The survival benefit from surgery on patients with large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma in the lung: a propensity-score matching study.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to investigate the prognostic significance of surgery in large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNC) patients. METHODS: A total of 453 patients from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database diagnosed with stage T1-4N0-2M0 LCNC from 2010 to 2015 were analyzed. The propensity-score matching analysis with a ratio of 1:1 was used to minimize the bias effect of other clinical characteristics, and 77 pairs of patients' data were performed for subsequent statistical analysis. The Cox proportional hazards model, Kaplan-Meier analysis, and Log-rank test were used in the present study. The primary observational endpoint was cancer-specific survival (CSS). RESULTS: The 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year CSS rates were 60.0%, 45.0%, and 42.0% in those 453 LCNC patients. Compared with patients who underwent surgical resection, patients without surgery had a lower 5-year CSS rate (18.0% vs. 52.0%, P < 0.001). After analyses of multivariable Cox regression, chemotherapy, T stage, N stage, and surgery were identified as independent prognostic indicators (all P < 0.05). In the cohort of old patients, the median survival time was longer in cases after surgery than those without surgery (13.0 months vs. NA, P < 0.001). Besides, in patients with different clinical characteristics, the receiving surgery was a protective prognostic factor (all hazard ratio < 1, all P < 0.05). In addition, for the cohort with stage T1-2N0-2M0, patients after the operation had more improved outcomes than patients without surgery (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: We proposed that the surgery could improve the survival outcomes of LCNC patients with stage T1-4N0-2M0. Moreover, old patients could benefit from surgery.

Isolation of cadmium-resistant microbial strains and their immobilisation of cadmium in soil.

Six cadmium (Cd)-resistant microbial strains were isolated and their ability to immobilise Cd2+ in soil investigated. Cd-1, Cd-2, Cd-5, and Cd-6 were identified as Stenotrophomonas sp., Cd-3 as Achromobacter sp., and Cd-7 as Staphylococcus sp. The six strains showed a wide adaptation range for salinity and a strong tolerance to Cd2+. The effects of the initial Cd2+ concentration (1-100 mg/L), duration (18-72 h), temperature (10-40 °C), and pH (5.0-9.0) on the efficiency of Cd2+ removal were analysed. The results revealed that the Cd2+ removal rate was higher at an initial Cd2+ concentration of 5-100 mg/L than at 1 mg/L. The maximum Cd2+ removal effect was at a culture duration of 36 h, temperature of 10-35 °C, and pH of 5.0-7.0. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed that the Cd2+ was immobilised by Stenotrophomonas sp. Cd-2 and Staphylococcus sp. Cd-7 through bio-precipitation. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) revealed that the Cd2+ was adsorbed by Stenotrophomonas sp. Cd-2, Achromobacter sp. Cd-3, and Staphylococcus sp. Cd-7. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis revealed that the isolates reacted with the Cd2+ mainly through the O-H, protein N-H, C-N, lipid C-H, fatty acid COO, polysaccharide C-O, P-O, and other functional groups, as well as with lipid molecules on the cell wall surfaces. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis revealed that there was little difference in the cells after Cd2+ treatment. The results of the soil remediation experiments indicated that the toxicity of Cd in soil could be effectively reduced using certain strains of microbe.

Prediction of the Disordered Regions of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins Based on the Molecular Functions.

BACKGROUND: Intrinsically disordered proteins lack a well-defined three dimensional structure under physiological conditions while possessing the essential biological functions. They take part in various physiological processes such as signal transduction, transcription and posttranslational modifications and etc. The disordered regions are the main functional sites for intrinsically disordered proteins. Therefore, the research of the disordered regions has become a hot issue. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, our motivation is to analysis of the features of disordered regions with different molecular functions and predict of different disordered regions using valid features. METHODS: In this article, according to the different molecular function, we firstly divided intrinsically disordered proteins into six classes in DisProt database. Then, we extracted four features using bioinformatics methods, namely, Amino Acid Index (AAIndex), codon frequency (Codon), three kinds of protein secondary structure compositions (3PSS) and Chemical Shifts (CSs), and used these features to predict the disordered regions of the different functions by Support Vector Machine (SVM). RESULTS: The best overall accuracy was 99.29% using the chemical shift (CSs) as feature. In feature fusion, the overall accuracy can reach 88.70% by using CSs+AAIndex as features. The overall accuracy was up to 86.09% by using CSs+AAIndex+Codon+3PSS as features. CONCLUSION: We predicted and analyzed the disordered regions based on the molecular functions. The results showed that the prediction performance can be improved by adding chemical shifts and AAIndex as features, especially chemical shifts. Moreover, the chemical shift was the most effective feature in the prediction. We hoped that our results will be constructive for the study of intrinsically disordered proteins.