A combined pre- and intra-operative nomogram in evaluation of degrees of liver cirrhosis predicts post-hepatectomy liver failure: a multicenter prospective study.

Background: Adequate evaluation of degrees of liver cirrhosis is essential in surgical treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. The impact of the degrees of cirrhosis on prediction of post-hepatectomy liver failure (PHLF) remains poorly defined. This study aimed to construct and validate a combined pre- and intra-operative nomogram based on the degrees of cirrhosis in predicting PHLF in HCC patients using prospective multi-center's data. Methods: Consecutive HCC patients who underwent hepatectomy between May 18, 2019 and Dec 19, 2020 were enrolled at five tertiary hospitals. Preoperative cirrhotic severity scoring (CSS) and intra-operative direct liver stiffness measurement (DSM) were performed to correlate with the Laennec histopathological grading system. The performances of the pre-operative nomogram and combined pre- and intra-operative nomogram in predicting PHLF were compared with conventional predictive models of PHLF. Results: For 327 patients in this study, histopathological studies showed the rates of HCC patients with no, mild, moderate, and severe cirrhosis were 41.9%, 29.1%, 22.9%, and 6.1%, respectively. Either CSS or DSM was closely correlated with histopathological stages of cirrhosis. Thirty-three (10.1%) patients developed PHLF. The 30- and 90-day mortality rates were 0.9%. Multivariate regression analysis showed four pre-operative variables [HBV-DNA level, ICG-R15, prothrombin time (PT), and CSS], and one intra-operative variable (DSM) to be independent risk factors of PHLF. The pre-operative nomogram was constructed based on these four pre-operative variables together with total bilirubin. The combined pre- and intra-operative nomogram was constructed by adding the intra-operative DSM. The pre-operative nomogram was better than the conventional models in predicting PHLF. The prediction was further improved with the combined pre- and intra-operative nomogram. Conclusions: The combined pre- and intra-operative nomogram further improved prediction of PHLF when compared with the pre-operative nomogram. Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT04076631.

Identification of keystone taxa in rhizosphere microbial communities using different methods and their effects on compounds of the host Cinnamomum migao.

Exploring keystone taxa affecting microbial community stability and host function is crucial for understanding ecosystem functions. However, identifying keystone taxa from humongous microbial communities remains challenging. We collected 344 rhizosphere and bulk soil samples from the endangered plant C. migao for 2 years consecutively. Used high-throughput sequencing 16S rDNA and ITS to obtain the composition of bacterial and fungal communities. We explored keystone taxa and the applicability and limitations of five methods (SPEC-OCCU, Zi-Pi, Subnetwork, Betweenness, and Module), as well as the impact of microbial community domain, time series, and rhizosphere boundary on the identification of keystone taxa in the communities. Our results showed that the five methods, identified abundant keystone taxa in rhizosphere and bulk soil microbial communities. However, the keystone taxa shared by the rhizosphere and bulk soil microbial communities over time decreased rapidly decrease in the five methods. Among five methods on the identification of keystone taxa in the rhizosphere community, Module identified 113 taxa, SPEC-OCCU identified 17 taxa, Betweenness identified 3 taxa, Subnetwork identified 3 taxa, and Zi-Pi identified 4 taxa. The keystone taxa are mainly conditionally rare taxa, and their ecological functions include chemoheterotrophy, aerobic chemoheterotrophy, nitrate reduction, and anaerobic photoautotrophy. The results of the random forest model and structural equation model predict that keystone taxa Mortierella and Ellin6513 may have an effects on the accumulation of 1, 4, 7, - Cycloundecatriene, 1, 5, 9, 9-tetramethyl-, Z, Z, Z-, beta-copaene, bicyclogermacrene, 1,8-Cineole in C. migao fruits, but their effects still need further evidence. Our study evidence an unstable microbial community in the bulk soil, and the definition of microbial boundary and ecologically functional affected the identification of keystone taxa in the community. Subnetwork and Module are more in line with the definition of keystone taxa in microbial ecosystems in terms of maintaining community stability and hosting function.

Deep Multiview Module Adaption Transfer Network for Subject-Specific EEG Recognition.

Transfer learning is one of the popular methods to solve the problem of insufficient data in subject-specific electroencephalogram (EEG) recognition tasks. However, most existing approaches ignore the difference between subjects and transfer the same feature representations from source domain to different target domains, resulting in poor transfer performance. To address this issue, we propose a novel subject-specific EEG recognition method named deep multiview module adaption transfer (DMV-MAT) network. First, we design a universal deep multiview (DMV) network to generate different types of discriminative features from multiple perspectives, which improves the generalization performance by extensive feature sets. Second, module adaption transfer (MAT) is designed to evaluate each module by the feature distributions of source and target samples, which can generate an optimal weight sharing strategy for each target subject and promote the model to learn domain-invariant and domain-specific features simultaneously. We conduct extensive experiments in two EEG recognition tasks, i.e., motor imagery (MI) and seizure prediction, on four datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves promising performance compared with the state-of-the-art methods, indicating a feasible solution for subject-specific EEG recognition tasks. Implementation codes are available at https://github.com/YangLibuaa/DMV-MAT.

Symbiotic seed germination and seedling growth of mycorrhizal fungi in Paphiopedilum hirsutissimun (Lindl.Ex Hook.) Stein from China.

Similar to other orchid species, Paphiopedilum hirsutissimum (Lindl.ex Hook.) Stein, relies on nutrients provided by mycorrhizal fungus for seed germination and seedling development in the wild owing to a lack of endosperm in its seeds. Therefore, obtaining suitable and specialized fungi to enhance seed germination, seedling formation, and further development is considered a powerful tool for orchid seedling propagation, reintroduction, and species conservation. In this study, we investigated the diversity, abundance, and frequency of endophytic fungal strains in the root organs of P. hirsutissimum. One family and five genera of the fungi were isolated and identified through rDNA-ITS sequencing. The ability of isolated fungi to germinate in vitro from the seeds of this species was evaluated, and the development of P. hirsutissimum protocorm has been described. The findings showed that the treatments inoculated with endophytic fungal DYXY033 may successfully support the advanced developmental stage of seedlings up to stage 5. In addition, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed that the mycelium of this strain began to invade from either end of the seeds up to the embryo, extending rapidly from the inside to the outside. Its lengthening resulted in the bursting of the seed coat to form protocorms, which developed into seedlings. The results showed that DYXY033 has a high degree of mycobiont specificity under in vitro symbiotic seed germination conditions and is a representative mycorrhizal fungus with ecological value for the species. In summary, this strain may particularly be significant for the protection of P. hirsutissimum species that are endangered in China. In the long run, it may also contribute to global efforts in reintroducing orchid species and in realizing in situ restorations of threatened orchid populations.

Global Transformer and Dual Local Attention Network via Deep-Shallow Hierarchical Feature Fusion for Retinal Vessel Segmentation.

Clinically, retinal vessel segmentation is a significant step in the diagnosis of fundus diseases. However, recent methods generally neglect the difference of semantic information between deep and shallow features, which fail to capture the global and local characterizations in fundus images simultaneously, resulting in the limited segmentation performance for fine vessels. In this article, a global transformer (GT) and dual local attention (DLA) network via deep-shallow hierarchical feature fusion (GT-DLA-dsHFF) are investigated to solve the above limitations. First, the GT is developed to integrate the global information in the retinal image, which effectively captures the long-distance dependence between pixels, alleviating the discontinuity of blood vessels in the segmentation results. Second, DLA, which is constructed using dilated convolutions with varied dilation rates, unsupervised edge detection, and squeeze-excitation block, is proposed to extract local vessel information, consolidating the edge details in the segmentation result. Finally, a novel deep-shallow hierarchical feature fusion (dsHFF) algorithm is studied to fuse the features in different scales in the deep learning framework, respectively, which can mitigate the attenuation of valid information in the process of feature fusion. We verified the GT-DLA-dsHFF on four typical fundus image datasets. The experimental results demonstrate our GT-DLA-dsHFF achieves superior performance against the current methods and detailed discussions verify the efficacy of the proposed three modules. Segmentation results of diseased images show the robustness of our proposed GT-DLA-dsHFF. Implementation codes will be available on https://github.com/YangLibuaa/GT-DLA-dsHFF.

Seed Dormancy Release and Germination Requirements of Cinnamomum migao, an Endangered and Rare Woody Plant in Southwest China.

Seed dormancy is a complex adaptive trait of plants that are influenced by several physiological and environmental factors. The endangered plant Cinnamomum migao is also known to exhibit seed dormancy and low germination, which may influence its regeneration; however, these characteristics remain unexplored. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the type of dormancy and improve the germination percentage of C. migao seeds. We evaluated the structure and characteristics of the embryo and endocarp of C. migao seeds as well as the effects of endogenous inhibitors. Furthermore, we assessed the effects of light, stratification, alternating temperature, and gibberellic acid 3 (GA3) on the dormancy release of these seeds. The embryo was well developed the endocarp was water-permeable, and no obvious mechanical hindrance to germination was observed. However, the endocarp and embryo contained phenols and other germination inhibitors. The seed extracts of C. migao delayed the germination of cabbage and ryegrass seeds, which indicates the presence of endogenous inhibitors. These findings suggest that C. migao seeds exhibit physiological dormancy. Light and an alternating temperature (15/20°C) did not influence germination. However, GA3 pretreatment, alternating temperatures, and warm stratification relieved dormancy. GA3 pretreatment combined with the 15°C stratification treatment was most effective in rapidly releasing the C. migao seed dormancy. Our findings may facilitate the storage and conservation of this endangered plant, which is currently underrepresented in ex situ collections.

[Preparation of Functional Attapulgite Composite and Its Adsorption Behaviors for Congo Red].

Heavy metal ion wastewater poses a serious threat to human health and the environment. The adsorption method is an important method to remove heavy metal ions from heavy metal wastewater. Magnetic attapulgite (ATP) composite nanomaterials with excellent adsorption properties were prepared by grafting the Fe3O4 nanoparticles and using 3-aminopropyl triethoxy silane (APTES) modification. The prepared ATP-Fe3O4-APTES materials were used as adsorbents and applied to the treatment of heavy metal ion wastewater. The structure and surface properties of the materials were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, SEM, TEM, and BET characterization, Zeta potential, and VSM. The effects of pH, adsorption time, adsorption temperature, and initial concentration of Pb2+ on the adsorption properties of the ATP-Fe3O4-PEI materials were investigated. The results show that the maximum adsorption capacity of the materials for Pb2+ was 129.32 mg·g-1 under optimum conditions. The adsorption process conformed to the pseudo second order kinetic model and Langmuir adsorption isotherm, which indicates that the adsorption of Pb2+ is a monolayer chemical adsorption and a spontaneous endothermic process. The driving force of adsorption mainly comes from the coordination between the amino group (-NH2) on the ATP-Fe3O4-APTES surface and Pb2+. These results indicate that the functionalized magnetic attapulgite adsorbent has good adsorption properties for heavy metal ions and is expected to be used in the treatment of heavy metal ion wastewater.

Spatio-Temporal-Spectral Hierarchical Graph Convolutional Network With Semisupervised Active Learning for Patient-Specific Seizure Prediction.

Graph theory analysis using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals is currently an advanced technique for seizure prediction. Recent deep learning approaches, which fail to fully explore both the characterizations in EEGs themselves and correlations among different electrodes simultaneously, generally neglect the spatial or temporal dependencies in an epileptic brain and, thus, produce suboptimal seizure prediction performance consequently. To tackle this issue, in this article, a patient-specific EEG seizure predictor is proposed by using a novel spatio-temporal-spectral hierarchical graph convolutional network with an active preictal interval learning scheme (STS-HGCN-AL). Specifically, since the epileptic activities in different brain regions may be of different frequencies, the proposed STS-HGCN-AL framework first infers a hierarchical graph to concurrently characterize an epileptic cortex under different rhythms, whose temporal dependencies and spatial couplings are extracted by a spectral-temporal convolutional neural network and a variant self-gating mechanism, respectively. Critical intrarhythm spatiotemporal properties are then captured and integrated jointly and further mapped to the final recognition results by using a hierarchical graph convolutional network. Particularly, since the preictal transition may be diverse from seconds to hours prior to a seizure onset among different patients, our STS-HGCN-AL scheme estimates an optimal preictal interval patient dependently via a semisupervised active learning strategy, which further enhances the robustness of the proposed patient-specific EEG seizure predictor. Competitive experimental results validate the efficacy of the proposed method in extracting critical preictal biomarkers, indicating its promising abilities in automatic seizure prediction.

Isolation and identification of beneficial orchid mycorrhizal fungi in Paphiopedilum barbigerum (Orchidaceae).

Seed germination and seedling development in nearly all orchid species rely on a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizal fungi; however, this is not the case with all mycorrhizal fungi. This study aims to provide an understanding about the important role of mycorrhiza in seed germination and growth of Paphiopedilum barbigerum. Therefore, we isolated and identified endophytic fungi from the roots of wild P. barbigerum. The beneficial mycorrhizal fungi Epulorhiza sp. FQXY019 and Tulasnella calospora FQXY017 were screened by seed symbiotic germination tests and found to promote seed germination. However, only the seeds inoculated with FQXY019 progressed from the seed germination to rooting stage. This shows that mycorrhizal fungi and P. barbigerum have a specific relation at different growth phases. In addition, we selected FQXY019 and inoculated it into MS medium, B5 medium, OMA medium, and PDA medium. The results showed that FQXY019 co-cultured on PDA significantly promoted the increase in seedling fresh weight, leaf length, and root length (p < .01). Furthermore, it significantly promoted the root number and leaf number of seedlings compared with those co-cultured on MS, B5, and OMA media and control (p < .05). Thus, this study demonstrated the promoting effect of Epulorhiza sp. FQXY019 on seed germination and seedling development, making it an alternative method for the artificial propagation of P. barbigerum.

Doxorubicin resistance induces IL6 activation in the colon cancer cell line LS180.

Despite improvements in the development of drugs for the treatment of cancer, drug resistance remains a major obstacle. In colon cancer, following an initially promising response, patients develop drug resistance, which impacts the efficacy and halts the response of cancerous cells towards drugs. In the present study, a phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) knockdown model of LS180 cells, doxorubicin-resistant models of LS180 cells as well as doxorubicin-resistant LS180 (PTEN) knockdown model were established. The present study demonstrated that doxorubicin resistance led to the activation of interleukin (IL)6 signalling pathway which was enhanced by knockdown of PTEN. There was also an increase in the levels of IL8 and IL2 which were further enchanced by knockdown of PTEN. Doxorubicin resistance also led to an increase in the population of cancer stem cells in LS180 and shPTEN-treated LS180 cells. Notably, doxorubicin resistance also induced epithelial to mesenchymal transition and increased the formation of mammospheres. Furthermore, the present study also reported that IL6 receptor antibody not only decreased IL6 levels but also led to a significant decreased number of cancer stem cell like population and mammosphere formation. In conclusion, in the present study it was demonstrated that doxorubicin resistance led to activation of IL6 signalling pathway which was further elevated by the knockdown of PTEN in the colon cancer cell line LS180. Thus, inhibiting the IL6 loop may provide an alternative pathway to tackle doxorubicin resistance.

Clinicopathological factors associated with HER2-positive gastric cancer: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: The treatment of patients with advanced gastric cancer remains a most challenging task in the clinical practice. Recently, targeted therapies have significantly impacted the treatment strategy for many common malignancies. The use of trastuzumab, a monoclonal antibody against human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2; also known as ERBB2), plus chemotherapy proved to improve median overall survival in patients with advanced gastric cancer, compared with chemotherapy alone in Trastuzumab for Gastric Cancer (ToGA) trial. However, the prognostic value of HER2 status in gastric cancer remains controversial. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the clinical pathology significance of HER2 overexpression in resectable gastric cancer for selecting the right patients with gastric cancer who may benefit from trastuzumab treatment. METHODS: Publications reported the clinicopathological factors associated with HER2 status in gastric cancer from 2012 to 2017 were collected. The literature databases, such as "Cochrane Library", "Sciencedirect", "Springer", "PubMed", "Embase", were extensively searched to retrieve the clinical studies of HER2 expression in gastric cancer. The major outcomes measures were odds ratios (ORs) and their 95% CIs. Statistical analysis was carried out by Revman software 5.3. The Newcastle-Ottawa scale was used to assess the quality of evidence. RESULT: Fifteen studies met our inclusion criteria. This study demonstrated that the pooled OR for HER2 positivity was associated with being male (OR: 1.42; 95% CI: 1.23-1.64), well/moderately differentiated tumor (OR: 2.76; 95% CI: 1.72-4.45), and for intestinal-type tumor (OR: 0.31; 95% CI: 0.25-0.38). However, it had no correlation with depth of tumor (P = .07), venous invasion (P = .82), and lymphovascular invasion (P = .24). CONCLUSION: HER2-positive expression was associated with male gender, intestinal type, and well/moderate cell differentiation. We recommend that those gastric cancer patients who may benefit from trastuzumab treatment should be subjected to targeted therapies. However, detecting HER2 status may contribute to the target therapy for gastric carcinoma using trastuzumab. This would be strengthened by further studies incorporating comorbidity data, and outcomes from centralized programs.

Clinical application of entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films in patients with intestinal neuronal dysplasia type B.

OBJECTIVE: To report and evaluate the application of entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films in the diagnosis of patients with intestinal neuronal dysplasia type B (IND type B). METHODS: Thirty-six patients with symptoms of long-standing constipation were enrolled in this study. The study took place at the Department of General Surgery, Xiangyang Central Hospital, Hubei Province, China from July 2007 to October 2012. All of them had already been subjected to the tests of barium enema and anorectal manometry and were suspected to be IND type B, but were not confirmed by mucous membrane acetylcholinesterase determination. All underwent the entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films. The data was collected and then analyzed retrospectively. RESULTS: After entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films, 30 out of 36 cases in this group were diagnosed with intestinal neuronal diseases, and then were treated with appropriate surgical treatment. The postoperative pathological diagnosis was IND type B. The other 6 patients in this group still could not be diagnosed explicitly after the test; thus, we treated them with conservative treatment. CONCLUSION: Entire gastrointestinal barium meal combined with multi-temporal abdominal films has the advantage of being able to test the gastrointestinal transfer capabilities and to find physiological and pathological changes simultaneously. It could provide important proof for the diagnosis of patients with intestinal neuronal dysplasia type B.

Time-varying linear and nonlinear parametric model for Granger causality analysis.

Statistical measures such as coherence, mutual information, or correlation are usually applied to evaluate the interactions between two or more signals. However, these methods cannot distinguish directions of flow between two signals. The capability to detect causalities is highly desirable for understanding the cooperative nature of complex systems. The main objective of this work is to present a linear and nonlinear time-varying parametric modeling and identification approach that can be used to detect Granger causality, which may change with time and may not be detected by traditional methods. A numerical example, in which the exact causal influences relationships, is presented to illustrate the performance of the method for time-varying Granger causality detection. The approach is applied to EEG signals to track and detect hidden potential causalities. One advantage of the proposed model, compared with traditional Granger causality, is that the results are easier to interpret and yield additional insights into the transient directed dynamical Granger causality interactions.

[PTEN induces anoikis through its phosphatase activity in hepatocellular carcinoma cells].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect and mechanisms of tumor suppressor gene PTEN on the induction of anoikis of hepatocellular carcinoma SMMC-7721 cells. METHODS: SMMC-7721 cells were transfected with GFP plasmids containing wild-type PTEN or phosphatase inactivating mutant PTEN (C124A-PTEN) in vitro; The PTEN expression and the phosphorylation levels of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) and protein kinase B (PKB/Akt) were detected by Western blotting; Flow cytometry assay and laser scanning confocal microscopy were used to analyze apoptosis in adherent and non-adherent cells. RESULTS: Compared with the control, PTEN expression in the cells transfected with wild-type PTEN increased to 248%, while the phosphorylation level of FAK and Akt decreased 65.2% and 89.1%, respectively; and the anoikis percentage increased from 9.5% to 31.3%. In the cells transfected with C124A-PTEN, neither the phosphorylation of FAK and Akt nor the anoikis percentage had obviously changed, although the PTEN expression enhanced dramatically in comparison with the control. CONCLUSION: Through its phosphatase activity, tumor suppressor gene PTEN can suppress the phosphorylation of FAK and Akt, and induce anoikis in hepatocellular carcinoma cells.

Tumor angiogenesis and its clinical significance in pediatric malignant liver tumor.

AIM: To investigate the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and microvascular density (MVD) count in pediatric malignant liver tumor and their clinical significances. METHODS: Fourteen children with malignant liver tumors including seven hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs), five hepatoblastomas, one malignant mesenchymoma and one rhabdomyosarcoma were studied. Twelve adult HCC samples served as control group. All samples were examined with streptavidin-biotin peroxidase (SP) immunohistochemical staining for VEGF expression and MVD count. RESULTS: VEGF positive expression in all pediatric malignant liver tumors was significantly higher than that in adult HCC (0.4971+/-0.14 vs 0.4027+/-0.03, P<0.05). VEGF expression in pediatric HCC group was also markedly higher than that in adult HCC group (0.5665+/-0.10 vs 0.4027+/-0.03, P<0.01) and pediatric non-HCC group (0.5665+/-0.10 vs 0.4276+/-0.15, P<0.05). The mean value of MVD in pediatric malignant liver tumors was significantly higher than that in adult HCC (33.66+/-12.24 vs 26.52+/-4.38, P<0.05). Furthermore, MVD in pediatric HCC group was significantly higher compared to that in adult HCC group (36.94+/-9.28 vs 26.52+/-4.38, P<0.05), but there was no significant difference compared to the pediatric non-HCC group (36.94+/-9.28 vs 30.37+/-14.61, P>0.05). All 7 children in HCC group died within 2 years, whereas the prognosis in pediatric non-HCC group was better, in which two patients survived more than 5 years. CONCLUSION: Children with malignant liver tumors, especially with HCC, may have extensive angiogenesis that induces a rapid tumor growth and leads to a poor prognosis.

[PTEN induces apoptosis and up-regulates p53 expression in HepG2 cells].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of tumor suppressor gene PTEN on apoptosis and protein expression of p53 in HepG2 cells, as well as to explore its mechanisms. METHODS: HepG2 cells were transfected with GFP plasmids containing wild-type PTEN or G129E-PTEN and C124A-PTEN in vitro. Both the expression of wild-type p53 and the phosphorylation of protein kinase B (PKB/Akt) and focal adhesion kinase (FAK) were detected by Western blotting. Flow cytometry and confocal microscopy were used to analyze apoptosis of the transfected cells. RESULTS: Compared with the control, the expression of phosphorylated FAK and phosphoylated Akt were down-regulated in HepG2 cells transfected with wild-type PTEN (-65%, -93%) and G129E-PTEN (-65%, -35%), whereas the apoptosis percentage increased to (19.8+/-1.2)% and (9.2+/-0.6)%, and p53 expression was up-regulated by 120% and 50%, respectively. However, in the cells transfected with C124A-PTEN, neither the phosphorylation of FAK and Akt nor the apoptosis percentage and p53 expression had changed. CONCLUSION: PTEN can dephosphrylate FAK through its protein phosphatase activity, and suppress phosphorylation of Akt mainly through its lipid phosphatase activity. Consequently, it can induce apoptosis of HepG2 cells and up-regulate p53 expression.

Angiogenesis in rabbit hepatic tumor after transcatheter arterial embolization.

AIM: To investigate the effect of transcatheter arterial embolization (TAE) on angiogenesis of hepatic tumor. METHODS: Twenty New Zealand White rabbits were randomly divided into two groups of 10 each and VX2 carcinoma was implanted in the left medial lobes of the livers. Fourteen days later, a silicon catheter was inserted into the left hepatic artery of rabbit with VX2 hepatic tumor and infusion was performed via the hepatic artery using Lipiodol (the TAE group) or saline (the control group). Rabbits were sacrificed 7 d after treatment and tumor tissues were excised. Expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) protein and microvessel density (MVD) of tumors were examined using immunohistochemistry. The staining intensity of VEGF was evaluated with a computer-assisted image-analyzer. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to detect the VEGF mRNA expression of tumors. RESULTS: MVD was higher in the TAE group compared with the control group (28.6+/-10.6 vs 16.3+/-6.9, P<0.01). Expression of VEGF protein was enhanced after TAE. The staining intensity of VEGF in the TAE group was 0.162+/-0.018, significantly higher than in the control group (0.142+/-0.01, P<0.01). At mRNA level, VEGF165 mRNA was significantly higher in the TAE group compared with the control group (2.58+/-0.42 vs 1.99+/-0.21, P<0.001). MVD was well correlated to VEGF expression in both the TAE group (r=0.69, P<0.05) and the control group (r=0.72, P<0.05). CONCLUSION: TAE promotes the development of neovascularization of residual tumors through up-regulation of VEGF expression, possibly due to hypoxic insult.