Isoliquiritigenin inhibits mouse S180 tumors with a new mechanism that regulates autophagy by GSK-3ß/TNF-α pathway.

In this study, the pharmacokinetic properties and stability of isoliquiritigenin (ILQ) in microsomes were evaluated. The data showed ILQ administrated by i.h had high absorption degree (absolute bioavailability> 90%), and strong elimination ability (average t1/2≈ 67 min). ILQ in rat tissues could reach peak at 0.25 h, and be detected in almost all tissues. In vitro, stability of ILQ in four species liver microsomes were rat > beagle dog > monkey > human > mouse. On the basis of pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles, mechanism of ILQ against S180 was explored. ILQ could not inhibit S180 growth directly in vitro. However, ILQ extremely prohibited S180 tumor volume in vivo. And when TNF-α in NK cells was knocked down by siRNA, ILQ had no inhibiting effect on S180 tumor. ILQ enhanced TNF-α expression in NK cells by FCM detection. Autophagy-associated proteins LC3-II, Beclin-1, ATG-7 were elevated in S180 cells co-cultured with ILQ treating NK cells. When TNF-α was knocked down by siRNA, ILQ could not induce autophagy in S180 tumors. In the NK cells of osteosarcoma patients, TNF-α was negatively correlated with GSK-3ß by ELISA detection. ILQ could inhibit GSK-3ß expression and further increased p65 and c-Rel expression in NK cells. When GSK-3ß was knocked down by siRNA, ILQ did not affect p65 and c-Rel expression. ILQ directly inhibited GSK-3ß and then activated the NF-κB pathway to enhance TNF-α expression in NK cells, which could induce autophagy in sarcomas. The present study supplied a new mechanism for ILQ against tumors.

Detoxification of cancerogenic compounds by lactic acid bacteria strains.

Carcinogens in food are an important issue that threat people's health right now. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) strains as well-known probiotics have shown numerous perspectives in being used as a good food additive to confront cancerogenic compounds in recent years. Some LAB strains can remove cancerogenic compounds from medium environment via direct physical binding and avoid re-pollution of poisonous secondary metabolites which are generated from degradation of cancerogenic compounds. This article presents a whole overview of the physical-binding of LAB strains to such common cancerogenic compounds existed in food and feed environments as mycotoxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), heterocyclic amines (HAs) and pthalic acid esters (PAEs).In most cases, summaries of these published researches show that the binding of LAB strains to cancerogenic compounds is a physical process. Binding sites generally take place in cell wall, and peptidoglycan from LAB cells is the chief binding site. The adsorption of lactic acid bacteria to cancerogenic compounds is strain-specific. Specially, the strains from the two genera Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium show a better potential in binding cancerogenic compounds. Moreover, we firstly used molecular dynamic computer model as a highly potential tool to simulate the binding behavior of peptidoglycan from Lactobacillus acidophilus to DBP, one of pthalic acid esters with genetic toxicity. It was seen that the theoretical data were quite consistent with the experimental results in terms of the ability of this bacterium to bind DBP. Also, the toxicity reduction of cancerogenic compounds by LAB strains could be achieved either in gastrointestinal model or animal tests and clinical researches as well. In conclusion, carefully selected LAB strains should be a good solution as one of safety strategies to reduce potential risk of cancerogenic compounds from food-based products.

An iterative weighted method based on YALL1 for cone-beam X-ray luminescence optical tomography imaging: A phantom experimental study.

Cone-beam X-ray luminescence optical tomography (CB-XLOT) plays an important role in in vivo small animal imaging study, which can non-invasively image the three-dimensional (3-D) distribution of x-ray-excitable nanophosphors deeply embedded in imaged object. However, CB-XLOT suffers from a low spatial resolution due to the ill-posed nature of optical reconstruction. To alleviate the ill-posedness of reconstruction and improve the imaging performance of XLOT, in this paper, we propose an iterative weighted L1 minimization method which is achieved by incorporating YALL1 (Your algorithm for L1 norm problems). The physical phantom experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, where a custom-made cone-beam XLOT system was used as the imaging platform. The experimental results indicate that by applying the proposed iterative weighted strategy to YALL1 method, the reconstruction performance of XLOT can be improved when compared with the conventional YALL1 method.

Screening lactic acid bacteria strains with ability to bind di-n-butyl phthalate via Turbiscan technique.

Di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP) is a ubiquitous environmental contaminant that poses a risk to humans. Previous work indicates that the ability of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) to bind phthalic acid esters is strain-specific. As cell suspensions of LAB strains in aqueous solution are likely to be colloidal dispersions, this study provided a technique to efficiently screen LAB strains that bind DBP via Turbiscan, which has been widely used to measure the stability of emulsions or colloidal dispersions. Eleven LAB strains belonging to Lactobacillus plantarum, Lb. pentosus, Lb. paralimentarius, Lb. helveticus, Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Lb. acidophilus, Bifidobacterium lactis, and Bifidobacterium bifidum species were used in this study, and seven of them were selected to test in an earlier stage of exploring the process for finding a screening method; others were used for a validation test. It was observed that the various values of the 10 h Turbiscan Stability Index (TSI) of the cell suspension from each strain, at the equilibrium time of dispersed particles according to the peak thickness of cell-suspensions as measured by Turbiscan, had significant negative correlations with the DBP-binding percentage of LAB strains. Higher TSI values are correlated with lower binding of bacteria strains to DBP with a correlation coefficient of 0.8292. Cell surface hydrocarbons of LAB strains and their adherence were observed to correlate with DBP-binding percentages and may lead to the different states of aggregation or equilibrium of bacterial cell-suspensions, and the aggregation of bacterial cells resulted in fewer binding sites in the cell wall for DBP. Finally, four LAB strains were randomly selected to verify the feasibility of the method. In all, the findings demonstrate that TSI might be used as a tool to quickly screen strains that bind DBP. The present work could be extended to the removal of other toxic compounds, when screening of high-efficiency strains is required.

A Case of Successful Treatment of Infective Endocarditis Complicated with Intracranial Hemorrhage, and Literature Review.

The risks of neurological deteriorations during open heart surgery under heparinization in patients with infective endocarditis complicated by intracranial hemorrhage remain unknown. The optimal timing for heart surgery is still a point of conflict. We report a case in which a young man who had suffered from infective endocarditis complicated with intracranial hemorrhage successfully received mitral valve replacement on day 9 after the onset of intracranial hemorrhage.

In-depth tanscriptomic analysis on giant freshwater prawns.

Gene discovery in the Malaysian giant freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) has been limited to small scale data collection, despite great interest in various research fields related to the commercial significance of this species. Next generation sequencing technologies that have been developed recently and enabled whole transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq), have allowed generation of large scale functional genomics data sets in a shorter time than was previously possible. Using this technology, transcriptome sequencing of three tissue types: hepatopancreas, gill and muscle, has been undertaken to generate functional genomics data for M. rosenbergii at a massive scale. De novo assembly of 75-bp paired end Ilumina reads has generated 102,230 unigenes. Sequence homology search and in silico prediction have identified known and novel protein coding candidate genes (∼24%), non-coding RNA, and repetitive elements in the transcriptome. Potential markers consisting of simple sequence repeats associated with known protein coding genes have been successfully identified. Using KEGG pathway enrichment, differentially expressed genes in different tissues were systematically represented. The functions of gill and hepatopancreas in the context of neuroactive regulation, metabolism, reproduction, environmental stress and disease responses are described and support relevant experimental studies conducted previously in M. rosenbergii and other crustaceans. This large scale gene discovery represents the most extensive transcriptome data for freshwater prawn. Comparison with model organisms has paved the path to address the possible conserved biological entities shared between vertebrates and crustaceans. The functional genomics resources generated from this study provide the basis for constructing hypotheses for future molecular research in the freshwater shrimp.

A novel and sensitive method for the detection of enrofloxacin in food using time-resolved fluoroimmunoassay.

A time-resolved fluoroimmunoassay (TRFIA) technique is developed to detect enrofloxacin (ENR) contamination in food. By using ENR-ovalbumin, anti-ENR antibodies and europium-labeled goat anti-rabbit antibodies, we establish an indirect and competitive method for ENR-TRFIA. The sensitivity of the method is high, with a detection limit of 0.01 ng/mL. The tests show that the technique's sensitivity is 1 µg/kg in eel, pork and chicken, and 1 µg/L in honey. The detection range attained is 0.01-100 ng/mL and within the detection range the intra- and inter-batch coefficients of variation of the ENR-TRFIA method are 2.4% and 9.2%, respectively. The data obtained from eel samples by TRFIA and enzyme-linked immunoassay are in good agreement. The assay did not cross-react with other quinolones, which commonly exist in food. The study suggests that ENR-TRFIA is a simple, sensitive and economic method of screening large quantities of samples, and has good prospects for application.

Comparing 3-hour pH monitoring in esophagus with 24-hour pH monitoring to diagnose GERD.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Ambulatory pH monitoring is an invasive method and it would bring some discomfort for patients to wear the probe for prolonged periods. A short time pH monitoring may be more acceptable with high compliance. Our aim is to determine whether analyzing a 3-hour (prandial and postprandial) period from an ambulatory 24-hour pH monitoring in esophagus would be as sensitive as the routine test. METHODOLOGY: Patients had been called for esophageal manometry and ambulatory 24-hour pH monitoring. 3-hour data were analyzed from the standard ambulatory 24-hour pH recording. GERD was confirmed if pH was less than 4.0 for more than 4% of 24 hours, the data were then reanalyzed by determining the percent time of pH < 4.0 during a 3-hour period. Kappa test and Mc-nemar test were used in the study. RESULTS: Two hundred twenty-one patients met the entrance criterion. The 3-hour test had a sensitivity of 86% when compared to the 24-hour test and a specificity of 84%. Kappa test and Mc-nemar test verified the two monitor periods were considerable consistency. CONCLUSION: 3-hour analysis is sensitive and specific test for demonstrating GERD. By using this test, patients can suffer less discomfort and appear enhanced compliance.