Diagnosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma with convolutional neural network on narrowband imaging / 临床耳鼻咽喉头颈外科杂志

Objective:To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the convolutional neural network（CNN） in diagnosing nasopharyngeal carcinoma using endoscopic narrowband imaging. Methods:A total of 834 cases with nasopharyngeal lesions were collected from the People's Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region between 2014 and 2016. We trained the DenseNet201 model to classify the endoscopic images, evaluated its performance using the test dataset, and compared the results with those of two independent endoscopic experts. Results:The area under the ROC curve of the CNN in diagnosing nasopharyngeal carcinoma was 0.98. The sensitivity and specificity of the CNN were 91.90% and 94.69%, respectively. The sensitivity of the two expert-based assessment was 92.08% and 91.06%, respectively, and the specificity was 95.58% and 92.79%, respectively. There was no significant difference between the diagnostic accuracy of CNN and the expert-based assessment （P=0.282, P=0.085）. Moreover, there was no significant difference in the accuracy in discriminating early-stage and late-stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma（P=0.382）. The CNN model could rapidly distinguish nasopharyngeal carcinoma from benign lesions, with an image recognition time of 0.1 s/piece. Conclusion:The CNN model can quickly distinguish nasopharyngeal carcinoma from benign nasopharyngeal lesions, which can aid endoscopists in diagnosing nasopharyngeal lesions and reduce the rate of nasopharyngeal biopsy.

Modeling human pregastrulation development by 3D culture of blastoids generated from primed-to-naïve transitioning intermediates

Human pluripotent stem cells provide an inexhaustible model to study human embryogenesis in vitro. Recent studies have provided diverse models to generate human blastoids by self-organization of different pluripotent stem cells or somatic reprogramming intermediates. However, whether blastoids can be generated from other cell types or whether they can recapitulate postimplantation development in vitro is unknown. Here, we develop a strategy to generate human blastoids from heterogeneous intermediates with epiblast, trophectoderm, and primitive endoderm signatures of the primed-to-naïve conversion process, which resemble natural blastocysts in morphological architecture, composition of cell lineages, transcriptome, and lineage differentiation potential. In addition, these blastoids reflect many features of human peri-implantation and pregastrulation development when further cultured in an in vitro 3D culture system. In summary, our study provides an alternative strategy to generate human blastoids and offers insights into human early embryogenesis by modeling peri- and postimplantation development in vitro.

The mechanism of alleviation of acute myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury in rats by Fasudil / 中国医师杂志

Objective To explore the potential mechanism of Fasudil hydrochloride pharmacologic postconditioning that alleviated acute myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury (MI/RI) in rats,narrowed the scope of infacted myocardium,and inhibited cell apoptosis.Methods Ninety rats were randomly and averagely divided into 5 groups:sham group,ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) group,ischemic postconditioning (IPost) group,fasudil hydrochloride (FH) group,and FH and PI3K inhibitor (LY294002) (FH + I) group.The expressions of Rho associated coiled-coil forming protein kinase-1 (ROCK-1),Bcl-2,Bax,Caspase-3,Akt,and P-Akt in rat myocardial cells were determined.Results Compared to I/R group (ROCK1:2.94 ± 0.13),ROCK1 expression was not changed in IPost group (ROCK1:2.79 ± 0.11),FH group (ROCK1:2.83 ± 0.10),and FH + I group (ROCK1:2.85 ± 0.26).Compared to I/R group (Bcl-2:1.11 ± 0.12,P-Akt:1.09 ± 0.06,Bax:1.74 ± 0.06,and caspase-3:1.32 ± 0.12),the expressions of Bcl-2 and P-Akt in FH group (Bcl-2:1.76 ± 0.08,and P-Akt:1.73 ± 0.05) and IPost group (Bcl-2:1.74 ± 0.06,and P-Akt:1.37 ± 0.05) were all significantly higher than those in I/R group (P ＜ 0.05),while the expressions of Bax and caspase-3 in FH group (Bax:0.98 ±0.14,and caspase-3:0.97 ±0.06) and IPost group (Bax:0.97 ±0.11,and caspase-3:1.07 ±0.08) were all significantly lower than those in I/R group (P ＜0.05).Compared to FH group,the expressions of Bcl-2 and P-Akt in FH + I group (Bcl2:1.05 ±0.12,and P-Akt:1.21 ±0.06) were decreased (P ＜0.05),while the levels of Bax and caspase-3 (Bax:1.61 ±0.11,and caspase-3:1.42 ± 0.11) were increased (P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions The mechanism of FH postconditioning was associated with the inhibition of ROCK activity,and the activation of PI3K-Akt pathway.