Surface modification of multifunctional ferrite magnetic nanoparticles and progress in biomedicine / 生物医学工程学杂志

Magnetic ferrite nanoparticles (MFNPs) have great application potential in biomedical fields such as magnetic resonance imaging, targeted drugs, magnetothermal therapy and gene delivery. MFNPs can migrate under the action of a magnetic field and target specific cells or tissues. However, to apply MFNPs to organisms, further modifications on the surface of MFNPs are required. In this paper, the common modification methods of MFNPs are reviewed, their applications in medical fields such as bioimaging, medical detection, and biotherapy are summarized, and the future application directions of MFNPs are further prospected.

Expression and clinical significance of melanoma antigen-encoding gene A1 protein in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma / 中国医师进修杂志

Objective To investigate the expression of melanoma antigen- encoding gene (MAGE) A1 protein in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, and explore its correlation with the clinicopathological factors and prognosis. Methods A retrospective analysis was performed on 197 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who accepted radical surgical treatment from January 2006 to December 2012. The expressions of MAGEA1 protein in these specimens of cancer tissue and cancer adjacent tissue were detected by immunohistochemistry with tissue microarray technology. Results MAGEA1 protein was expressed in cytoplasm and nucleus of tumor cells. The positive expression rate of MAGEA1 protein in cancer tissue was significantly higher than that in cancer adjacent tissue: 73.6％ (145/197) vs. 5.6％ (11/197), and there was statistical difference (P<0.01). The positive expression of MAGEA1 protein had no correlations with sex, age, history of smoking/drinking, family history of upper gastrointestinal cancer, depth of tumor invasion, lymph node metastasis, tumor differentiation, location and TNM stage (P>0.05). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis result showed that the 5-year survival rate in patients with MAGEA1 protein positive expression was significantly lower than that in patients with MAGEA1 protein negative expression (37.2％ vs. 53.8％), and there was statistical difference (P=0.018). Multivariate analysis result showed that MAGEA1 protein positive expression was an independent predictor of prognosis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients (HR=1.91, 95％CI 1.22 to 2.98, P = 0.004). Conclusions The expression of MAGEA1 protein is abundant in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, and is related to worse clinical outcome. MAGEA1 protein could be a candidate target for tumor immunotherapy.