Enhanced focal cortical dysplasia detection in pediatric frontal lobe epilepsy with asymmetric radiomic and morphological features.

Objective: Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) is the most common pathological cause for pediatric epilepsy, with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) being the most prevalent in the pediatric population. We attempted to utilize radiomic and morphological methods on MRI and PET to detect FCD in children with FLE. Methods: Thirty-seven children with FLE and 20 controls were included in the primary cohort, and a five-fold cross-validation was performed. In addition, we validated the performance in an independent site of 12 FLE children. A two-stage experiments including frontal lobe and subregions were employed to detect the lesion area of FCD, incorporating the asymmetric feature between the left and right hemispheres. Specifically, for the radiomics approach, we used gray matter (GM), white matter (WM), GM and WM, and the gray-white matter boundary regions of interest to extract features. Then, we employed a Multi-Layer Perceptron classifier to achieve FCD lesion localization based on both radiomic and morphological methods. Results: The Multi-Layer Perceptron model based on the asymmetric feature exhibited excellent performance both in the frontal lobe and subregions. In the primary cohort and independent site, the radiomics analysis with GM and WM asymmetric features had the highest sensitivity (89.2 and 91.7%) and AUC (98.9 and 99.3%) in frontal lobe. While in the subregions, the GM asymmetric features had the highest sensitivity (85.6 and 79.7%). Furthermore, relying on the highest sensitivity of GM and WM asymmetric features in frontal lobe, when integrated with the subregions results, our approach exhibited overlaps with GM asymmetric features (55.4 and 52.4%), as well as morphological asymmetric features (54.4 and 53.8%), both in the primary cohort and at the independent site. Significance: This study demonstrates that a two-stage design based on the asymmetry of radiomic and morphological features can improve FCD detection. Specifically, incorporating regions of interest for GM, WM, GM, and WM, and the gray-white matter boundary significantly enhances the localization capabilities for lesion detection within the radiomics approach.

Automatic Localization of Seizure Onset Zone Based on Multi-Epileptogenic Biomarkers Analysis of Single-Contact from Interictal SEEG.

Successful surgery on drug-resistant epilepsy patients (DRE) needs precise localization of the seizure onset zone (SOZ). Previous studies analyzing this issue still face limitations, such as inadequate analysis of features, low sensitivity and limited generality. Our study proposed an innovative and effective SOZ localization method based on multiple epileptogenic biomarkers (spike and HFOs), and analysis of single-contact (MEBM-SC) to address the above problems. We extracted contacts epileptic features from signal distributions and signal energy based on machine learning and end-to-end deep learning. Among them, a normalized pathological ripple rate was designed to reduce the disturbance of physiological ripple and enhance the performance of SOZ localization. Then, a feature selection algorithm based on Shapley value and hypothetical testing (ShapHT+) was used to limit interference from irrelevant features. Moreover, an attention mechanism and a focal loss algorithm were used on the classifier to learn significant features and overcome the unbalance of SOZ/nSOZ contacts. Finally, we provided an SOZ prediction and visualization on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Ten patients with DRE were selected to verify our method. The experiment performed cross-validation and revealed that MEBM-SC obtains higher sensitivity. Additionally, the spike has better sensitivity while HFOs have better specificity, and the combination of these biomarkers can achieve the best performance. The study confirmed that MEBM-SC can increase the sensitivity and accuracy of SOZ localization and help clinicians to perform a precise and reliable preoperative evaluation based on interictal SEEG.

Pt(IV) Prodrugs Designed to Embed in Nanotubes of a Polysaccharide for Drug Delivery.

Cisplatin exhibits a sufficient killing effect on cancer cells; however, it damages normal cells simultaneously. Herein, we developed a prodrug delivery system based on branched ß-(1→3)-d-glucan. This natural biomacromolecule-based polysaccharide nanotube was modified with cisplatin embedded in the hollow cavity (BFCP), showing high anticancer activity and low toxicity in vitro. It is a broad-prospect system, which is based on biocompatible nanomaterials loaded with Pt(IV) prodrugs for cancer cell absorption with subsequent release in tumors by utilizing the intracellular reducibility. BFCP chains adopted a nanotube conformation in water, observed by transmission electron microscopy. In comparison to cisplatin, the Pt(IV) prodrugs not only displayed better antitumor properties but also had significant tumor targeting. A potent natural complex conjugated with redox-responsive platinum prodrugs is a significantly efficient tumor drug demonstrated in vitro and in vivo.

Selective Chemical Labeling and Sequencing of 5-Carboxylcytosine in DNA at Single-Base Resolution.

5-Carboxylcytosine (5caC) plays a vital role in the dynamics of DNA demethylation, and sequencing of its sites will help us dig out more biological functions of 5caC. Herein, we present a novel chemical method to efficiently label 5caC distinguished from other bases in DNA. Combined with bisulfite sequencing, 5caC sites can be located at single-base resolution, and the efficiency of 5caC labeling is 92% based on the Sanger sequencing data. Furthermore, dot blot assays have confirmed that 5caC-containing DNA isolated from HeLa cells was successfully labeled using our method. We expect that our strategy can be further applied to selectively tagging other carboxyl-modified bases and mapping their sites in RNA.

Qualitative and quantitative detection of methylation at CpG sites using the fluorescein-dGTP incorporated asymmetric PCR assay strategy.

The methylation status of each CpG site can be monitored by Fl-dGTP incorporated asymmetric PCR assay. The ability of quantitative detection makes it a good choice for detecting partial methylation at CpG sites compared with others. And the monitoring is not limited to sites within PCR primers or restriction enzyme-recognition sites.