Pilot studies were conducted with an anoxic/aerobic concept membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology and a hollow fiber Petro ® MBR system with capacity of 12 m 3 /d was operated continuously (24-hour) during the study. Trials on different membrane fluxes were conducted to obtain the sustainable flux while mixed liquor suspended solid (MLSS) was maintained at 9-11 g/L. The results of the MBR pilot trials showed that no obvious fouling of the membrane was found when the plant was operated at the flux of 12 L /m 2 /h (LMH) over 3 months and 15 LMH over one month during the pilot study. Design guidelines such as hydraulic retention time (HRT), sludge retention time (SRT), anoxic and aeration volume ratio, re-circulation flow rate and air scouring were obtained for a full-scale plant. It was concluded that treatment of wastewater from an ethylene plant without addition of any chemicals using MBR technology is feasible. The product quality consistently met the requirement for discharge and was suitable for the feed of further reverse osmosis (RO) post-treatment.
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating cancer-associated fibroblasts (cCAFs) have been individually considered as strong indicators of cancer progression. However, technical limitations have prevented their simultaneous analysis in the context of CTC phenotypes different from epithelial. This study aimed to analyze CTCs and cCAFs simultaneously in peripheral blood of 210 breast cancer patients using DAPI/pan-keratin (K)/vimentin (V)/alpha-SMA/CD29/CD45/CD31 immunofluorescent staining and novel technology - imaging flow cytometry (imFC). Single and clustered CTCs of different sizes and phenotypes (i.e. epithelial phenotype K+/V-, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related such as K+/V+, K-/V+ and K-/V-) were detected in 27.6% of the samples and correlated with metastases. EMT-related CTCs interacted more frequently with normal cells and tended to occur in patients with tumors progressing during therapy, while cCAFs coincided with CTCs (mainly K+/V- and K-/V-) in 7 (3.3%) patients and seemed to correlate with the presence of metastases, particularly visceral ones. This study emphasizes advantages of imFC in the field of liquid biopsy and highlights the importance of multimarker detailed analysis of different subpopulations and phenotypes of cancer progression-related cells i.e. CTCs and cCAFs. Co-detection of CTCs and cCAFs might improve the identification of patients at higher risk of progression and their monitoring during therapy.
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