Establishment and characterization of a murine xenograft model of appendiceal mucinous adenocarcinoma

We describe the clinical, pathologic and molecular characteristics of a xenograft model of metastatic mucinous appendiceal adenocarcinoma. Tumours from patients with mucinous appendiceal neoplasms were implanted in nude mice and observed for evidence of intraperitoneal tumour growth. Morphologic and immunohistochemical features, temporal growth characteristics relative to controls, and loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at multiple chromosomal alleles were assessed in a successfully engrafted tumour. Two of seventeen implanted tumours successfully engrafted and only one mucinous adenocarcinoma propagated throughout the course of the study. The successful xenograft is morphologically similar to the original tumour, produces abundant extracellular mucin and exhibits non‐invasive growth on peritoneal surfaces. The temporal growth characteristics of the xenograft tumour relative to controls reveal that tumour burden can be followed indirectly by measuring the weight or abdominal girth of engrafted animals. The cytokeratin, mucin core protein, CDX2, Ki‐67 and p53 expression patterns are identical in the xenograft and resected tumour and are consistent with the expected pattern of protein expression for mucinous adenocarcinoma of the appendix. LOH was found in 1 of 10 informative chromosomal loci (chromosome 10p23) in xenograft tumour cells. Although we were unable to engraft a low‐grade appendiceal mucinous neoplasm, the engrafted adenocarcinoma will be useful for future evaluation of novel therapeutic strategies directed at mucinous appendiceal adenocarcinoma and evaluation of strategies for treating widespread, bulky, mucinous peritoneal surface neoplasms. Xenograft tumour enrichment can facilitate molecular studies of appendiceal epithelial neoplasia.     

Education is associated with reduction in racial disparities in kidney transplant outcome

In this study, we hypothesized that higher level of education might be associated with reduced racial disparities in renal transplantation outcomes. We used data from the United States Renal Data System (September 1, 1990–September 1, 2007) (n = 79 223) and analyzed two outcomes, graft loss and recipient mortality, using Cox models. Compared with whites, African Americans had increased risk of graft failure (HR, 1.48; p < 0.001) and recipient mortality (HR, 1.06; p = 0.004). Compared with recipients who graduated from college, all other education groups had inferior graft survival. Specifically, compared with college‐graduated individuals, African Americans who never finished high school had the highest risk of graft failure (HR, 1.45; p < 0.001), followed by high school graduates (HR, 1.27; p < 0.001) and those with some college education (HR, 1.18; p < 0.001). A similar trend was observed in whites. In African Americans (compared with whites), the highest risk of graft failure was associated with individuals who did not complete high school (HR, 1.96; p < 0.001) followed by high school graduates (HR, 1.47; p < 0.001), individuals with some college education (HR, 1.45; p < 0.001), and college graduates (HR, 1.39; p < 0.001). A similar trend was observed with recipient mortality. In sum, higher education was associated with reduced racial disparities in graft and recipient survival.     

Dentures with phonetically contoured palate: a simple technique of adding customized rugae and palatal contours to the maxillary denture

Speech is essential to human activity, therefore phonetics must be considered with mechanics and esthetics as the cardinal factors contributing to the success of the dental prosthesis. The aim of this following procedure is to produce dentures that are mechanically functional, esthetically pleasing and permit normal speech.     

Laterally closed tunnel technique with and without adjunctive photobiomodulation therapy for the management of isolated gingival recession—a randomized controlled assessor-blinded clinical trial

Lasers in Medical Science - The objective of this prospective randomized controlled single-center clinical trial was to prove the efficacy of adjunctive photobiomodulation in improving selected...     

Mesoporous superacid catalysts for valorisation of refinery naphtha stream

In the current petroleum refining scenario, many refineries end up with surplus naphtha which is either absorbed into the gasoline pool or exported at unattractive prices. Therefore, several options for naphtha valorisation are currently being explored. The usage of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) as a fuel in heating appliances, cooking equipment and automobiles is rapidly increasing. The high specific calorific value, high octane number, clean and efficient combustion of LPG distinguish it as an extremely promising fuel of the future. In the current work, tungstophosphoric acid (TPA) supported on four different mesoporous silica supports were investigated as mesoporous superacids for hydroconversion of refinery naphtha using n-heptane as a model feedstock. The varied levels of interactions of prepared mesoporous silica with tungstophosphoric acid catalysts were observed to have a prominent effect on the strength of the acid sites generated on silica surfaces and as a result affected heptane hydroconversion activity and selectivity of isomerized and cracked products. Interestingly, activity could be tuned towards selective cracking or isomerization-cracking by selection of a suitable topology of mesoporous silica. Hexagonal Mesoporous Silica (HMS) and plugged SBA-15 supported TPA catalysts demonstrated high n-heptane conversion activity and isomerization selectivity whereas KIT-6 and SBA-15 supported TPA catalysts demonstrated high cracking selectivity to LPG.

TPA silanol interactions in mesoporous TPA silica composites govern the strength of acid sites, activity and selectivity.     

Extracting and summarizing white matter hyperintensities using supervised segmentation methods in Alzheimer's disease risk and aging studies

Precise detection and quantification of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) observed in T2‐weighted Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) is of substantial interest in aging, and age‐related neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). This is mainly because WMH may reflect co‐morbid neural injury or cerebral vascular disease burden. WMH in the older population may be small, diffuse, and irregular in shape, and sufficiently heterogeneous within and across subjects. Here, we pose hyperintensity detection as a supervised inference problem and adapt two learning models, specifically, Support Vector Machines and Random Forests, for this task. Using texture features engineered by texton filter banks, we provide a suite of effective segmentation methods for this problem. Through extensive evaluations on healthy middle‐aged and older adults who vary in AD risk, we show that our methods are reliable and robust in segmenting hyperintense regions. A measure of hyperintensity accumulation, referred to as normalized effective WMH volume, is shown to be associated with dementia in older adults and parental family history in cognitively normal subjects. We provide an open source library for hyperintensity detection and accumulation (interfaced with existing neuroimaging tools), that can be adapted for segmentation problems in other neuroimaging studies. Hum Brain Mapp 35:4219–4235, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc .