Analysis of key genes and targeted protection methods affecting the survival of human islets / 器官移植

Objective To identify the key genes and targeted protection methods affecting the survival of human islets. Methods Using bioinformatics method, the gene expression profile (GSE53454) was selected through screening and comparison from Gene Expression Omnibus(GEO) database. GEO2R tool was employed to screen the differentially expressed gene(DEG) between the human islets exposed (exposure group) and non-exposed (non-exposure group) to interleukin (IL)-1β and interferon (IFN)-γ for 24, 48 and 72 h, respectively. Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses were performed by DAVID. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed by STRING and Cytoscape apps. Results A total of 69 up-regulated DEGs and 2 down-regulated DEGs were identified. GO analysis showed that during the biological process, DEGs were enriched in the aspects of virus defense and inflammatory response. In cellular components, DEGs were significantly enriched in extracellular space, outside plasma membrane and extracellular regions. Regarding molecular functions, DEGs were significantly enriched in chemokine activity and cytokine activity. KEGG analysis revealed that DEGs were mainly enriched in multiple signaling pathways, such as cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, virus protein-cytokine and cytokine-receptor interaction, etc. Ten key genes (STAT1, CXCL10, IRF1, IL6, CXCL9, CCL5, CXCL11, ISG15, CD274, IFIT3) with high connectivity were selected by STRING analysis, all of which were significantly up-regulated in human islets exposed to IL-1β and IFN-γ. Six genes (STAT1, CXCL10, CXCL9, CXCL11, CCL5, IL6) were screened by KEGG enrichment analysis, mainly in Toll-like receptor signaling pathway. Conclusions STAT1, CXCL10, CXCL9, CXCL11, CCL5 and IL6 are the key genes affecting the survival of human islets, which are mainly enriched in Toll-like receptor signaling pathway and act as important targets for islet protection.

Assessment of myocardial viability in ischemic heart disease by integrated PET/MR / 中华核医学与分子影像杂志

Objective:To evaluate the value of integrated PET/MR in assessing myocardial viability in ischemic heart disease.Methods:A total of 39 patients (28 males, 11 females; age (60.1±12.0) years) diagnosed with ischemic heart disease in Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University were retrospectively enrolled from September 2020 to December 2021. All patients underwent cardiac 13N-NH 3·H 2O and 18F-FDG PET/MR examinations. Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) sequence was included in MRI scan. PET and MRI images were analyzed and myocardial viability of each myocardial segment was evaluated according to the American Heart Association (AHA) 17 segment method. The extent of left ventricular infarcted myocardium was measured based on PET and MRI images. Weighted Kappa test was used to evaluate the agreement of PET and MRI in assessing myocardial viability. The extent of infarcted myocardium measured by PET and MRI was compared by paired- t test, and Pearson correlation analysis was used to assess the correlation between them. Results:There was a moderate agreement between PET and MRI in assessing myocardial viability ( Kappa=0.532, P<0.001), with the agreement rate of 69.83%(463/663). There was no significant difference but strong correlation between the extents of infarcted myocardium measured by PET and MRI ((23.89±14.23)% vs (23.55±11.90)%; t=-0.24, P=0.809; r=0.79, P<0.001). In segments with normal perfusion and metabolism on PET, 22.52% (100/444) showed abnormal enhancement on MRI. On the other hand, 39.89% (73/183) of the segments classified as non-viable on MRI showed normal or viable on PET. Conclusion:Integrated PET/MR is able to take full advantage of the complementary nature of PET and MRI, achieving the comprehensive and accurate evaluation of myocardial viability.

Research progress on optimization strategies for microencapsulated islet transplantation / 器官移植

Islet transplantation is one of the effective therapies for diabetes mellitus. Nevertheless, multiple issues still exist, such as shortage of donors and adverse reactions caused by long-term use of immunosuppressants, which limit the islet survival post-transplantation. Microencapsulated islet transplantation may overcome these difficulties to certain extent, whereas many factors, such as the destruction of immune isolation microenvironment within the microcapsules and insufficient supply of oxygen and nutrients, constrain the application of microencapsulated islet transplantation in clinical practice. In recent years, how to enhance the effect of microencapsulated islet transplantation has been gradually studied. The application of stem cells in microencapsulated islet transplantation has steadily become a research hot spot. Therefore, the optimizing strategies for microencapsulated islet transplantation and the application of stem cells in microencapsulated islet transplantation were reviewed, and the potential improvement techniques of microencapsulated islet transplantation were investigated in this article, aiming to provide reference for further clinical application of microencapsulated islet transplantation.

Automatic Post-operative Cervical Cancer Target Area and Organ at Risk Outlining Based on Fusion Convolutional Neural Network / 中国医疗器械杂志

CT image based organ segmentation is essential for radiotherapy treatment planning, and it is laborious and time consuming to outline the endangered organs and target areas before making radiation treatment plans. This study proposes a fully automated segmentation method based on fusion convolutional neural network to improve the efficiency of physicians in outlining the endangered organs and target areas. The CT images of 170 postoperative cervical cancer stage IB and IIA patients were selected for network training and automatic outlining of bladder, rectum, femoral head and CTV, and the neural network was used to localize easily distinguishable vessels around the target area to achieve more accurate outlining of CTV.

Current Status, Hot Spot Discovery and Integration Prospect of Cancer-related Fatigue Research at Home and Abroad Based on Bibliometric Visualization Map Analysis / 肿瘤防治研究

Objective To review the research progress, present the research status and analyze the evolution trend of hot spots through the bibliometric analysis of the research literature of cancer-related fatigue(CRF) at home and abroad. Methods We took CRF as the theme and the papers on CRF included in CNKI and WOS core database as the research object, and used VOSviewer and CiteSpace software as research tools, to make a visual atlas analysis on the research status and hot spot evolution at home and abroad. Results (1)Research status: ① Literature: 3 646 papers (1 959 in English and 1 687 in Chinese) were finally included. The number of papers published at home and abroad showed an overall upward trend, and the proportion of foreign fund papers was high; ② domestic papers focused on nursing and rehabilitation. The research area of foreign papers was more extensive, diverse and integrated; ③ Domestic cooperation was mainly small group cooperation, while foreign cooperation was more interdisciplinary and cross-team cooperation, forming a number of core teams and research institutions; ④ Domestic scholars paid attention to clinical application research and were good at learning from foreign countries and summarizing own experience. Foreign scholars paid more attention to basic research and the treatment was more systematic and standardized; ⑤ There were a variety of diagnostic and therapeutic evaluation tools, mainly foreign scales. (2) Hot spot evolution: "quality of life" had always been a common topic of concern at home and abroad. Domestic scholars focused on clinical research and emphasized "treatment based on examination of causes" and "treatment based on syndrome differentiation". Foreign scholars attached importance to basic research and methodological research, and advocated non-drug intervention such as sports. In recent years, complementary and alternative medicine had become a hot topic in the international research. Domestic scholars had paid more attention to the research of mechanism and methodology, and expanded the application of TCM characteristic therapy in CRF. Conclusion Integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine and multi-disciplinary participation are the future diagnosis and treatment mode of CRF. It's the direction of future efforts to establish CRF evaluation and management mode with TCM characteristic non-drug therapy as the core under integrated medicine.

A fusion network model based on limited training samples for the automatic segmentation of pelvic endangered organs / 生物医学工程学杂志

When applying deep learning to the automatic segmentation of organs at risk in medical images, we combine two network models of Dense Net and V-Net to develop a Dense V-network for automatic segmentation of three-dimensional computed tomography (CT) images, in order to solve the problems of degradation and gradient disappearance of three-dimensional convolutional neural networks optimization as training samples are insufficient. This algorithm is applied to the delineation of pelvic endangered organs and we take three representative evaluation parameters to quantitatively evaluate the segmentation effect. The clinical result showed that the Dice similarity coefficient values of the bladder, small intestine, rectum, femoral head and spinal cord were all above 0.87 (average was 0.9); Jaccard distance of these were within 2.3 (average was 0.18). Except for the small intestine, the Hausdorff distance of other organs were less than 0.9 cm (average was 0.62 cm). The Dense V-Network has been proven to achieve the accurate segmentation of pelvic endangered organs.

Research on automatic segmentation of female bowel based on Dense V-Network neural network / 中华放射肿瘤学杂志

Objective:To resolve the issue of poor automatic segmentation of the bowel in women with pelvic tumors, a Dense V-Network model was established, trained and evaluated to accurately and automatically delineate the bowel of female patients with pelvic tumors.Methods:Dense Net and V-Net network models were combined to develop a Dense V-Network algorithm for automatic segmentation of 3D CT images. CT data were collected from 160 patients with cervical cancer, 130 of which were randomly selected as the training set to adjust the model parameters, and the remaining 30 were used as test set to evaluate the effect of automatic segmentation.Results:Eight parameters including Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) were utilized to quantitatively evaluate the segmentation effect. The DSC value, JD, ΔV, SI, IncI, HD (cm), MDA (mm), and DC (mm) of the small intestine were 0.86±0.03, 0.25±0.04, 0.10±0.07, 0.88±0.05, 0.85±0.05, 2.98±0.61, 2.40±0.45 and 4.13±1.74, which were better than those of any other single algorithm.Conclusion:Dense V-Network algorithm proposed in this paper can deliver accurate segmentation of the bowel organs. It can be applied in clinical practice after slight revision by physicians.

Automated Pre-delineation of CTV in Patients with Cervical Cancer Using Dense V-Net / 中国医疗器械杂志

We use a dense and fully connected convolutional network with good feature learning in small samples, to automatically pre-deline CTV of cervical cancer patients based on CT images and evaluate the effect. The CT data of stage IB and IIA postoperative cervical cancer with similar delineation scope were selected to be used to evaluate the pre-sketching accuracy from three aspects:sketching similarity, sketching offset and sketching volume difference. It has been proved that the 8 most representative parameters are superior to those with single network and reported internationally before. Dense V-Net can accurately predict CTV pre-delineation of cervical cancer patients, which can be used clinically after simple modification by doctors.

Comparative study of arterial vulnerable plaque molecular imaging with novel molecular probes 99Tcm-Duramycin and 99Tcm-RGD in rabbit models / 中华核医学与分子影像杂志

Objective To investigate the potential of 99Tcm-Durarnycin and 99Tcm-RGD in detecting vulnerable plaque in rabbit models.Methods Fifteen healthy New Zealand male rabbits were randomly divided into group A (control group,n =5),group B (stable plaque group,n =5) and group C (vulnerable plaque group,n =5).Animals were injected with 99Tcm-Duramycin and 99Tcm-RGD at the end of 4,8 and 12 weeks.SPECT/CT scanning was performed at 0.5 h post injection.One rabbit was sacrificed at the end of 4 weeks and one at the end of 8 weeks after imaging.The others were sacrificed at the end of 12 weeks after imaging studies.All aortas were collected.Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) was performed at the end of 8,12 weeks before SPECT/CT scanning.The data was analyzed with paired t test.Results In group A,the aortas had little uptake of the two probes.In group B,the aortas showed obvious radioactive uptake of 99Tcm-Duramycin and 99Tcm-RGD at the end of 8 weeks and 12 weeks,while 99Tcm-Durarnycin gave better display than 99Tcm-RGD.In group C,99Tcm-Duramycin uptake was higher than 99Tcm-RGD uptake in the aorta.The T/NT ratios of 99Tcm-Duramycin and 99Tcm-RGD in group C were 2.14±0.34 and 1.46±0.34 (t=4.072,P＜0.05) at the end of 4 weeks,2.93±0.41 and 1.66±0.22 (t=5.578,P＜0.05) at the end of 8 weeks,3.25±0.29 and 1.81±0.28 (t=19.692,P＜0.05) at the end of 12 weeks.In isolated specimen of group C,the yellow lipid plaque of the intima bulged on the lumen at the end of 12 weeks.IVUS indicated that,at the end of 8 weeks and 12 weeks,the endometrial thickness of group C was (450±104) mm and (767±52) mm (t=44.024,P ＜ 0.05) respectively,and the rates of luminal stenosis were (29.30± 2.81) ％ and (37.98 ±6.41)％ (t =9.226,P＜0.05).Conclusions Both 99Tcm-Duramycin and 99Tcm-RGD may be used to detect vulnerable plaque at early time.99Tcm-Duramycin may detect vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque earlier than 99Tcm-RGD and provide better diagnostic image.

Protein Interaction Network Construction and Biological Pathway Analysis Related to Atherosclerosis / 生物医学工程学杂志

Atherosclerosis is a complex disease characterized by lipid accumulation in the vascular wall and influenced by multiple genetic and environmental factors. To understand the mechanisms of molecular regulation related to atherosclerosis better, a protein interaction network was constructed in the present study. Genes were collected in nucleotide database and interactions were downloaded from Biomolecular Object Network Database (BOND). The interactional data were imported into the software Cytoscape to construct the interaction network, and then the degree characteristics of the network were analyzed for Hub proteins. Statistical significance pathways and diseases were figured out by inputting Hub proteins to KOBAS2. 0. The complete pathway network related to atherosclerosis was constructed. The results identified a series of key genes related to atherosclerosis, which would be the potential promising drug targets for effective prevention.

Targeting vulnerable plaque of experimental atherosclerosis models with 99Tcm-Duramycin / 中华核医学与分子影像杂志

Objective To investigate the value of 99Tcm-Duramycin SPCET/CT in the detection of vulnerable plaque (VP) in atherosclerotic (AS) rabbit models.Methods Sixteen New Zealand male rabbits were randomly divided into three groups:group A (sham-operated group,n =4),group B (stable plaque group,n =4) and group C (VP group,n =8).Group A was fed on normal diet,and the other 2groups were fed on cholesterol diet for 12 weeks.Femoral artery dissection sham-operation was done in group A and group B,while balloon-induced abdominal aorta wall injury was produced in group C after 2 weeks'feeding.Animals were injected with 99Tcm-Duramycin (74 MBq/kg) and then SPECT/CT imaging was performed at the end of 4,8,and 12 weeks,respectively.Abdominal aortas were explanted for ex vivo imaging and histological characterization of plaque.The apoptosis index (AI) was calculated.One-way analysis of variance was used to analyze data.Results There was no radioactive uptake by the abdominal aorta in each group at the end of 4 weeks and no uptake in group A and group B at the end of 8 weeks.There was slightly uptake radioactive uptake by the abdominal aorta in group B at the end of 12 weeks and in group C at the end of 8 weeks.There was intense uptake at the lesions of AS rabbits in group C at the end of 12 weeks,and the T/NT value significantly higher than that of the other two groups (3.40±0.22 vs 2.12±0.65,2.68±0.18,F=198.775,P＜0.05).The result was confirmed in the ex vivo imaging of the explanted aorta.The AI of group C was significantly higher than that of group A and B ((25.4±6.32) ％ vs (0±0.02)％,(5.3± 1.97)％,F=70.260,P＜0.05).Conclusions 99Tcm-Duramycin scimigraphy could identify the apoptosis of VP in the rabbit AS models.It is a promising non-invasive method to diagnose AS plaques.

Research progress of genomic alterations and treatment of Ph-like acute lymphoblastic leukemia / 白血病·淋巴瘤

Ph-like acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph-like ALL) involves various genomic alterations associated with high risk factors and poor clinical outcome, such as IKZF1, CRLF2, JAK1/2, EBF1-PDGFRB, ATF7IP, EPOR, SH2B3.JAK/STAT pathway and PI3K/mTOR pathway are likely to be the targets of Ph-like ALL.Here,the above genomic alterations and treatment progress are reviewed.

Detection of abnormal myocardial blood supply caused by myocardial bridge using myocardial perfusion imaging and CT coronary angiography / 中华核医学与分子影像杂志

Objective To evaluate the cause of ischemia related to myocardial bridge (MB) by using SPECT/CT MPI and CTCA.Methods A total of 294 patients with chest pain,tightness or palpitation undergoing both CTCA and MPI were retrospectively enrolled in this study from March 2008 to March 2013.Among them,49 patients (26 males,23 females,age:32-85 (55.4± 16.6) years) had MB.Locations of MB and myocardial ischemia were recorded.Fused MPI/CTCA was analyzed.If there was no mural atherosclerotic plaque-related stenosis on CAG at the same location of coronary artery where ischemic myocardium was found,then MB was considered as the ischemic cause.Myocardial ischemia rates of different MB locations were compared by x2 test.Results Among 49 patients with MB,3 cases had MB in proximal segment of LAD,34 in mid LAD,4 in distal LAD,3 in septal branch,2 in distal LCX,1 in intermedius,and 2 in mid RCA.There were 41 cases with myocardial ischemia.Myocardial ischemia in 32 cases was caused by MB,including 23 caused by MB in mid LAD.The myocardial ischemia rates of the most common MB location (mid LAD,n =34) and other locations (n =15) were not significantly different (67.6％ (23/34) vs 60.0％ (9/15),x2 =0.27,P＞0.05).Conclusions MB is commonly found in the mid LAD.The myocardial ischemia rates caused by MB is not related the MB location.Hybrid MPI/CTCA could evaluate the sites of coronary MB and myocardial ischemia simultaneously and therefore may be useful to evaluate the relationship between MB and myocardial ischemia.