Study on Flocculation Behavior of Cr(VI) Using a Novel Chitosan Functionalized with Thiol Groups.

In this study, CTS-GSH was prepared by grafting thiol (-SH) groups onto chitosan (CTS), which was characterized through Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectra, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Differential Thermal Analysis-Thermogravimetric Analysis (DTA-TG). The performance of CTS-GSH was evaluated by measuring Cr(VI) removal efficiency. The -SH group was successfully grafted onto CTS, forming a chemical composite, CTS-GSH, with a rough, porous and spatial network surface. All of the molecules tested in this study were efficient at removing Cr(VI) from the solution. The more CTS-GSH added, the more Cr(VI) removed. When a suitable dosage of CTS-GSH was added, Cr(VI) was almost completely removed. The acidic environment at pH 5-6 was beneficial for the removal of Cr(VI), and at pH 6, the maximum removal efficiency was achieved. Further experimentation showed that with 100.0 mg/L CTS-GSH for the disposal of 5.0 mg/L Cr(VI) solution, the removal rate of Cr(VI) reached 99.3% with a slow stirring time of 8.0 min and sedimentation time of 3 h; the presence of four common ions, including Mg2+, Ca2+, SO42- and CO32-, had an inhibitory effect on CTS-GSH's ability to remove Cr(VI) from the aqueous solution, and more CTS-GSH was needed to reduce this inhibiting action. Overall, CTS-GSH exhibited good results in Cr(VI) removal, and thus has good potential for the further treatment of heavy metal wastewater.

A logistic regression model for prediction of glioma grading based on radiomics. / 基于影像组学的logistic回归模型预测胶质瘤分级.

OBJECTIVES: Glioma is the most common intracranial primary tumor in central nervous system. Glioma grading possesses important guiding significance for the selection of clinical treatment and follow-up plan, and the assessment of prognosis. This study aims to explore the feasibility of logistic regression model based on radiomics to predict glioma grading. METHODS: Retrospective analysis was performed on 146 glioma patients with confirmed pathological diagnosis from January, 2012 to December, 2018. A total of 41 radiomics features were extracted from contrast-enhanced T1-weighted imaging (T1WI+C) lesion by manual segmentation. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) was used to select the most-predictive radiomics features for pathological grading and to calculate radiomics score (Rad-score) of each patient. A logistic regression model was built to explore the correlation between giloma grading and Rad-score. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was performed to evaluate the model's predictive ability with area under the curve (AUC) for the evaluation index. Hosmer-Lemeshow test was used to measure the model's predictive accuracy. RESULTS: A total of 5 imaging features selected by LASSO were used to establish a logistic regression model for predicting glioma grading. The model showed good discrimination with AUC value of 0.919. Hosmer-Lemeshow test showed no significant difference between the calibration curve and the ideal curve (P=0.808), indicating high predictive accuracy of the model. CONCLUSIONS: The logistic regression model using radiomics exhibits a relatively high accuracy for predicting glioma grading, which may serve as a complementary tool for preoperative prediction of giloma grading.

Enhancement of Mechanical and Barrier Property of Hemicellulose Film via Crosslinking with Sodium Trimetaphosphate.

Hemicellulose is a kind of biopolymer with abundant resources and excellent biodegradability. Owing to its large number of polar hydroxyls, hemicellulose has a good barrier performance to nonpolar oxygen, making this biopolymer promising as food packaging material. Hydrophilic hydroxyls also make the polymer prone to water absorption, resulting in less satisfied strength especially under humid conditions. Thus, preparation of hemicellulose film with enhanced oxygen and water vapor barrier ability, as well as mechanical strength is still sought after. Herein, sodium trimetaphosphate (STMP) was used as esterification agent to form a crosslinked structure with hemicellulose through esterification reaction to render improved barrier performance by reducing the distance between molecular chains. The thus modified hemicellulose film achieved an oxygen permeability and water vapor permeability of 3.72 cm3 × µm × m-2 × d-1 × kPa-1 and 2.85 × 10-10 × g × m-1 × s-1 × Pa-1, respectively, at the lowest esterification agent addition of 10%. The crosslinked structure also brought good mechanical and thermal properties, with the tensile strength reaching 30 MPa, which is 118% higher than that of the hemicellulose film. Preliminary test of its application in apple preservation showed that the barrier film obtained can effectively slow down the oxidation and dehydration of apples, showing the prospect of application in the field of food packaging.

A Review: Research Progress in Modification of Poly (Lactic Acid) by Lignin and Cellulose.

With the depletion of petroleum energy, the possibility of prices of petroleum-based materials increasing, and increased environmental awareness, biodegradable materials as a kind of green alternative have attracted more and more research attention. In this context, poly (lactic acid) has shown a unique combination of properties such as nontoxicity, biodegradability, biocompatibility, and good workability. However, examples of its known drawbacks include poor tensile strength, low elongation at break, poor thermal properties, and low crystallization rate. Lignocellulosic materials such as lignin and cellulose have excellent biodegradability and mechanical properties. Compounding such biomass components with poly (lactic acid) is expected to prepare green composite materials with improved properties of poly (lactic acid). This paper is aimed at summarizing the research progress of modification of poly (lactic acid) with lignin and cellulose made in in recent years, with emphasis on effects of lignin and cellulose on mechanical properties, thermal stability and crystallinity on poly (lactic acid) composite materials. Development of poly (lactic acid) composite materials in this respect is forecasted.

Barrier Film of Etherified Hemicellulose from Single-Step Synthesis.

Hemicellulose with good biodegradability and low oxygen permeability shows great potential in food packaging. However, its strong hydrophilicity leads to its poor moisture resistance, which hinders its wider application. In this paper, a near-hydrophobic hemicellulose was obtained by using single-step synthesis from poplar powder via etherification modification with epoxy chloropropane. This proposed approach has the advantage of avoiding the destruction of hemicellulose structure by secondary alkali-hydrolysis, which was what usually occurred in traditional etherification procedures. The feasibility of using epoxy chloropropane as an alkylation reagent to etherify hemicellulose was confirmed, and the reaction mechanism was elucidated. Contact angle test, thermogravimetric analysis, oxygen transmittance test, and infrared spectrum analysis showed that the barrier property and thermal stability of etherified hemicellulose films have been significantly improved. At an epoxy chloropropane/wood powder ratio (volume/weight) of 2/3 (mL/g), the epoxy hemicellulose films contained the most epoxy groups and displayed the best performance, i.e., tensile strength of 14.6 MPa, surface contact angle of 71.7° and oxygen transmission coefficient of 1.9 (cm3·µm)/(m2·d·kPa), showing great promise as barrier film in food-packaging.

Hemicellulose-Based Film: Potential Green Films for Food Packaging.

Globally increasing environmental awareness and the possibility of increasing price and dwindling supply of traditional petroleum-based plastics have led to a breadth of research currently addressing environmentally friendly bioplastics as an alternative solution. In this context, hemicellulose, as the second richest polysaccharide, has attracted extensive attention due to its combination of such advantages as abundance, biodegradability, and renewability. Herein, in this review, the latest research progress in development of hemicellulose film with regard to application in the field of food packaging is presented with particular emphasis on various physical and chemical modification approaches aimed at performance improvement, primarily for enhancement of mechanical, barrier properties, and hydrophobicity that are essential to food packing materials. The development highlights of hemicellulose film substrate are outlined and research prospects in the field are described.

Long non-coding RNA TUSC8 inhibits breast cancer growth and metastasis via miR-190b-5p/MYLIP axis.

The lncRNA tumor suppressor candidate 8 (TUSC8) plays a critical role in the development of several cancers. However, the biological functions and underlying molecular mechanisms of TUSC8 with respect to breast cancer remain largely unclear. Here, we found that TUSC8 was significantly down-regulated in breast cancer tissues and its high expression predicted better prognosis of breast cancer patients. Functionally, knock-down of TUSC8 drastically promoted the proliferation, migration and invasion of breast cancer cells in vitro and facilitated tumorigenicity and metastasis in vivo. Mechanistically, the results of luciferase reporter, RIP and RNA pull-down assays proved that TUSC8 functioned as molecular sponge for miR-190b-5p. Furthermore, we showed that TUSC8 served as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) of myosin regulatory light chain interacting protein (MYLIP) through competitively binding with miR-190b-5p and suppressed breast cancer metastasis through regulating the expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) related markers. Clinically, the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analyses revealed that the combination usage of TUSC8 and MYLIP might become novel promising diagnostic biomarkers for breast cancer. Taken together, these results suggested that TUSC8 inhibited breast cancer growth and metastasis via miR-190b-5p/MYLIP axis, providing us new insights into developing potential therapeutic targets for breast cancer patients.

The functional pathway analysis and clinical significance of miR-20a and its related lncRNAs in breast cancer.

BACKGROUND: miR-20a is a critical molecule in various biological processes and cancer progression procedures. However, its relationships with lncRNAs and their functional pathway analysis in breast tumorigenesis are less intensively studied. METHODS: The expression data from TCGA database and multiple bioinformatics resources were used to check the expression levels, survival curves, interactions and functional illustrations of miR-20a and its related lncRNAs (XIST, H19 and MALAT1) in breast cancer patients. The luciferase reporter assays and Pearson's correlation analyses were utilized to verify the direct regulatory relationship between miR-20a and three lncRNAs (XIST, H19 and MALAT1). In vitro cell proliferation, migration and invasion assays, were performed to check the biological effects of miR-20a and XIST in different breast cancer cell lines. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analyses were done for evaluating diagnostic values of serum miR-20a and XIST in breast cancer patients. RESULTS: The miR-20a expression was significantly up-regulated in both breast cancer samples and serum samples, and correlated with poor survival rate in breast cancer patients. LncRNAs (XIST, H19 and MALAT1) directly bound to hsa-miR-20a and were negatively correlated with hsa-miR-20a expression in breast cancer patient samples. For functional illustrations and downstream signaling pathways analysis, XIST, H19 and MALAT1 mainly shared their regulatory functions in cell motility and interleukin signaling in breast cancer progression. Additionally, over-expression of miR-20a and inhibition of XIST promoted breast cancer cell growth, migration and invasion in vitro, and serum miR-20a and XIST served as potential diagnostic biomarkers for breast cancer with the area under ROC curve (AUC) of 0.87 (95% CI = 0.78 to 0.97), and 0.78 (95% CI = 0.67 to 0.89) respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, these findings provide us novel insights and avenues for utilizing miR-20a and its related lncRNAs as potential diagnostic biomarkers and promising therapeutic targets for breast cancer treatment.

[An artificial neural network model for glioma grading using image information].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the feasibility and efficacy of artificial neural network for differentiating high-grade glioma and low-grade glioma using image information.
 Methods: A total of 130 glioma patients with confirmed pathological diagnosis were selected retrospectively from 2012 to 2017. Forty one imaging features were extracted from each subjects based on 2-dimension magnetic resonance T1 weighted imaging with contrast-enhancement. An artificial neural network model was created and optimized according to the performance of feature selection. The training dataset was randomly selected half of the whole dataset, and the other half dataset was used to verify the performance of the neural network for glioma grading. The training-verification process was repeated for 100 times and the performance was averaged.
 Results: A total of 5 imaging features were selected as the ultimate input features for the neural network. The mean accuracy of the neural network for glioma grading was 90.32%, with a mean sensitivity at 87.86% and a mean specificity at 92.49%. The area under the curve of receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.9486.
 Conclusion: As a technique of artificial intelligence, neural network can reach a relatively high accuracy for the grading of glioma and provide a non-invasive and promising computer-aided diagnostic process for the pre-operative grading of glioma.

miR-19b promotes breast cancer metastasis through targeting MYLIP and its related cell adhesion molecules.

miR-19b is a key molecule for cancer development, however its crucial roles in breast cancer metastasis are rarely studied right now. In this study, using several bioinformatics databases to predict the downstream targets for miR-19b, we verified that a novel target gene, myosin regulatory light chain interacting protein (MYLIP), could be directly down-regulated by miR-19b through its 3'-UTR region. MYLIP belongs to the cytoskeletal protein clusters and is involved in the regulation of cell movement and migration. We further explored that miR-19b was highly expressed and negatively correlated with MYLIP expression in breast cancer patient samples from the TCGA database. And the over-expression of miR-19b or inhibition of MYLIP facilitated the migration and metastasis of breast cancer cells, through conducting the wound healing assay and transwell invasion assay. Additionally, miR-19b could obviously promote breast tumor growth in mouse models and affect the expressions of cell adhesion molecules (including E-Cadherin, ICAM-1 and Integrin ß1) by down-regulating E-Cadherin expression and up-regulating ICAM-1 and Integrin ß1 expressions in vitro and in vivo. Meanwhile, miR-19b effectively activated the Integrin ß downstream signaling pathways (such as the Ras-MAPK pathway and the PI3K-AKT pathway) and elevated the expression levels of essential genes in these two pathways. Taken together, these findings comprehensively illustrate the regulatory mechanisms ofmiR-19b in breast cancer metastasis, and provide us new insights for exploring MYLIP and its related cell adhesion molecules as promising therapeutic targets to interfere breast cancer development.

DDX3X promotes the biogenesis of a subset of miRNAs and the potential roles they played in cancer development.

DDX3X, located on the X-chromosome, belongs to the DEAD-box RNA helicase family and acts as a key RNA-binding protein to exert its regulatory functions in various biological processes. In this paper, knock-down the expression of DDX3X can affect a subset of miRNA expression levels, especially for miR-1, miR-141, miR-145, miR-19b, miR-20a and miR-34a. Through adopting the immunoprecipitation (IP), RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP), dual luciferase reporter assays, we illustrate that DDX3X could interact with Drosha/DGCR8 complex, elevate the processing activity of Drosha/DGCR8 complex on pri-miRNAs, and increase mature miRNA expression levels. For the studies of potential roles and biological functions of DDX3X-dependent miRNAs and their downstream target genes in multiple cancers, we use the primary data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) and several miRNA target prediction databases, to systematically analyze the expression levels of DDX3X-dependent miRNAs in almost 14 kinds of cancers versus normal tissues, and the essential biological functions for their putative downstream target genes. All these findings will provide us novel insights and directions for thoroughly exploring the regulatory mechanisms of miRNA biogenesis, and shed light on effectively searching the clinical significances and biological roles of DDX3X-dependent miRNAs and their target genes in cancer development.

Multifunctional DDX3: dual roles in various cancer development and its related signaling pathways.

DEAD-box RNA helicase 3 (DDX3) is a highly conserved family member of DEAD-box protein, which is a cluster of ATP-dependent and the largest family of RNA helicase. DEAD-box family is characterized by the regulation of ATPase and helicase activities, the modulation of RNA metabolism, and the actors of RNA binding proteins or molecular chaperones to interact with other proteins or RNA. For DDX3, it exerts its multifaceted roles in viral manipulation, stress response, hypoxia, radiation response and apoptosis, and is closely related to cancer development and progression. DDX3 has dual roles in different cancer types and can act as either an oncogene or tumor suppressor gene during cancer progression. In the present review, we mainly provide an overview of current knowledge on dual roles of DDX3 in various types of cancer, including breast cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, oral squamous cell carcinoma, Ewing sarcoma, glioblastoma multiforme and gallbladder carcinoma, and illustrate the regulatory mechanisms for leading these two controversial biological effects. Furthermore, we summarize the essential signaling pathways that DDX3 participated, especially the Wnt/ß-catenin signaling and EMT related signaling (TGF-ß, Notch, Hedgehog pathways), which are crucial to DDX3 mediated cancer metastasis process. Thoroughly exploring the dual roles of DDX3 in cancer development and the essential signaling pathways it involved, it will help us open new perspectives to develop novel promising targets to elevate therapeutic effects and facilitate the "Personalized medicine" or "Precision medicine" to come into clinic.

Role of multifaceted regulators in cancer glucose metabolism and their clinical significance.

Aberrant glucose metabolism, "aerobic glycolysis" or "Warburg effect", is a hallmark of human cancers. There is a cluster of "multifaceted regulators", which plays a pivotal role in the regulation of glucose metabolism. They can not only modulate the activities of specific enzymes, but also act as transcriptional activators to regulate the expression of metabolism related genes. Additionally, they can crosstalk with other key factors involved in glucose metabolism and work together to initiate multiple oncogenic processes. These "multifaceted regulators", especially p53, HIF-1, TIGAR and microRNA, will be focused in this review. And we will comprehensively illustrate their regulatory effects on cancer glucose metabolism, and further elaborate on their clinical significance. In-depth elucidation the role of "multifaceted regulators" in cancer glucose metabolism will provide us novel insights in cancer research field and offer promising therapeutic targets for anti-cancer therapies.