BackgroundThis research aimed to investigate the value of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) histogram in differentiating between medulloblastoma and pilocytic astrocytoma in children.Material/MethodsThirty-three children with posterior cranial fossa tumor confirmed by operation and pathology participated in this retrospective study, including 18 children with medulloblastoma and 15 children with pilocytic astrocytoma. ADC images of the maximum lay of tumors were selected, and the region of interest was delineated by Mazda software and analyzed by histogram. Histogram characteristic parameters of the 2 tumors were statistically analyzed to determine the significantly different characteristic parameters between the 2 tumor types.ResultsThere were significant differences in the mean value, variance, skewness, kurtosis, and 1th, 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles of 9 characteristic parameters extracted by histogram (P<0.05). The corresponding receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were drawn, in which the mean value and 50th percentile were best identified. When the maximum area under the ROC curve was 1 and the optimal threshold was 137.7 and 125.5, the specificity and sensitivity were both 100%.ConclusionsADC histograms can be used to differentiate between medulloblastoma and pilocytic astrocytoma in children and provide reliable and objective evidence for the differentiation.
Spermatogenesis associated serine rich 2 (SPATS2) has been reported to contribute to the tumorigenesis of multiple malignancies. The molecular function of SPATS2 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is still not fully understood. In this study, we aimed to investigate the expression pattern and function roles of SPATS2 in HCC. The regulation of SPATS2 expression was also explored. We found that SPATS2 was highly expressed in HCC tissues in comparison with that in adjacent normal tissues. High expression of SPATS2 was associated with vascular invasion, advanced TNM stages, tumor multiplicity, and poor survival. Functionally, SPATS2 was found to promote the proliferation and metastasis of HCC cells both in vitro and in vivo, while knockdown of SPATS2 enhanced apoptosis and G1 arrest of HCC cells in vitro. Mechanistically, bioinformatics analysis revealed that MiR-145-5p directly targeted SPATS2 and functional rescue experiments verified that MiR-145-5p overexpression could abolish the effect of SPATS2 on the regulation of HCC malignant phenotype. Taken together, our findings suggest that SPATS2 functions as an oncogene in HCC. The MiR-145-5p/SPATS2 axis provides a novel mechanism underlying HCC progression and may serve as a potential therapeutic target for HCC.
Craving is a significant predicator of smoking relapse. Thus, revealing the neural correlates of craving to smoke in young smokers is important to improve the success of quit attempts. The abstinence-induced craving to smoke has not been explored extensively, although previous studies had investigated the neural substrates of cue-induced craving. Especially, the critical roles of thalamus had been revealed in cigarettes smoking. However, the implication of thalamus resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) in abstinence-induced craving remains unclear. In the current study, by employing a within-subject design in 25 young smokers, both the left and right thalamus RSFC patterns differences were investigated between smoking abstinence condition and smoking satiety condition in young smokers. Moreover, a correlation analysis was employed to assess the relationship between these RSFC changes and abstinence-induced changes in subjective craving. We found young smokers in abstinence state showed reduced RSFC between the left thalamus and right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) as well as the right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) compared with smoking satiety state. There were no significant different RSFC of right thalamus detected across the two sessions. Additionally, the left thalamus-right dlPFC RSFC changes were correlated with the changes in craving induced by 12-h abstinence (i.e., abstinence minus satiety). The present findings provides new evidence that abstinence-induced cravings to smoke are associated with abnormal thalamus RSFC and may shed new insights into the neural mechanism of abstinence-induced craving in young smokers.
One of the strategies to improve the outcome of anti-erbB2-mediated immunotherapy is to combine anti-erbB2 antibodies with T-cell-based adoptive immunotherapy, which can be achieved by expressing anti-erbB2 mAb on the surface of T cells. A single-chain variable fragment (scFv) from an anti-erbB2 mAb has been expressed on T cell surface to bind to erbB2-positive cells, and CD3ζ has been expressed as a fusion partner at C terminus of this scFv to transduce signals. T cells grafted with this chimeric scFv/CD3ζ were able to specifically attack target tumor cells with no MHC/Ag restriction. To test the effects of CD28 signal on cellular activation and antitumor effectiveness of chimeric scFv/CD3ζ-modified T cells, we constructed a recombinant anti-erbB2 scFv/Fc/CD28/CD3ζ gene in a retroviral vector. T cells expressing anti-erbB2 scFv/Fc/CD28/CD3ζ specifically lyzed erbB2-positive target tumor cells and secreted not only interferon-γ (IFN-γ) but also IL-2 after binding to their target cells. Our data indicate that CD3 and CD28 signaling can be delivered in one molecule, which is sufficient for complete T cell activation without exogenous B7/CD28 co-stimulation.
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