ABSTRACT
Due to its rich nutritional value, yak milk is an important food source in the alpine pastoral areas. However, yaks have a low milk yield. The Hippo pathway participates in cell proliferation and organ development. We aimed to determine the regulatory mechanism of this pathway in yak mammary cells. A greater understanding of how the expression of its essential genes influence the reproductive cycle could lead to improvements in lactation performance. The expression levels of the key genes MST1, LATS1, YAP1, and TEAD1 were detected by quantitative real-time PCR, Western blotting, and immunohistochemistry during the growth, lactation, and dry periods (GP, LP and DP, respectively). The MST1 and LATS1 mRNA and protein expression level was highest during GP and lowest during LP. The YAP1 and TEAD1 mRNA and protein expression level decreased from GP to LP and DP. MST1 and LATS1 were expressed in the cytoplasm whereas YAP1 and TEAD1 were expressed in the nucleus and cytoplasm, respectively. The differential expression of MST1, LATS1, YAP1, and TEAD1 expression in the yak mammary gland during different developmental stages strongly suggests that they play an important role in the regulation of developmental functions under different physiological conditions.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: We aimed to investigate whether pre-therapeutic radiomic features based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can predict the clinical response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC). METHODS: A total of 275 patients with LACC receiving NACT were enrolled in this study from eight hospitals, and allocated to training and testing sets (2:1 ratio). Three radiomic feature sets were extracted from the intratumoural region of T1-weighted images, intratumoural region of T2-weighted images, and peritumoural region of T2-weighted images before NACT for each patient. With a feature selection strategy, three single sequence radiomic models were constructed, and three additional combined models were constructed by combining the features of different regions or sequences. The performance of all models was assessed using receiver operating characteristic curve. FINDINGS: The combined model of the intratumoural zone of T1-weighted images, intratumoural zone of T2-weighted images,and peritumoural zone of T2-weighted images achieved an AUC of 0.998 in training set and 0.999 in testing set, which was significantly better (pâ¯<â¯.05) than the other radiomic models. Moreover, no significant variation in performance was found if different training sets were used. INTERPRETATION: This study demonstrated that MRI-based radiomic features hold potential in the pretreatment prediction of response to NACT in LACC, which could be used to identify rightful patients for receiving NACT avoiding unnecessary treatment.
Subject(s)
Diagnostic Imaging , Image Processing, Computer-Assisted , Uterine Cervical Neoplasms/diagnostic imaging , Uterine Cervical Neoplasms/mortality , Adult , Chemotherapy, Adjuvant , Diagnostic Imaging/methods , Female , Humans , Image Processing, Computer-Assisted/methods , Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods , Male , Middle Aged , Neoadjuvant Therapy , Neoplasm Metastasis , Neoplasm Staging , Prognosis , ROC Curve , Reproducibility of Results , Retrospective Studies , Treatment Outcome , Uterine Cervical Neoplasms/drug therapy , Uterine Cervical Neoplasms/pathologyABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To develop a near-infrared fluorescence imaging system based on the fluorescence properties of methylene blue. METHODS: According to the optical properties of methylene blue, we used a custom-made specific LED light source and an interference filter, a CCD camera and other relevant components to construct the near-infrared fluorescence imaging system. We tested the signal-to-background ratio (SBR) of this imaging system for detecting methylene blue under different experimental conditions and analyzed the SBR in urine samples collected from 15 Wistar rats with intravenous injection of methylene blue at the doses of 0, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, or 2.0 0 mg/kg methylene blue. RESULTS: The SBR of this imaging system for detecting methylene blue was affected by the concentration of methylene blue and the distance from the sample (P<0.05). In the urine samples from Wistar rats, the SBR varied with the the injection dose, and the rats injected with 1.6 mg/kg methylene blue showed the highest SBR (8.71∓0.20) in the urine (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: This near-infrared fluorescence imaging system is useful for fluorescence detection of methylene blue and can be used for real-time recognition of ureters during abdominal surgery.
