Notes

Tensile Viscoelastic Attributes in the Sclera after Glycosaminoglycan Depletion.
Triptolide (TPL) is proposed as an effective anticancer agent known for its anti-proliferation of a variety of cancer cells including ovarian cancer cells. Although some studies have been conducted, the mechanism by which TPL acts on ovarian cancer remains to be clearly described. Herein, systematic work based on bioinformatics was carried out to discover the potential targets of TPL in SKOV-3 cells. TPL induces the early apoptosis of SKOV-3 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner with an IC50 = 40 ± 0.89 nM when cells are incubated for 48 h. Moreover, 20 nM TPL significantly promotes early apoptosis at a rate of 40.73%. Using a self-designed inverse molecular docking protocol, we fish the top 19 probable targets of TPL from the target library, which was built on 2,250 proteins extracted from the Protein Data Bank. The 2D-DIGE assay reveals that the expression of eight genes is affected by TPL. The results of western blotting and qRT-PCR assay suggest that 40 nM of TPL up-regulates the level of Annexin A5 (6.34 ± 0.07 fold) and ATP syn thase (4.08 ± 0.08 fold) and down-regulates the level of β-Tubulin (0.11 ± 0.12 fold) and HSP90 (0.21 ± 0.09 fold). More details of TPL affecting on Annexin A5 signaling pathway will be discovered in the future. Our results define some potential targets of TPL, with the hope that this agent could be used as therapy for the preclinical treatment of ovarian cancer. © 2020 Wu et al.Modeling and forecasting ocean ecosystems in a changing world will require advances in observational efforts to monitor marine biodiversity. One of the observational challenges in coastal reef ecosystems is to quantify benthic and climate interactions which are key to community dynamics across habitats. Habitat complexity (i.e., substrate rugosity) on intertidal reefs can be an important variable explaining benthic diversity and taxa composition, but the association between substrate and seasonal variability is poorly understood on lateritic reefs in the South Atlantic. We asked if benthic assemblages on intertidal reefs with distinct substrate rugosity would follow similar seasonal patterns of succession following meteo-oceanographic variability in a tropical coastal area of Brazil. We combined an innovative 3D imaging for measuring substrate rugosity with satellite monitoring to monitor spatio-temporal patterns of benthic assemblages. The dataset included monthly in situ surveys of substrate cover and taxons not only a useful tool for biodiversity mapping in reef intertidal ecosystems but also that spatial differences in rugosity would lead to very distinct biogeographic and temporal patterns. This study offers a unique baseline of benthic biodiversity on coastal marine habitats that is complementary to worldwide efforts to improve monitoring and management of coastal reefs. ©2020 Mazzuco et al.The loss of estrogen with menopause is associated with an increase in central fat. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of menopause hormone therapy (HT) on body composition and metabolic parameters in postmenopausal women. A prospective study was conducted among postmenopausal women from the Climacteric clinic, Universidade Federal de São Paulo. Thirty-two participants, median age 51 years, were included. Sixteen women were eligible to receive a low-dose continuous combined HT, containing 1 mg of E2 plus 0.125 mg of trimegestone for 6 months. The other 16 women remained in the control group. In the HT group, significant decreases from baseline were evident for the total cholesterol (TC) (p  less then  0.05) and LDL levels (p  less then  0.05). The HDL significantly decreased (p  less then  0.05). However, the TC/HDL ratio also decreased (p = 0.05). The parameters of body composition, after 6 months of HT, were maintained. In the control group, body mass index levels increased from baseline, however, with nonstatistically significant differences (p = 0.06). Analyzing the body composition showed a significant increase in the trunk body fat (p = 0.04), trunk region fat (p = 0.04), and total region fat (p = 0.03) after 6 months. In conclusion, the present study provides evidence that HT can stunt the increase in total body fat and prevent the shift from a more central fat distribution observed in early postmenopausal period. © Graciela B.C. Costa et al. 2020; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.Ovarian carcinogenesis can be induced by a large number of somatic gene mutations. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) released into peripheral blood can provide insights into the genomic landscape of cancer cells and monitor their dynamics. Our aim was to detect and compare the genetic profiles in tumor tissue and plasma before and after tumor resection in ovarian cancer patients. All three samples were collected from each patient. In this study, we used a commercial cancer panel to identify somatic mutations in 26 genes in seven selected patients through next-generation sequencing on the Illumina platform. Overall, 16 variants with pathogenic effect were identified in the TP53, PIK3CA, PTEN, APC, NRAS, KRAS, GNAS, and MET genes involved in important signaling pathways. The genetic alterations found in the presurgical plasma in six of seven ovarian cancer patients were no longer present in the plasma after tumor surgical removal. Identical variants in formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues and preoperative plasma specimens were observed in only two cases. These findings suggest that the detected presurgical pathogenic variants absent in postsurgery plasma are associated with the primary ovarian tumor. Finally, the low-identified concordance between FFPE and plasma can be due to various factors, but most likely to high tumor heterogeneity and low ctDNA level. © Marianna Jagelkova et al. 2020; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.Many studies have shown that mitochondrial metabolism has a fundamental role in induction of carcinogenesis due to the influence of increased levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in all steps of oncogene transformation and cancer progression. It is widely accepted that the anticancer effect of conventional anticancer drugs is due to induction of oxidative stress and elevated intracellular levels of ROS, which alter the redox homeostasis of cancer cells. On the other hand, the harmful side effects of conventional anticancer chemotherapeutics are also due to increased production of ROS and disruption of redox homeostasis of normal cells and tissues. Therefore, there is a growing interest toward the development of natural antioxidant compounds from various sources, which could impact the redox state of cancer and normal cells by different pathways and could prevent damage from oxidant-mediated reactions. It is known that chitosan exhibits versatile biological properties, including biodegradability, biocompatibility, and a less toxic nature. Crenolanib PDGFR inhibitor Because of its antioxidant, antibacterial, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and immunostimulatory activities, the biopolymer has been used in a wide variety of pharmaceutical, biomedical, food industry, health, and agricultural applications and has been classified as a new physiologically bioactive material. © Donika G. Ivanova and Zvezdelina L. Yaneva 2020; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.Background or Objectives Despite the global decline in maternal mortality within the last decade, women continue to die excessively from pregnancy-related complicationsin developing countries. We assessed the trends in maternal mortality, fetal mortality and cesarean section (C-Section) rates within 25 selected Nigerian hospitals over the last decade. Methods Basic obstetric data on all deliveries were routinely collected by midwives using the maternity record book developed for the project in all the participating hospitals. Trends of C-Section Rates (CSR), Maternal Mortality Rates (MMR), Fetal Mortality Rates (FMR) and Spontaneous Vaginal Delivery rates (SVD) were calculated using joinpoint regression models. Results The annual average percent change in CSR was 12.2%, which was statistically significant, indicating a rise in CSR over the decade of the study. There was a noticeable fall in MMR from a zenith of about 1,868 per 100,000 at baseline down to 1,315/100,000 by the end of the study period, representing a relative drop in MMR of about 30%. An average annual drop of 3.8% in FMR and 1.5% drop in SVD over time were noted over the course of the study period. Conclusion and Global Health Implications We observed an overall CSR of 10.4% and a significant rise in CSR over the 9-year period (2008-2016) of about 108% across hospital facilities in Nigeria. Despite the decrease in MMR, it was still high compared to the global average of 546 maternal deaths per 100 000 livebirths. The FMR was also high compared with the global average. The MMR found in this study clearly indicates that Nigeria is far behind in making progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SGD 3) which aims to reduce the global MMR to less than 70 per 100 000 live births by 2030. Copyright © 2020 Galadanci et al.Humans convey their intentions through the usage of both verbal and nonverbal behaviors during face-to-face communication. Speaker intentions often vary dynamically depending on different nonverbal contexts, such as vocal patterns and facial expressions. As a result, when modeling human language, it is essential to not only consider the literal meaning of the words but also the nonverbal contexts in which these words appear. To better model human language, we first model expressive nonverbal representations by analyzing the fine-grained visual and acoustic patterns that occur during word segments. In addition, we seek to capture the dynamic nature of nonverbal intents by shifting word representations based on the accompanying nonverbal behaviors. To this end, we propose the Recurrent Attended Variation Embedding Network (RAVEN) that models the fine-grained structure of nonverbal subword sequences and dynamically shifts word representations based on nonverbal cues. Our proposed model achieves competitive performance on two publicly available datasets for multimodal sentiment analysis and emotion recognition. We also visualize the shifted word representations in different nonverbal contexts and summarize common patterns regarding multimodal variations of word representations.Our contribution demonstrates that rhodium, an element that has barely been reported as an active metal for selective dehydrogenation of alkanes becomes a very active, selective, and robust dehydrogenation catalyst when exposed to propane in the form of single atoms at the interface of a solid-supported, highly dynamic liquid Ga-Rh mixture. We demonstrate that the transition to a fully liquid supported alloy droplet at Ga/Rh ratios above 80, results in a drastic increase in catalyst activity with high propylene selectivity. The combining results from catalytic studies, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, IR-spectroscopy under reaction conditions, microscopy, and density-functional theory calculations, we obtained a comprehensive microscopy picture of the working principle of the Ga-Rh supported catalytically active liquid metal solution. Copyright © 2019 American Chemical Society.
Website: https://www.selleckchem.com/products/crenolanib-cp-868596.html