Noninvasive and real‐time cuffless blood pressure (BP) measurement realizes the idea of unobtrusive and continuous BP monitoring which is essential for diagnosis and prevention of cardiovascular diseases associated with hypertension. In this paper, a wearable sensor patch system that integrates flexible piezoresistive sensor (FPS) and epidermal electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors for cuffless BP measurement is presented. By developing parametric models on the FPS sensing mechanism and optimizing operational conditions, a highly stable epidermal pulse monitoring method is established and beat‐to‐beat BP measurement from the ECG and epidermal pulse signals is demonstrated. In particular, this study highlights the compromise between sensor sensitivity and signal stability. As compared with the current optical‐based cuffless BP measurement devices, the sensing patch requires much lower power consumption (3 nW) and is capable of detecting subtle physiological signal variations, e.g., pre and postexercises, thus providing a promising solution for low‐power, real‐time, and home‐based BP monitoring.

Cartilage defects are one of the most common symptoms of osteoarthritis (OA), a degenerative disease that affects millions of people world-wide and places a significant socio-economic burden on society. Hydrogels, which are a class of biomaterials that are elastic, and display smooth surfaces while exhibiting high water content, are promising candidates for cartilage regeneration. In recent years, various kinds of hydrogels have been developed and applied for the repair of cartilage defects in vitro or in vivo , some of which are hopeful to enter clinical trials. In this review, recent research findings and developments of hydrogels for cartilage defects repair are summarized. We discuss the principle of cartilage regeneration, and outline the requirements that have to be fulfilled for the deployment of hydrogels for medical applications. We also highlight the development of advanced hydrogels with tailored properties for different kinds of cartilage defects to meet the requirements of cartilage tissue engineering and precision medicine.

Background: Aberrant expression of circular RNAs contributes to the initiation and progression of cancers, but the underlying mechanism remains elusive. Methods: RNA-seq and qRT-PCR were performed to screen differential expressed circRNAs between gastric cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues. Candidate circRNA (circMRPS35) was screened out and validated by qRT-PCR. Cell proliferation and invasion ability were determined by CCK-8 and cell invasion assays. RNA-seq, GO-pathway, RNA pull-down and ChIRP were further applied to search for detailed mechanism. Results: Here, a novel circRNA named circMRPS35, was screened out by RNA-seq in gastric cancer tissues, whose expression is related to clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis in gastric cancer patients. Biologically, circMRPS35 suppresses the proliferation and invasion of gastric cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, circMRPS35 acts as a modular scaffold to recruit histone acetyltransferase KAT7 to the promoters of FOXO1 and FOXO3a genes, which elicits acetylation of H4K5 in their promoters. Particularly, circMRPS35 specifically binds to FOXO1/3a promoter regions directly. Thus, it dramatically activates the transcription of FOXO1/3a and triggers subsequent response of their downstream target genes expression, including p21, p27, Twist1 and E-cadherin, resulting in the inhibition of cell proliferation and invasion. Moreover, circMRPS35 expression positively correlates with that of FOXO1/3a in gastric cancer tissues. Conclusions: Our findings not only reveal the pivotal roles of circMRPS35 in governing histone modification in anticancer treatment, but also advocate for triggering circMRPS35/KAT7/FOXO1/3a pathway to combat gastric cancer.

BackgroundMesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have potent immunomodulatory effects on multiple immune cells and have great potential in treating immune disorders. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) serve as an unlimited and noninvasive source of MSCs, and iPSC-MSCs have been reported to have more advantages and exhibit immunomodulation on T lymphocytes and natural killer cells. However, the effects of iPSC-MSCs on dendritic cells (DCs) are unclear. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of iPSC-MSCs on the differentiation, maturation, and function of DCs.MethodsHuman monocyte-derived DCs were induced and cultured in the presence or absence of iPSC-MSCs. Flow cytometry was used to analyze the phenotype and functions of DCs, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to study cytokine production.ResultsIn this study, we successfully induced MSCs from different clones of human iPSCs. iPSC-MSCs exhibited a higher proliferation rate with less cell senescence than BM-MSCs. iPSC-MSCs inhibited the differentiation of human monocyte-derived DCs by both producing interleukin (IL)-10 and direct cell contact. Furthermore, iPSC-MSCs did not affect immature DCs to become mature DCs, but modulated their functional properties by increasing their phagocytic ability and inhibiting their ability to stimulate proliferation of lymphocytes. More importantly, iPSC-MSCs induced the generation of IL-10-producing regulatory DCs in the process of maturation, which was mostly mediated by a cell-cell contact mechanism.ConclusionsOur results indicate an important role for iPSC-MSCs in the modulation of DC differentiation and function, supporting the clinical application of iPSC-MSCs in DC-mediated immune diseases.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13287-017-0499-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Abstract. Fibronectin (FN) is a primary component of the mammary mesenchymal compartment and undergoes dramatic changes during breast cancer development. Increased FN expression is associated with an invasive and metastatic breast cancer phenotype. The present study demonstrated that FN causes an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-like morphological change in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. FN stimulation caused the downregulation of epithelial markers E-cadherin and tight junction protein ZO-1, and the upregulation of mesenchymal markers N-cadherin and vimentin. Additionally, FN promoted cell migration and invasion in MCF-7 cells, with increased expression of calpain-2 and proteolysis of focal adhesion kinase 1 (FAK), indicating calpain activation. Notably, the FN induced changes in morphology and EMT markers were reversed with the treatment of calpain-specific inhibitors, calpain inhibitor I (N-acetyl-L-leucyl-L-leucyl-L-norleucinal), calpeptin and calpain inhibitor IV. Meanwhile, the effects of FN on cell migration and invasion, as well as FAK proteolysis were markedly suppressed by calpain inhibitors. Taken together, the results of the present study indicate that calpain plays an essential role in FN-induced EMT response, and that targeting calpain signaling may be a potential strategy to reduce breast cancer metastasis.

BackgroundThere have been no reports regarding the molecular characteristics, virulence features, and antibiotic resistance profiles of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) from Hainan, the southernmost province of China.MethodsTwo hundred twenty-seven S. aureus isolates, consisting of 76 methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and 151 methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA), were collected in 2013–2014 and 2018–2019 in Hainan, and investigated for their molecular characteristics, virulence genes, antibiotic resistance profiles and main antibiotic resistance genes.ResultsForty sequence types (STs) including three new STs (ST5489, ST5492 and ST5493), and 79 Staphylococcal protein A (spa) types were identified based on multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and spa typing, respectively. ST398 (14.1%, 32/227) was found to be the most prevalent, and the prevalence of ST398-MSSA increased significantly from 2013 to 2014 (5.5%, 5/91) to 2018–2019 (18.4%, 25/136). Seventy-six MRSA isolates were subject to staphylococcus chromosomal cassette mec (SCCmec) typing. SCCmec-IVa was the predominant SCCmec type, and specifically, ST45-SCCmec IVa, an infrequent type in mainland China, was predominant in S. aureus from Hainan. The antibiotic resistance profiles and antibiotic resistance genes of S. aureus show distinctive features in Hainan. The resistant rates of the MRSA isolates to a variety of antibiotics were significantly higher than those of the MSSA isolates. The predominant erythromycin and tetracycline resistance genes were ermC (90.1%, 100/111) and tetK (91.8%, 78/85), respectively. Eleven virulence genes, including the Panton-Valentine leukocidin (pvl) and eta, were determined, and the frequency of eta and pvl were found to be 57.3 and 47.6%. Such high prevalence has never been seen in mainland China before.ConclusionS. aureus isolates in Hainan have unique molecular characteristics, virulence gene and antibiotic resistance profiles, and main antibiotic resistance genes which may be associated with the special geographical location of Hainan and local trends in antibiotic use.

Caching at mobile edge servers can smooth temporal traffic variability and reduce service load of base stations in mobile video delivery. However, the assignment of multiple video representations to distributed servers is still a challenging question in the context of adaptive streaming, since any two representations from different videos or even from the same video will compete for the limited caching storage. It is therefore important, yet challenging, to optimally select the cached representations for each edge server in order to effectively reduce the service load of base station while maintaining a high quality of experience (QoE) for users. To address this, we study on a QoE-driven mobile edge caching placement optimization problem for dynamic adaptive video streaming that properly takes into account the different ratedistortion (R-D) characteristics of videos and the coordination among distributed edge servers. Then, by the optimal caching placement of representations for multiple videos, we maximize the aggregate average video distortion reduction of all users while minimizing the additional cost of representation downloading from the base station, subject not only to the storage capacity constraints at the edge servers, but also to the transmission and initial startup delay constraints at the users. We formulate the proposed optimization problem as an integer linear program (ILP) to provide the performance upper bound, and as a submodular maximization problem with a set of knapsack constraints to develop a practically feasible cost benefit greedy algorithm. The proposed algorithm has polynomial computational complexity and a theoretical lower bound on its performance. Simulation results further show that the proposed algorithm is able to achieve a near-optimal performance with very low time complexity. Therefore, the proposed optimization framework reveals the caching performance upper bound for general adaptive video streaming systems, while the proposed algorithm provides some design guidelines for the edge servers to select the cached representations in practice based on both the video popularity and content information.