Progress of Steroids Effect on Efficacy of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors / 中国肺癌杂志

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), including programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1)/ligand (PD-L1) and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4) monoclonal antibody, have been approved for the treatment of multiple advanced malignant tumors, on account of its ideal antitumor activity. For patients receiving ICIs treatment, glucocorticoid intervention and treatment are often applied because of some complications associated with tumor, immunotherapy-related adverse reactions, and pretreatment before immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy. However, excessive physiological dose of glucocorticoid has a certain immunosuppressive effect, which may even affect the curative efficacy of ICIs. Thus, there are controversies about the use of steroids in patients receiving ICIs treatment. In this article, we reviewed the progress of steroids effect on the efficacy of ICIs.

Evaluation of the effect of music given to pregnant rats on the development of brain functions in offspring rats / 中国实验动物学报

Objectives To systematically evaluate the effect of music given to pregnant rats on the development of brain functions in the offspring rats and to provide scientific evidence for the application of antenatal musical training and the promotion of welfare for laboratory animals.Methods We comprehensively retrieved and collected the research literatures related to the effect of music on brain function development in offsprings of the pregnant rats from Pubmed,Web of Science,Cochrane Library,Wanfang,Weipu,CNKI and CBMdisc.The retrieval time was set from the foundation date of databases to 2 April,2016.We selected literatures according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria,evaluated their utilities,then extracted and qualitatively described the data.Results Seven experimental studies were selected in this study including 4 published in Chinese and 3 in English.The object laboratory animals of those studies were Wistar or SD rats.Music materials involved comfort music,classic music,violin concerto(Liangzhu/The butterfly lovers).Intervention were given to the pregnant rats roundly from the gestation until parturition.These results showed that,to some extent,music stimulations during gestation may promote the development of brain function and improve spatial memory of the offspring rats.However,expressions of some functional receptors were not significantly altered.Conclusions Appropriate music provided to the pregnant rats promote the development of brain functions in their offspring.

Gene expression and calcium ion concentration variation in bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells differentiating into neuron-like cells / 中国组织工程研究

BACKGROUND: Monosialotetrahexosylganglioside plays an important role in a variety of physiological processes, such as the nerve cel growth and development, differentiation, regeneration and intracel ular and extracel ular information transmission. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of monosialotetrahexosylganglioside on the changes of gene expression and calcium ion concentration in the course of inducing the mesenchymal stem cells into neuron-like cells with Woodbury’s method. METHODS: The mesenchymal stem cells from Sprague Dawley rats were cultured after isolated and purified, After 5 passages in culture, the cel integrated into a dense monolayer, and treated with 50 mmol/L monosialotetrahexosylganglioside for 24 hours as the monosialotetrahexosylganglioside group; then the mesenchymal stem cells were induced into neuron-like cells with the methods of Woodbury after pre-cultured for 24 hours, and set the control group. The protein and mRNA expression levels of growth-associated protein 43, neuron-specific enolase, neurofilament and nestin were detected by immunocytochemistry and real-time PCR, respectively. The fluorescence intensity of intracel ular free calcium ion before and after inducing was detected by laser scan confocal microscope. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: After induction, the expression levels of growth-associated protein 43, neuron-specific enolase, neurofilament and nestin of the mesenchymal stem cells in the monosialotetrahexosylganglioside group were higher than those in the control group (P < 0.05), demonstrating that monosialotetrahexosylganglioside could promote the differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells into neuron-like cells. The fluorescence intensity in mesenchymal stem cells was increased gradual y in two groups after the medium was replaced by the induction medium, attained its peak value at 100 seconds and then decreased gradual y, but the fluorescence intensity was stil higher than that before the induction at 20 minutes. The fluorescence intensity of intracel ular free Ca2+ was increased significantly in the monosialotetrahexosylganglioside group when compared with the control group (P < 0.05), suggesting that monosialotetrahexosylganglioside could increase the concentration of intracel ular free Ca2+, and intracel ular free Ca2+ may be useful in the course of induction. The changes of protein expression levels of growth-associated protein 43, neuron-specific enolase, neurofilament and nestin were not significant after induction, indicating that Woodbury classic induced programme could regulate the post-transcriptive protein level.