A Novel Method Enables General Pathologists to Create Web Dynamic Forms for Synoptic Tumor Reporting.

CONTEXT.­: Tumor reporting constitutes a significant daily task of pathologists. An efficient tumor-reporting methodology is thus vitally important. The Web dynamic form (WbDF) method offers a multitude of advantages over the prevailing transcription-mediated reporting method based on static-text checklists. However, its adaptation has been severely hampered for 2 decades by its costly needs to maintain a complex back-end system and to change the system for frequent updates of reporting content. OBJECTIVE.­: To overcome these 2 obstacles with a serverless Web platform that enables users to create, customize, use, and download WbDFs as synoptic templates for structured tumor reporting. DESIGN.­: Deploy ReactJS as a Web platform. Create form components in JavaScript Object Notation files. Use JavaScript Object Notation files to make WbDFs on the Web platform. Use the WbDFs to generate final pathology reports. RESULTS.­: Ordinary users (pathologists) can create/customize reporting templates as WbDFs on the Web platform. The WbDF can be used to make a pathology report and stored/shared like ordinary document files. There is no back-end system to change, nor a requirement for computer programming skills. CONCLUSIONS.­: This strategy eliminates the need for a complex back-end system and the associated cost when updating tumor-reporting standards, making it possible to adopt the WbDF method without the technological drawbacks associated with content updates. It also opens a new field of how the tumor-reporting system should be organized, updated, and implemented.

A wash-free lysosome targeting carbon dots for ultrafast imaging and monitoring cell apoptosis status.

In this work, a novel bright yellow fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) was synthesized from N-methyl-1,2-phenylenediamine hydrochloride in ethanol solvent through the solvothermal method. The obtained carbon dots had no fluorescence in water, but could specifically light up in the cell which makes the staining process without washing. Interestingly, the imaging process can be performed by simply shaking the culture with the cells for only 1 min, indicating ultrafast and easy to operate fluorescence imaging. Moreover, the carbon dots with abundant amino functional groups had good lysosome targeting properties (the Pearson's correlation coefficient is 0.92) and could achieve the ultrafast lysosome imaging in cell and zebrafish and monitoring cell apoptosis status. This is the first lysosome targeting carbon dots that allows the combination of a short incubation at the second-level with wash-free process providing great potential for continuous observation lysosome in vivo.

Structure-switching aptamer triggering hybridization displacement reaction for label-free detection of exosomes.

Exosomes play important roles in intercellular communications, tumor migration and invasion. However, the specific detection of cancer exosomes remains as a big challenge due to its low concentration in biofluids. Therefore, the sensitive and selective detection of cancer cells-derived exosomes has attracted growing attention owing to their potential in diagnostic and prognostic applications. Activatable strategies have received great attention for the detection of low abundant analytes due to their high sensitivity. Herein, based on molecular recognition between DNA aptamer and exosome surface biomarker (protein tyrosine kinase-7), a novel activatable and label-free strategy was designed for highly sensitive and specific sensing of exosomes. In this work, the target exosomes trigger strand replacement reaction to form G-quadruplex, which result in an obvious fluorescence enhancement of N-methylmesoporphyrin IX due to the bonding between G-quadruplex and N-methylmesoporphyrin IX. Under the optimum experimental conditions, the linear range for exosomes was measured to be 5.0 × 105-5.0 × 107 particles/µL and the detection limit (LOD) was calculated to be 3.4 × 105 particles/µL (3σ). This assay possesses high specificity to distinguish exosomes derived from different cell lines, and has successfully been validated in patient and healthy plasma samples. Furthermore, the probe can effectively detect the exosomes in 30% fetal bovine serum, indicating that the biological matrix has a negligible effect on this method. This developed label-free, convenient and highly sensitive biosensor will offer a great opportunity for exosomes quantification in biological study and clinical application.