A Tumor-Specific Tissue-Penetrating Peptide Enhances the Efficacy of Chemotherapy Drugs in Gastric Cancer

PURPOSE: C-end rule (CendR) peptides are found to enhance the penetration of chemotherapeutic agents into tumor cells, while GX1 is a peptide that homes to gastric cancer (GC) vasculature. This study aimed to synthesize a novel peptide GX1-RPAKPAR (GXC) and to explore the effect of GXC on sensitizing GC cells to chemotherapeutic agents. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Intracellular Adriamycin concentration analysis was applied to conform whether GXC peptide increases the penetration of chemotherapeutic agents into GC cells in vitro. The effect of GXC peptide on sensitizing GC cells to chemotherapeutics was validated by apoptosis assay and in vitro/vivo drug sensitivity assay. The specificity of GXC to GC tissue was validated by ex vivo fluorescence imaging. RESULTS: In vitro, administration of GXC significantly increased Adriamycin concentrations inside SGC-7901 cells, and enhanced the efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents by decreasing the IC50 value. In vivo, FITC-GXC specifically accumulated in GC tissue. Moreover, systemic co-injection with GXC peptide and Adriamycin statistically improved the therapeutic efficacy in SGC-7901 xenograft models, surprisingly, without obviously increasing side effects. CONCLUSION: These results demonstrated that co-administration of the novel peptide GXC with chemotherapeutic agents may be a potential way to enhance the efficacy of anticancer drugs in GC treatment.

Analysis on injury characteristics and treatment of the hospitalized patients attributable to 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China: a report of 826 cases / 中华创伤杂志

Objective To analyze injury characteristics and treatment of hospitalized patients wounded in Wenehuan earthquake so as to provide references for medical rescue in disasters. Methods The study involved data of seismic patients from Trauma Database System Version 3.0 that collected clini-cal data of seismic patients admitted into West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, and First and Second Hospitals of Deyang City. Trauma Database System Version 3.0 was developed by Research Institute for Traffic Medicine of PLA, Research Institute of Surgery, Daping Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing. A comparative analysis was done on patient distribution, injury severity and medical treatment. Results There were 826 qualified patients including 410 males and 416 females ( at age range of 1-102 years, mean 45.8 years). Of all, the patients at age of 31-60 years accounted for 50. 2%. The patients were mainly peasants (43.8%, 208/477), workers (15.7%, 75/477) and students (14.1%, 67/477). Blunt injury (53.2%), crush/bury injury (22.5%) and slip/fall injury were three main causes for injury. The patients for 92.1% were admitted into two hospitals of the City of Deyang within four days after earthquake, while 81.7% of patients were admitted into West China Hospital in Chengdu at days 3-9 after earthquake. Patients with bone injuries accounted for 75.3%. The patients had abbreviated injury score (AIS) for mainly 1-3 points, with incidence rate of se-vere multiple trauma ( ISS > 16 points) of 8.2%. Internal fixation was done in 120 patients ( 34. 1% ), debridement and suturing in 103 (29.3%), external fixation in 55 ( 15.6% ), extremity amputation in 22 (6.3%) and intracerebral surgery in 2 (0.6%). Conclusions The injuries are mainly induced by collapse of buildings during earthquake. Bone injuries are predominant injury type, with AIS of mainly 1-3 points and few severe multiple trauma. The results show that the patients receive late special treat-ment and slow evacuation, indieating necessity of strengthening capacity of early medical treatment and ef-fective evacuation during destructive natural disasters.

Assessment of left ventricle function in early diabetic cardiomyopathy by Doppler tissue imaging / 中国组织工程研究

BACKGROUND: Comparing with diabetic nephropathy and diabetic retinopathy, diabetic cardiomyopathy is put forward exceeded later and the research about it was not enough. It is difficult to detect diabetic cardiomyopathy in the earlier period so that it has usually been neglected.OBJECTIVE: To evaluate features of dysfunction of left ventricle in early diabetic cardiomyopathy by Doppler tissue imaging.DESIGN: Completely randomized and controlled experiment.SETTING: Ultrasound Department of General Hospital of Chengdu Military Area Command of Chinese PLA.MATERIALS: The experiment was carried out at Ultrasound Department of General Hospital of Chengdu Military Area Command of Chinese PLA from March to June 2002. Totally 56 New Zealand rabbits of either gender were selected.METHODS: ① Ten New Zealand rabbits was pulled out randomly from 56 as control group. The rest of 46 New Zealand rabbits were replicated diabetes mellitus by Streptozotocin (STZ), rabbits were absolute diet 18 hours and injected intravenously to ear marginal vein with 65 mg/kg of STZ. Then these rabbits were randomly divided into 4 groups as 2, 4, 6, 8th experimental group, with 10 rabbits in each group. ② Digit ultrasonic cardiogram equipment was used to examined interventricular motion of mitral annulus at 2nd,4th, 6th and 8th week in model groups and comparison group. The parameters such as systolic peak velocity (Sa), preejection period (PEP), local ejection time (ET), systolic mean velocity (Vm) of four various portions in mitral annulus and diastole early period velocity (Ea), diastole later period velocity (Aa), Ea/Aa were determined. ③ SPSS 11.0 was used for statistical analysis,one-factor analysis was adopted to compare difference of groups.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The motion of lateral wall and posterior interventricular septum at mitral annulus were estimated by PW-DTI.RESULTS: Among 56 rabbits, 50 entered the final analysis and other 6 were lost because of failure modeling. Diastole dysfunction of left ventricle was discovered in STZ-inducod diabetic rabbits detected by tissue Doppler imaging at the 4th week. It showed that not only the tite of early period of diastole peak velocity (Ea) in mitral ring lateral wall and post-interval of left ventricle was reduced, but also the tite of Ea/Aa was reduced notably (P ＜ 0.05). Systolic dysfunction of left ventricle was discovered in STZ-in-duced diabetic rabbits detected by tissue Doppler imaging at the 6th week.It showed that local contraction peak velocity (Sa) of lateral wall and postseptum of mitral ring was decreased strikingly (P ＜ 0.05). Mean systole velocity of four various parts of mitral ring (Vm) was reduced at the 6th week (P ＜ 0.05). Pre-ejection period time (PEP) at post-septum and ejection time (ET) was elongated at lateral wall at the 8th week (P ＜ 0.05).CONCLUSION: ① Diastolic dysfunction of left ventricle is characterized by decrease of early period of diastole peak velocity and the tite of Ea/Aa.② Systolic dysfunction of diabetic cardiomyopathy is characterized by decrease of local contraction peak velocity and elongation of pre-ejection period time and ejection time.