cells is modulated in part by CC ligand (CCL) chemokines, having a major effect on tumor progression. However, the predictive value and function of CCL family members in HNSCC have not been elucidated. Here, the predictive value of CCL members in cancer prognosis and Immune checkpoint blockade therapy response was investigated. CCL17 and CCL22 were screened as the key CCL chemokines in HNSCC through co-expression analysis. Further, the correlation between CCL17/CCL22 expression and cancer immune infiltration were evaluated based on TIMER and were validated by a set of scRNA-seq data. Moreover, the expression level of CCL17/CCL22 we evaluated to predict the response to Immune checkpoint blockade therapy in a panel of cancer types by using the TIDE database. Results indicated that CCL17/CCL22 had a high co-expression correlation and had a marginally statistical significance with the overall survival in HNSCC patients (P value = 0.057 and 0.055, respectively). Our findings showed high expression of CCL17/CCL22 was positively correlated with CD4⁺ T cell infiltration levels in HNSCCs and activate mTORC1 signaling pathway in CD4⁺ T cells. Further analysis from TIDE showed the high expression of CCL17/CCL22 might predict favorable responses to immune checkpoint blockade therapy in HNSCC patients. These findings provide an insight into the predictive roles of CCL17/CCL22 in HNSCC.     

Mitochondrial quality control mechanisms as therapeutic targets in doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity

Doxorubicin (DOX) is a chemotherapeutic drug that is utilized for solid tumors and hematologic malignancies, but its clinical application is hampered by life-threatening cardiotoxicity including cardiac dilation and heart failure. Mitochondrial quality control processes, including mitochondrial proteostasis, mitophagy, and mitochondrial dynamics and biogenesis, serve to maintain mitochondrial homeostasis in the cardiovascular system. Importantly, recent advances have unveiled a major role for defective mitochondrial quality control in the etiology of DOX cardiomyopathy. Moreover, specific interventions targeting these quality control mechanisms to preserve mitochondrial function have emerged as potential therapeutic strategies to attenuate DOX cardiotoxicity. However, clinical translation is challenging because of obscure mechanisms of action and potential adverse effects. The purpose of this review is to provide new insights regarding the role of mitochondrial quality control in the pathogenesis of DOX cardiotoxicity, and to explore promising therapeutic approaches targeting these mechanisms to aid clinical management.     

Automatic Grading Assessments for Knee MRI Cartilage Defects via Self-ensembling Semi-supervised Learning with Dual-Consistency

Knee cartilage defects caused by osteoarthritis are major musculoskeletal disorders, leading to joint necrosis or even disability if not intervened at early stage. Deep learning has demonstrated its effectiveness in computer-aided diagnosis, but it is time-consuming to prepare a large set of well-annotated data by experienced radiologists for model training. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised framework to effectively use unlabeled data for better evaluation of knee cartilage defect grading. Our framework is developed based on the widely-used mean-teacher classification model, by designing a novel dual-consistency strategy to boost the consistency between the teacher and student models. The main contributions are three-fold: (1) We define an attention loss function to make the network focus on the cartilage regions, which can both achieve accurate attention masks and boost classification performance simultaneously; (2) Besides enforcing the consistency of classification results, we further design a novel attention consistency mechanism to ensure the focusing of the student and teacher networks on the same defect regions; (3) We introduce an aggregation approach to ensemble the slice-level classification outcomes for deriving the final subject-level diagnosis. Experimental results show that our proposed method can significantly improve both classification and localization performances of knee cartilage defects. Our code is available on https://github.com/King-HAW/DC-MT.     

基于PERK-eIF2α-CHOP通路调控巨噬细胞胆固醇稳态及冠心康含药血清干预机制研究＊

目的 观察具有益气化痰活血作用的冠心康对人单核/巨噬细胞株THP-1细胞PERK-eIF2α信号通路及相关活化转录因子（ATF）和C/EBP同源转录因子（CHOP）的影响，探究冠心康对胆固醇在巨噬细胞内质网中的代谢稳态调节及作为“脂毒”流出后异常沉积的相关作用。方法 采用100 ng·mL^-1 PMA及80 μg·mL^-1氧化低密度脂蛋白诱导THP-1细胞株，构建巨噬细胞模型，并随机分为模型组、冠心康组、辛伐他汀组、正常组。分别采用10%小牛血清及含药血清干预模型细胞72 h后收集细胞。HE染色观察巨噬细胞病理形态变化，同时进行胆固醇及脂滴含量测定。分别采用Real-time PCR及Western blot法检测各组细胞PERK、eIF2α、ATF、CHOP mRNA及蛋白的表达。结果 HE染色观察到模型组细胞内呈现较多红色脂滴，经胆固醇含量测定，明显高于正常组，脂滴含量测定与前者一致（P<0.01）。模型组细胞ATF、CHOP基因表达水平均显著升高（P<0.01）。与模型组比较，冠心康组和辛伐他汀组细胞ATF、CHOP基因表达水平均显著降低（P<0.01）。PERK磷酸化以及CHOP蛋白表达水平在冠心康和辛伐他汀干预组表现为显著下调，与模型组比较，差异具有统计学意义（P<0.05）。结论 冠心康可能通过调控PERK-eIF2α-CHOP通路相关基因及蛋白，减少泡沫细胞形成，从而减轻内质网应激，维持细胞内胆固醇稳态，减少细胞内胆固醇沉积。