Selection and validation of reference genes for qPCR analysis of differentiation and maturation of THP-1 cells into M1 macrophage-like cells.

For cell-based assays studying monocytes and macrophages, the immortalized monocyte cell line THP-1 is widely used and stimulated with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and/or interferon-γ (IFN-γ), after which it differentiates and polarizes into proinflammatory M1-like macrophages. For the quantification of this and the effect of different factors affecting these processes, the expression levels of various maturation markers are determined using reverse transcription-quantitative PCR. For this purpose, stably expressed reference genes are crucial. However, no studies evaluating the stability of reference genes in THP-1 cells stimulated with LPS and IFN-γ have been performed. Therefore, this paper describes the selection of the most used reference genes [RPL37A (ribosomal protein L37a), GAPDH (glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase), UBC (ubiquitin C), B2M (0ß2-microbulin), ACTB (ß-actin) and PPIA (cyclophilin A)], the in silico primer design, the analysis and the validation of these in accordance with the MIQE (Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments) guidelines and more recent recommendations for the validation of the stability of reference genes. Using the RefFinder platform, including the four most popular algorithms for reference gene validation, the Delta CT, BestKeeper, NormFinder and geNorm, we find the reference genes GAPDH and UBC to be the most stable. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the normalization of gene expression data using the least stable reference genes, ACTB and B2M, dramatically affects the interpretation of experimental data. Taken together, it is vital to validate the stability of reference genes under the specific experimental conditions used when utilizing the THP-1 monocyte model system.

Spontaneous tendon rupture in a patient with systemic sclerosis: a case report.

BACKGROUND: Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an incurable autoimmune disease characterized by progressive skin fibrosis and organ failure. Tenosynovitis is a common musculoskeletal manifestation, but tendon rupture has seldom reported in SSc. CASE PRESENTATION: We present a rare case of a 49-year-old female with SSc who has suffered from bilateral tendon rupture of the fourth and fifth digits with positive antinuclear antibody (ANA) and anti-centromere B antibody, but negative rheumatoid factor in serum. In the extensor tendons of the patient's hands, inflammation, edema, hypertrophy and tendon interruption were detected with ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging(MRI). Tendon transfer repair surgery was performed and 10 mg/week methotrexate was then used in this patient. Her hand function was improved well with methotrexate and rehabilitation treatment postoperatively. CONCLUSIONS: Early detection of tenosynovitis is necessary to prevent tendon rupture in SSc patients. Ultrasound and Magnetic Resonance Imaging appear to be useful examinations for evaluating tendon pathology for early detection.

Efficacy of lianhuaqingwen granules in the management of chronic rhinosinusitis without nasal polyps.

OBJECTIVES: Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is a complicated disease with clinical symptoms that are impacted by the absence or presence of nasal polyps (CRSsNP or CRSwNP). Understanding of the different treatments of CRS is very significant in selecting appropriate therapies and preventing exacerbation relevant to this chronic inflammation. This study was aimed to evaluate the effect of Chinese traditional medicine lianhuaqingwen granules on CRSsNP. MATERIALS AND METHODS: CRSsNP patients were enrolled and randomized into placebo or lianhuaqingwen (LHQW) granules treatment group (placebo or LHQW group). Their clinical symptoms were scored using Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and Sino-Nasal Outcome Test (SNOT)-22. Nitric oxide (NO) from nasal cavity and sinus and nasal resistance were also examined. Then, nasal biopsy samples and nasal lavage fluid (NLF) were obtained from these patients, and histologic characteristics of nasal mucosa and T cell subpopulations patterns in the NLF were evaluated. Finally, inflammatory mediators in the NLF were assessed in both groups. RESULTS: One hundred and forty patients with CRSsNP finished this one-month study. VAS and SNOT-22 scores and nasal resistance were all decreased distinctly after the treatment of LHQW, but not after placebo. However, the nasal NO concentration was increased in LHQW administration group in comparison with placebo group. There were significant differences in above parameters between these two treatments. Histologic changes in nasal mucosa were improved only in LHQW group. CD4+ and CD8+ T cells were all downregulated in the LHQW treatment group, but not in placebo group. Inflammatory mediators from the NLF were decreased in LHQW treatment group compared to placebo group. Furthermore, there were significant changes between these two groups in CD4+ and CD8+ T cell subpopulations and concentrations of inflammatory substances. CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate that LHQW granules treatment may control the inflammation in nasal mucosa and result in the improvement of CRSsNP. This Chinese medicine might become a promising therapy in the management of this disease.

BM-IQE: An Image Quality Evaluator with Block-Matching for Both Real-Life Scenes and Remote Sensing Scenes.

Like natural images, remote sensing scene images; of which the quality represents the imaging performance of the remote sensor, also suffer from the degradation caused by imaging system. However, current methods measuring the imaging performance in engineering applications require for particular image patterns and lack generality. Therefore, a more universal approach is demanded to assess the imaging performance of remote sensor without constraints of land cover. Due to the fact that existing general-purpose blind image quality assessment (BIQA) methods cannot obtain satisfying results on remote sensing scene images; in this work, we propose a BIQA model of improved performance for natural images as well as remote sensing scene images namely BM-IQE. We employ a novel block-matching strategy called Structural Similarity Block-Matching (SSIM-BM) to match and group similar image patches. In this way, the potential local information among different patches can get expressed; thus, the validity of natural scene statistics (NSS) feature modeling is enhanced. At the same time, we introduce several features to better characterize and express remote sensing images. The NSS features are extracted from each group and the feature vectors are then fitted to a multivariate Gaussian (MVG) model. This MVG model is therefore used against a reference MVG model learned from a corpus of high-quality natural images to produce a basic quality estimation of each patch (centroid of each group). The further quality estimation of each patch is obtained by weighting averaging of its similar patches' basic quality estimations. The overall quality score of the test image is then computed through average pooling of the patch estimations. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed BM-IQE method can not only outperforms other BIQA methods on remote sensing scene image datasets but also achieve competitive performance on general-purpose natural image datasets as compared to existing state-of-the-art FR/NR-IQA methods.

Non-iterative method for camera calibration.

This paper presents a new and effective technique to calibrate a camera without nonlinear iteration optimization. To this end, the centre-of-distortion is accurately estimated firstly. Based on the radial distortion division model, point correspondences between model plane and its image were used to compute the homography and distortion coefficients afterwards. Once the homographies of calibration images are obtained, the camera intrinsic parameters are solved analytically. All the solution techniques applied in this calibration process are non-iterative that do not need any initial guess, with no risk of local minima. Moreover, estimation of the distortion coefficients and intrinsic parameters could be successfully decoupled, yielding the more stable and reliable result. Both simulative and real experiments have been carried out to show that the proposed method is reliable and effective. Without nonlinear iteration optimization, the proposed method is computationally efficient and can be applied to real-time online calibration.

Downregulation of EphA5 by promoter methylation in human prostate cancer.

BACKGROUND: EphA5 is a member of the Eph/ephrin family and plays a critical role in the regulation of carcinogenesis. A significant reduction of EphA5 transcripts in high-grade prostate cancer tissue was shown using a transcriptomic analysis, compared to the low-grade prostate cancer tissue. As less is known about the mechanism of EphA5 downregulation and the function of EphA5, here we investigated the expression and an epigenetic change of EphA5 in prostate cancer and determined if these findings were correlated with clinicopathologic characteristics of prostate cancer. METHODS: Seven prostate cell lines (RWPE-1, LNCap, LNCap-LN3, CWR22rv-1, PC-3, PC-3M-LN4, and DU145), thirty-nine BPH, twenty-two primary prostate carcinomas, twenty-three paired noncancerous and cancerous prostate tissues were examined via qRT-PCR, methylation-specific PCR, bisulfite sequencing, immunohistochemistry and western blotting. The role of EphA5 in prostate cancer cell migration and invasion was examined by wound healing and transwell assay. RESULTS: Downregulation or loss of EphA5 mRNA or protein expression was detected in 28 of 45 (62.2%) prostate carcinomas, 2 of 39 (5.1%) hyperplasias, and all 6 prostate cancer cell lines. Methylation of the EphA5 promoter region was present in 32 of 45 (71.1%) carcinoma samples, 3 of 39 (7.7%) hyperplasias, and the 6 prostate cancer cell lines. Among 23 paired prostate carcinoma tissues, 16 tumor samples exhibited the hypermethylation of EphA5, and 15 of these 16 specimens (93.8%) shown the downregulation of EphA5 expression than that of their respectively matched noncancerous samples. Immunostaining analysis demonstrated that the EphA5 protein was absent or down-regulated in 10 of 13 (76.9%) available carcinoma samples, and 8 of these 10 samples (80.0%) exhibited hypermethylation. The frequency of EphA5 methylation was higher in cancer patients with an elevated Gleason score or T3-T4 staging. Following the treatment of 6 prostate cancer cell lines with 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine, the levels of EphA5 mRNA were significantly increased. Prostate cancer cells invasion and migration were significantly suppressed by ectopic expression of EphA5 in vitro. CONCLUSION: Our study provides evidence that EphA5 is a potential target for epigenetic silencing in primary prostate cancer and is a potentially valuable prognosis predictor and thereapeutic marker for prostate cancer.

Beyond fullerenes: design of nonfullerene acceptors for efficient organic photovoltaics.

New electron-acceptor materials are long sought to overcome the small photovoltage, high-cost, poor photochemical stability, and other limitations of fullerene-based organic photovoltaics. However, all known nonfullerene acceptors have so far shown inferior photovoltaic properties compared to fullerene benchmark [6,6]-phenyl-C60-butyric acid methyl ester (PC60BM), and there are as yet no established design principles for realizing improved materials. Herein we report a design strategy that has produced a novel multichromophoric, large size, nonplanar three-dimensional (3D) organic molecule, DBFI-T, whose π-conjugated framework occupies space comparable to an aggregate of 9 [C60]-fullerene molecules. Comparative studies of DBFI-T with its planar monomeric analogue (BFI-P2) and PC60BM in bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells, by using a common thiazolothiazole-dithienosilole copolymer donor (PSEHTT), showed that DBFI-T has superior charge photogeneration and photovoltaic properties; PSEHTT:DBFI-T solar cells combined a high short-circuit current (10.14 mA/cm(2)) with a high open-circuit voltage (0.86 V) to give a power conversion efficiency of 5.0%. The external quantum efficiency spectrum of PSEHTT:DBFI-T devices had peaks of 60-65% in the 380-620 nm range, demonstrating that both hole transfer from photoexcited DBFI-T to PSEHTT and electron transfer from photoexcited PSEHTT to DBFI-T contribute substantially to charge photogeneration. The superior charge photogeneration and electron-accepting properties of DBFI-T were further confirmed by independent Xenon-flash time-resolved microwave conductivity measurements, which correctly predict the relative magnitudes of the conversion efficiencies of the BHJ solar cells: PSEHTT:DBFI-T > PSEHTT:PC60BM > PSEHTT:BFI-P2. The results demonstrate that the large size, multichromophoric, nonplanar 3D molecular design is a promising approach to more efficient organic photovoltaic materials.

Radiomic Prediction of CCND1 Expression Levels and Prognosis in Low-grade Glioma Based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

OJECTIVES: Low-grade glioma (LGG) is associated with increased mortality owing to recrudescence and the tendency for malignant transformation. Therefore, it is imperative to discover novel prognostic biomarkers as existing traditional prognostic biomarkers of glioma, including clinicopathological features and imaging examinations, are unable to meet the clinical demand for precision medicine. Accordingly, we aimed to evaluate the prognostic value of cyclin D1 (CCND1) expression levels and construct radiomic models to predict these levels in patients with LGG MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 412 LGG cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) were used for gene-based prognostic analysis. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images stored in The Cancer Imaging Archive with genomic data from TCGA, 149 cases were selected for radiomics feature extraction and model construction. After feature extraction, the radiomic signature was constructed using logistic regression (LR) and support vector machine (SVM) analyses. RESULTS: CCND1 was identified as a prognosis-related gene with differential expression in tumor and normal samples and plays a role in regulating both the cell cycle and immune response. Landmark analysis revealed that high-expression levels of CCND1 were beneficial for survival (P < 0.05) in advanced LGG. Four optimal radiomics features were selected to construct radiomics models. The performance of LR and SVM achieved areas under the curve of 0.703 and 0.705, as well as 0.724 and 0.726 in the training and validation sets, respectively. CONCLUSION: Elevated levels of CCND1 expression could impact the prognosis of patients with LGG. MRI-based radiomics, especially the AUC values, can serve as a novel tool for predicting CCND1 expression and understanding the correlation between elevated CCND1 expression and prognosis. AVAILABILITY OF DATA AND MATERIALS: The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the TCGA, TCIA, UCSC XENA and GTEx repository, https://portal.gdc.cancer.gov/, https://www.cancerimagingarchive.net/, https://xenabrowser.net/datapages/, https://www.gtexportal.org/home/.

High-mobility n-type conjugated polymers based on electron-deficient tetraazabenzodifluoranthene diimide for organic electronics.

High-mobility p-type and ambipolar conjugated polymers have been widely reported. However, high-mobility n-type conjugated polymers are still rare. Herein we present poly(tetraazabenzodifluoranthene diimide)s, PBFI-T and PBFI-BT, which exhibit a novel two-dimensional (2D) π-conjugation along the main chain and in the lateral direction, leading to high-mobility unipolar n-channel transport in field-effect transistors. The n-type polymers exhibit electron mobilities of up to 0.30 cm(2)/(V s), which is among the highest values for unipolar n-type conjugated polymers. Complementary inverters incorporating n-channel PBFI-T transistors produced nearly perfect switching characteristics with a high gain of 107.

Mobile robotics platform for strawberry temporal-spatial yield monitoring within precision indoor farming systems.

Plant phenotyping and production management are emerging fields to facilitate Genetics, Environment, & Management (GEM) research and provide production guidance. Precision indoor farming systems (PIFS), vertical farms with artificial light (aka plant factories) in particular, have long been suitable production scenes due to the advantages of efficient land utilization and year-round cultivation. In this study, a mobile robotics platform (MRP) within a commercial plant factory has been developed to dynamically understand plant growth and provide data support for growth model construction and production management by periodical monitoring of individual strawberry plants and fruit. Yield monitoring, where yield = the total number of ripe strawberry fruit detected, is a critical task to provide information on plant phenotyping. The MRP consists of an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) and a multilayer perception robot (MPR), i.e., MRP = the MPR installed on top of the AMR. The AMR is capable of traveling along the aisles between plant growing rows. The MPR consists of a data acquisition module that can be raised to the height of any plant growing tier of each row by a lifting module. Adding AprilTag observations (captured by a monocular camera) into the inertial navigation system to form an ATI navigation system has enhanced the MRP navigation within the repetitive and narrow physical structure of a plant factory to capture and correlate the growth and position information of each individual strawberry plant. The MRP performed robustly at various traveling speeds with a positioning accuracy of 13.0 mm. The temporal-spatial yield monitoring within a whole plant factory can be achieved to guide farmers to harvest strawberries on schedule through the MRP's periodical inspection. The yield monitoring performance was found to have an error rate of 6.26% when the plants were inspected at a constant MRP traveling speed of 0.2 m/s. The MRP's functions are expected to be transferable and expandable to other crop production monitoring and cultural tasks.

Correction: Peng et al. Distinct Dominant Lineage from In Vitro Expanded Adipose-Derived Stem Cells (ASCs) Exhibits Enhanced Wound Healing Properties. Cells 2022, 11, 1236.

In the original publication [...].

Potency assays for human adipose-derived stem cells as a medicinal product toward wound healing.

In pre-clinical studies, human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs) have shown great promise as a treatment modality for healing of cutaneous wounds. The advantages of hASCs are that they are relatively easy to obtain in large numbers from basic liposuctions, they maintain their characteristics after long-term in vitro culture, and they possess low immunogenicity, which enables the use of hASCs from random donors. It has been hypothesized that hASCs exert their wound healing properties by reducing inflammation, inducing angiogenesis, and promoting fibroblast and keratinocyte growth. Due to the inherent variability associated with the donor-dependent nature of ASC-based products, it appears necessary that the quality of the different products is prospectively certified using a set of most relevant potency assays. In this review, we present an overview of the available methodologies to assess the Mode and the Mechanism of Action of hASCs, specifically in the wound healing scenario. In conclusion, we propose a panel of potential potency assays to include in the future production of ASC-based medicinal products.

Level of LncRNA GAS5 and Hippocampal Volume are Associated with the Progression of Alzheimer's Disease.

Purpose: We evaluated the diagnostic value of long non-coding RNA growth arrest-specific transcript 5 (GAS5) and its relationship with hippocampal volume in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Patients and Methods: One hundred and eight patients with AD and 83 healthy controls were included, and demographic data, biochemical parameters, GAS5 levels, and hippocampal volume were recorded. Chi-squared tests or independent sample t-tests were used to compare the baseline characteristics, relative expression of GAS5, and hippocampal volume. Correlations between variables were determined using Spearman's rank correlation test. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated to compare the diagnostic value of GAS5 and total hippocampal volume in AD. Results: The levels of GAS5 were significantly upregulated in patients with AD compared with those in controls and were negatively correlated with MMSE score. There were differences in left hippocampal volume, right hippocampal volume, and total hippocampal volume between the two groups. Total hippocampal volume was positively correlated with MMSE score and negatively correlated with GAS5 expression in patients with AD. The area under the curve (AUC) of for GAS5 expression was 0.831, the sensitivity was 61.1%, and the specificity was 95.2%. The AUC of the combined total hippocampal volume was 0.891, the sensitivity was 74.1%, and the specificity was 92.8%. Conclusion: The results suggested that GAS5 may be an excellent indicator of AD progression alone or in combination with hippocampal volume.

A Comparative Analysis of the Wound Healing-Related Heterogeneity of Adipose-Derived Stem Cells Donors.

Adipose-derived Stem cells (ASCs) are on the verge of being available for large clinical trials in wound healing. However, for developing advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), potency assays mimicking the mode of action are required to control the product consistency of the cells. Thus, greater effort should go into the design of product assays. Therefore, we analyzed three ASC-based ATMPs from three different donors with respect to their surface markers, tri-lineage differentiation, proliferation, colony-forming unit capacity, and effect on fibroblast proliferation and migration, endothelial proliferation, migration, and angiogenesis. Furthermore, the transcriptome of all three cell products was analyzed through RNA-sequencing. Even though all products met the criteria by the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy and the International Federation for Adipose Therapeutics and Science, we found one product to be consistently superior to others when exploring their potency in the wound healing specific assays. Our results indicate that certain regulatory genes associated with extracellular matrix and angiogenesis could be used as markers of a superior ASC donor from which to use ASCs to treat chronic wounds. Having a panel of assays capable of predicting the potency of the product would ensure the patient receives the most potent product for a specific indication, which is paramount for successful patient treatment and acceptance from the healthcare system.

Automatic monitoring of lettuce fresh weight by multi-modal fusion based deep learning.

Fresh weight is a widely used growth indicator for quantifying crop growth. Traditional fresh weight measurement methods are time-consuming, laborious, and destructive. Non-destructive measurement of crop fresh weight is urgently needed in plant factories with high environment controllability. In this study, we proposed a multi-modal fusion based deep learning model for automatic estimation of lettuce shoot fresh weight by utilizing RGB-D images. The model combined geometric traits from empirical feature extraction and deep neural features from CNN. A lettuce leaf segmentation network based on U-Net was trained for extracting leaf boundary and geometric traits. A multi-branch regression network was performed to estimate fresh weight by fusing color, depth, and geometric features. The leaf segmentation model reported a reliable performance with a mIoU of 0.982 and an accuracy of 0.998. A total of 10 geometric traits were defined to describe the structure of the lettuce canopy from segmented images. The fresh weight estimation results showed that the proposed multi-modal fusion model significantly improved the accuracy of lettuce shoot fresh weight in different growth periods compared with baseline models. The model yielded a root mean square error (RMSE) of 25.3 g and a coefficient of determination (R 2) of 0.938 over the entire lettuce growth period. The experiment results demonstrated that the multi-modal fusion method could improve the fresh weight estimation performance by leveraging the advantages of empirical geometric traits and deep neural features simultaneously.

Distinct Dominant Lineage from In Vitro Expanded Adipose-Derived Stem Cells (ASCs) Exhibits Enhanced Wound Healing Properties.

It has been suggested that immunophenotypically defined lineages within the in vitro expanded adipose-derived stem cell (ASC) may play a beneficial role from the perspective of a personalized intervention. Therefore, to better understand the implications of different surface marker profiles for the functionality, we set out to examine the evolution of ASC-variants based on the co-expression of five bright or eight dim epitopes. At passages P1, P4, and P8, the co-localization of five bright markers (CD73, CD90, CD105, CD166, and CD201), or eight dim markers (CD34, CD36, CD200, CD248, CD271, CD274, CD146, and the Stro-1), was investigated by flow cytometry. Selected subpopulations were isolated using the fluorescence-activated cells sorting from the cryopreserved P4 and analyzed in terms of proliferative and clonogenic properties, trilineage differentiation, and wound healing potential. Only two of the dim epitopes were found in representative subpopulations (SP), and from the P4 onwards, two major combinations featuring the CD274+ (SP1) or the CD274+ CD146+ (SP2) emerged. Upon sorting and growth, both subpopulations assumed new but highly similar clonal profiles, consisting of the CD274+ CD146+ and the CD274+ CD146+ CD248+ phenotypes. The functional analysis revealed that the SP2 surpassed SP1 and the unfractionated cells regarding the growth rate, clonogenic activity, and the wound closure and endothelial tube formation potential. The surface epitopes may be considered a tool to enrich specific functionality and thus improve therapeutic outcomes in dedicated circumstances.

Multiplex Analysis of Adipose-Derived Stem Cell (ASC) Immunophenotype Adaption to In Vitro Expansion.

In order to enhance the therapeutic potential, it is important that sufficient knowledge regarding the dynamic changes of adipose-derived stem cell (ASC) immunophenotypical and biological properties during in vitro growth is available. Consequently, we embarked on a study to follow the evolution of highly defined cell subsets from three unrelated donors in the course of eight passages on tissue culture polystyrene. The co-expression patterns were defined by panels encompassing seven and five cell surface markers, including CD34, CD146, CD166, CD200, CD248, CD271, and CD274 and CD29, CD31, CD36, CD201, and Stro-1, respectively. The analysis was performed using multichromatic flow cytometry. We observed a major paradigm shift, where the CD166-CD34+ combination which was found across all cell subsets early in the culture was replaced by the CD166+ phenotype as the population homogeneity increased with time. At all analysis points, the cultures were dominated by a few major clones that were highly prevalent in most of the donors. The selection process resulted in two predominant clones in the larger panel (CD166+CD34-CD146-CD271- CD274-CD248-CD200- and CD166+CD34+ CD146-CD271-CD274-CD248-CD200-) and one clone in the smaller panel (CD29+CD201+CD36- Stro-1- CD31-). The minor subsets, including CD166+CD34-CD146-CD271+CD274-CD248-CD200- and CD166+CD34+CD146+CD271-CD274-CD248-CD200-, and CD29+CD201-CD36-Stro-1-CD31-, CD29+CD201+CD36-Stro-1+CD31-, and CD29+CD201+CD36+Stro-1-CD31-, in the seven and five marker panels, respectively, were, on the other, hand highly fluctuating and donor-dependent. The results demonstrate that only a limited number of phenotypical repertoires are possible in ASC cultures. Marked differences in their relative occurrence between distinct individuals underscore the need for potency standardization of different ASC preparation to improve the clinical outcome.

Detection of MSH2 Gene Methylation in Extramammary Paget's Disease by Methylation-Sensitive High-Resolution Melting Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Extramammary Paget's disease (EMPD) is a rare skin tumor. Hypermethylation in the MSH2 promoter resulting in the downregulation of its protein expression shows a high detection rate in EMPD tumor tissue, which indicates that the methylation of MSH2 may play an important role in the pathogenesis of EMPD. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to establish a rapid analysis strategy based on the methylation-sensitive high-resolution melting curve (MS-HRM) to detect the methylation level of the MSH2 promoter. METHODS: With the use of universal methylated human DNA products, we established the MS-HRM standard curve to quantitatively detect the methylation level of the MSH2 promoter. Then, all 57 EMPD tumor DNA samples were analyzed. Pyrosequencing assay was also carried out to test the accuracy and efficacy of MS-HRM. Besides, a total of 54 human normal and other cancerous tissues were included in this study to test the reliability and versatility of the MS-HRM standard curve. RESULTS: In this study, by using the established MS-HRM, we found that 96.5% (55/57) EMPD tumor samples had varying methylation levels in the MSH2 promoter ranging from 0% to 30%. Then, the methylation data were compared to the results obtained from pyrosequencing, which showed a high correlation between these two techniques by Pearson's correlation (r = 0.9425) and Bland-Altman plots (mean difference = -0.1069) indicating that the methylation levels analyzed by MS-HRM were consistent with DNA pyrosequencing. Furthermore, in 23 normal and 31 other cancerous tissue samples, there were two colorectal cancer (CRC) tissues that tested MSH2 methylation positive (1% and 5%) which confirmed that our established MS-HRM can be widely applied to various types of samples. CONCLUSION: MS-HRM standard curve can be used for the detection of the methylation level of MSH2 in EMPD tumor samples and other cancerous tissues potentially, which presents a promising candidate as a quantitative assay to analyze MSH2 promoter methylation in routine pathological procedure.

Intracranial Angiomatous Meningioma: A Clinicopathological Study of 23 Cases.

BACKGROUND: Intracranial angiomatous meningioma (AM) is a rare subtype of meningioma. Here, we investigated the clinical and pathological features of AMs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed a retrospective study of 23 intracranial AMs verified by postoperative pathology at Huashan Hospital North between 2013 and 2018. Clinical data, radiological and pathological findings, and information on treatment and outcomes were collected and analyzed. Additionally, the literature on intracranial AMs was reviewed. RESULTS: The sample comprised 13 men and 10 women with AMs. The mean age was 54.2 years, and the mean duration of symptoms was 14.9 months. Headache and epilepsy were the most common symptoms. The most common AMs locations were the cerebral convexity and parasagittal/falx region. The rates of vascular signs, homogeneous enhancement, and peritumoral brain edema (PTBE) on magnetic resonance images were high. Histologically, besides typical meningioma cells, AMs had an abundant vascular component and low Ki-67 index. The extent of PTBE was related to microvessel density (MVD) of tumors, but not to the expression of MMP9 or VEGF. Simpson grade I resection was achieved in 15 cases, and grade II resection was achieved in 7 cases. Twenty-one cases were followed up, and they all had favorable outcomes without recurrence. CONCLUSION: AM is a type of meningioma with a rich blood supply and distinct clinical and pathological features. It showed a slight male predominance and was common at the cerebral convexity or parasagittal/falx region. Histologically, it showed benign biological characteristics despite frequent and severe PTBE, and the extent of PTBE was related to MVD of tumors. Simpson I resection is the best treatment, and the prognosis is usually good after total tumor removal, while gamma knife is recommended for small residual tumor.

Temperature-induced restructuring of self-assembled PtPd nanoparticle superlattices.

PtPd nanoparticle superlattices were prepared at room temperature and investigated for their restructuring at elevated temperatures. The PtPd nanoparticles were spherical with a diameter of 3.5 +/- 0.3 nm and were capped with surfactants of oleic acids and oleylamine. Images of the nanoparticle superlattices were taken using a transmission electron microscope. Analysis of the images with fast Fourier transform (FFT) revealed whether the superlattices were crystalline or amorphous. It was found that the critical temperature that induced a phase transition of PtPd superlattices from a crystalline state to an amorphous state falls in the range of 100-110 degrees C. Meanwhile, heat-induced restructuring transformed less-ordered superlattices into better-ordered ones, similar to annealing. It was especially pronounced for 3D superlattices, which also showed well-defined grain boundaries after restructuring.