Wearable Motion Analysis System for Thoracic Spine Mobility With Inertial Sensors.

This study presents a wireless wearable portable system designed for the automatic quantitative spatio-temporal analysis of continuous thoracic spine motion across various planes and degrees of freedom (DOF). This includes automatic motion segmentation, computation of the range of motion (ROM) for six distinct thoracic spine movements across three planes, tracking of motion completion cycles, and visualization of both primary and coupled thoracic spine motions. To validate the system, this study employed an Inter-days experimental setting to conduct experiments involving a total of 957 thoracic spine movements, with participation from two representatives of varying age and gender. The reliability of the proposed system was assessed using the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and Standard Error of Measurement (SEM). The experimental results demonstrated strong ICC values for various thoracic spine movements across different planes, ranging from 0.774 to 0.918, with an average of 0.85. The SEM values ranged from 0.64° to 4.03°, with an average of 1.93°. Additionally, we successfully conducted an assessment of thoracic spine mobility in a stroke rehabilitation patient using the system. This illustrates the feasibility of the system for actively analyzing thoracic spine mobility, offering an effective technological means for non-invasive research on thoracic spine activity during continuous movement states.

Increased LOXL2 expression is related to poor prognosis in lung squamous cell carcinoma.

Background: The lysyl oxidate-like (LOXL) family was reported to be involved in the process of cancer development. However, the prognostic value of LOXL in lung cancer is unknown. We aimed to study the expression pattern and prognostic value of LOXL family members in lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC). Methods: The Wilcoxon test and logistic regression analysis were used to study the expression level of LOXLs and its correlation with clinical characteristics. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression analysis were performed to estimate the correlation of LOXsL expression with the survival of LUSC patients. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves were plotted, and areas under the curves (AUCs) were calculated to estimate the diagnostic and prognostic power of LOXL. Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assays, wound healing assays and Transwell assays were used to estimate the impact of LOXL2 on LUSC cells. Results: LOXL1 and LOXL2 expression was upregulated in LUSC tissues (P<0.001). LOXL1 and LOXL2 showed high diagnostic power in LUSC patients, with AUCs of 0.784 and 0.751, respectively. Patients with high LOXL2 expression levels showed poor overall survival (OS) (P=0.019) and progression-free survival (PFS) (P=0.015). High LOXL2 expression was an independent prognostic factor for poor survival (P=0.026). Inhibition of LOXL2 suppressed proliferation, migration and invasion in LUSC cell lines. Conclusions: Increased LOXL2 was related to poor survival in LUSC. LOXL2 may be a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target in LUSC.

Recognizing Continuous Multiple Degrees of Freedom Foot Movements With Inertial Sensors.

Recognition of continuous foot motions is important in robot-assisted lower limb rehabilitation, especially in prosthesis and exoskeleton design. For instance, perceiving foot motion is essential feedback for the robot controller. However, few studies have focused on perceiving multiple-degree of freedom (DOF) foot movements. This paper proposes a novel human-machine interaction (HMI) recognition wearable system for continuous multiple-DOF ankle-foot movements. The proposed system uses solely kinematic signals from inertial measurement units and multiclass support vector machines by creating error-correcting output codes. We conducted a study with multiple participants to validate the performance of the system using two strategies, a general model and a subject-specific model. The experimental results demonstrated satisfactory performance. The subject-specific approach achieved 98.45% ± 1.17% (mean ± SD) overall accuracy within a prediction time of 10.9 ms ± 1.7 ms, and the general approach achieved 85.3% ± 7.89% overall accuracy within a prediction time of 14.1 ms ± 4.5 ms. The results prove that the proposed system can more effectively recognize multiple continuous DOF foot movements than existing strategies. It can be applied to ankle-foot rehabilitation and fills the HMI high-level control demand for multiple-DOF wearable lower-limb robotics.

Anti prostate cancer therapy: Aptamer-functionalized, curcumin and cabazitaxel co-delivered, tumor targeted lipid-polymer hybrid nanoparticles.

Prostate cancer (PC) is the most common type of newly diagnosed malignancy in men. Combined chemotherapy has been shown to be an effective strategy for the treatment of PC therapy. Lipid-polymer hybrid nanoparticles (LPNs) are core-shell nanoparticles composed of a polymer core and a lipid shell, which are reported to provide significant advantages for combined PC therapy. This study synthesized an aptamer conjugated ligand and designed an aptamer-functionalized, curcumin (CUR) and cabazitaxel (CTX) co-delivered LPNs (APT-CUR/CTX-LPNs). APT-CUR/CTX-LPNs had a mean size of 121.3 ± 4.2 nm and a positive surface charge (23.5 ± 2.6 mV). Both CUR and CTX were sustained released from LPNs. Aptamer-functionalized APT-CUR/CTX-LPNs exhibited good cell inhibition ability, high tumor accumulation, and remarkable tumor inhibition efficiency at the drug ratio of 2:5 (CUR:CTX). The novel LPNs offers great promise for the double drugs delivery to the prostate cancer cells and tumor xenograft in vivo, showing the potential of synergistic combination therapy for prostate cancer.

Improving lung cancer treatment: Hyaluronic acid­modified and glutathione­responsive amphiphilic TPGS­doxorubicin prodrug­entrapped nanoparticles.

Lung cancer nanotherapeutics aim to overcome the limitations of conventional therapeutic methods. In the present study, a self­assembled amphiphilic prodrug­based nanocarrier delivery system was developed that exhibited high therapeutic efficiency. D­alpha­tocopheryl polyethylene glycol 1000 succinate (TPGS) conjugated to doxorubicin (DOX) through disulfide (S­S) bonds to constitute TPGS­S­S­DOX was synthesized; furthermore, hyaluronic acid (HA) was conjugated to TPGS to obtain HA­TPGS. TPGS­S­S­DOX prodrug­based and HA­TPGS ligand­modified nanoparticles (HA­TPGS DOX­NPs) were prepared for the treatment of lung cancer. In vitro and in vivo evaluation of the system was performed on lung cancer cell lines and lung tumor­bearing mice. HA­TPGS DOX­NPs had a uniformly spherical shape with a white core and grey shell, with a size of 172.3 nm and a polydispersity index of 0.16. All of the NPs exhibited a drug encapsulation efficiency of >90%. The blank NPs exhibited low toxicity to all the tested cell lines, resulting in viabilities of >85%. HA­TPGS DOX­NPs had a more prominent in vitro antitumor effect than the other NPs tested, with cell viabilities of 80.2, 73.4, 57.8, 39.1, 28.3 and 10.9% observed after 72 h of incubation with 0.01, 0.05, 0.1, 0.5, 1 and 5 µM, respectively. The in vivo results demonstrated that HA­TPGS DOX­NPs had the highest antitumor efficacy, with 10.5% tumor inhibition efficiency after 28 days of injection. Overall, HA­TPGS DOX­NPs had significant antitumor effects and minimal systemic toxicity, and their application may be a promising strategy for the treatment of lung cancer.