SOCPS with direct visualization and biopsy for diagnosis and SOCPS-directed therapy for biliary and pancreatic diseases can be safely performed with a high success rate. The clinical trial was registered at UMIN CTR (http://www.umin.ac.jp). The registration identification number is UMIN000015155.

An improved rapid focus reduction neutralization test for Japanese encephalitis (JE) virus in microtiter system was developed. 96-well tissue culture plates were used for preparation of cell monolayers and PAP (peroxidase-antiperoxidase) staining technique was used for visualization of foci of infected cells. As the test has many advantages over other methods, it might be applied widely for rapid diagnosis and seroepidemiological studies.

Abstract. Malignant gliomas are highly lethal neoplasms that cannot be cured with currently available therapies. Temozolomide (TMZ) is a recently introduced alkylating agent that has yielded significant benefits and become a key agent in the treatment of high-grade gliomas. However, its survival benefit remains unsatisfactory. Understanding the molecular basis of TMZ sensitivity/resistance is necessary for improving the treatment outcome by devising strategies that are able to circumvent primary drug resistance. We therefore combined the in vitro TMZ response with microarray gene expression data to identify genes that could potentially be used to predict the response of malignant gliomas to TMZ therapy. We first obtained the individual IC 50 values for TMZ in seven malignant glioma cell lines (A-172, AM-38, T98G, U-87MG, U-138MG, U-251MG and YH-13) and then identified the genes whose expression correlated most highly with TMZ sensitivity employing a cDNA microarray. We present here a list of the most highly up-regulated and down-regulated genes which may be involved in conferring TMZ sensitivity/resistance in malignant gliomas, although most of the genes have not been implicated as a causal factor in the TMZ response except MGMT. We also demonstrated and confirmed the MGMT methylation status, quantitative MGMT mRNA levels, and MGMT protein expression levels in TMZ resistant glioma cells in vitro. Our results are thus consistent with previous studies and suggest that a dominant mechanism conferring sensitivity/resistance to TMZ exists in malignant glioma cells. Although the present study dose have several limitations, our reported candidate genes could represent not only potential molecular markers for TMZ sensitivity/resistance but also chemotherapy targets. Furthermore, the present study could provide a foundation for alternative therapeutic strategies including novel combination treatments that incorporate additional reagents directed at overcoming resistance to TMZ.

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In SU (3)L × U (1)N gauge models for electroweak interactions, we discuss how to implement a radiative mechanism of generating Majorana neutrino masses by considering the property that the Higgs scalar, which has a coupling to a charged lepton (ℓ)-neutrino (ν) pair, is naturally included. The mechanism is shown to work in models with a heavy charged lepton, ω + , in a lepton triplet (ν, ℓ, ω + ) and with a heavy neutral lepton, N , in (ν, ℓ, N ). A minimal model with ℓ and ℓ c in (ν, ℓ, ℓ c ) together with a sextet Higgs scalar suffers from a fine-tuning problem to suppress tree-level neutrino masses.