Efficacy, safety, and survival of neoadjuvant immunotherapy plus chemotherapy in locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: A real-world retrospective study.

BACKGROUND: This study aims to analyze the efficacy and safety of neoadjuvant programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) blockade plus chemotherapy in real-world applications. Additionally, we report survival outcomes with a median follow-up of 40.1 months. METHODS: From January 2018 to October 2022, we retrospectively recruited patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) who underwent surgery after receiving PD-1 blockade (immunotherapy) plus chemotherapy at Jiangsu Cancer Hospital. RESULTS: A total of 132 eligible ESCC patients were included, and R0 resection was achieved in 131 cases (99.2 %). A complete pathological response rate (ypT0N0) was observed in 32 patients (24.2 %), and the objective response rate was 59.1 %. The most common grade 3-4 treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs) were leukopenia (18.2 %) and neutropenia (15.9 %). Three cases (2.3 %) of grade 3 immune-related AEs were observed, including increased ALT (0.8 %), rash (0.8 %), and encephalitis (0.8 %). The 1-year disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) rates were 68.2 % and 89.4 %, respectively, and the 2-year DFS and OS rates were 55.1 % and 78.6 %, respectively. The pathological responses of 103 cases (94.5 % of 109) of the index lymph node (ILN) were categorized as the worst regression subgroup. In these cases, using the pathological response of the ILN to indicate the status of other lymph nodes would not result to a missed therapeutic lymph node dissection. CONCLUSIONS: Neoadjuvant immunotherapy plus chemotherapy is safe and effective for ESCC, with observable survival benefits. The pathological response of the ILN after neoadjuvant therapy may have important value in guiding therapeutic lymph node dissection.

Complete pathological remission and tertiary lymphoid structures are associated with the efficacy of resectable NSCLC receiving neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy: A double-center retrospective study.

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between complete pathological remission (PCR), tertiary lymphoid structure (TLS) maturation and expression and clinical outcomes of patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy. Totally 80 patients with resectable NSCLC (stage IB-IIIB) receiving neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy were analyzed. We used the Kaplan-Meier method to plot survival curves and the log-rank test to compare differences. Among all patients included, 45 patients (56.25%) achieved major pathological response (MPR), including 30 patients (37.50%) with PCR. The proportion of patients diagnosed with stage IB, II, IIIA and IIIB was 1.25%, 10.00%, 52.50% and 36.25%, respectively. We divided patients into PCR group and non-PCR group respectively according to whether they achieved PCR. We found that patients achieving PCR had significantly improved disease-free survival (DFS) (mDFS: NR vs. 20.24 months, P = .020). TLS expression was low in 43 cases (53.75%) and high in 37 cases (46.25%). TLS maturation was low in 55 cases (68.75%) and high in 25 cases (31.25%). The DFS of patients with TLS high-maturation (34.07 vs. 22.30 months, P = .024) and TLS high-expression (34.07 vs. 22.30 months, P = .041) was significantly longer. In most subgroups, the PCR, TLS high-maturation and TLS high-expression group respectively achieved a better clinical outcome relative to the non-PCR, TLS low-maturation and TLS low-expression group. In patients with resectable NSCLC receiving neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy, the acquirement of PCR may predict better DFS. In addition, high expression and maturation of TLS may be prognostic factors.

Impact of hematological and radiation parameters on the clinical prognosis of esophageal cancer patients treated with definitive chemoradiotherapy.

This study aimed to conduct a survival analysis of thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients treated with radical chemoradiotherapy and identify prognostic variables from among the hematological and radiation parameters. Cases of patients with ESCC receiving definitive chemoradiotherapy at Jiangsu Cancer Hospital between January 2018 and September 2020 were screened. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to assess the effect of hematological and radiation parameters on the overall survival (OS). The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was calculated by dividing the absolute neutrophil count (ANC) by the absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) in the week prior to radical chemoradiotherapy. Variables associated with radiation were gathered based on dose-volume histograms (DVH). X-tile software was used to determine the optimal cutoff values for pretreatment NLR and posttreatment ALC nadir. Associations between lymphopenia and dose-volume parameters were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression. The study included 104 ESCC patients. The median follow-up of surviving patients was 45.0 months (interquartile range: 40.2-52.2), with 1- and 3-year OS rates of 88.0% and 62.7%, respectively. Multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated a significant survival benefit in patients with low baseline NLR (≤ 2.2), high ALC nadir (> 0.24*109/L), and desirable radiation parameters for the heart and thoracic vertebrae. Increased dose-volume parameters of the heart, lungs, and thoracic vertebrae were correlated with a high probability of radiation-induced lymphopenia (RIL) risk (P < 0.05). Baseline NLR and RIL are significantly related to survival outcomes in ESCC patients. Optimization of radiation parameters of cardiopulmonary and thoracic vertebrae can be effective in the prevention of RIL.

Printing Defect Detection Based on Scale-Adaptive Template Matching and Image Alignment.

Printing defects are extremely common in the manufacturing industry. Although some studies have been conducted to detect printing defects, the stability and practicality of the printing defect detection has received relatively little attention. Currently, printing defect detection is susceptible to external environmental interference such as illuminance and noise, which leads to poor detection rates and poor practicality. This research develops a printing defect detection method based on scale-adaptive template matching and image alignment. Firstly, the research introduces a convolutional neural network (CNN) to adaptively extract deep feature vectors from templates and target images at a low-resolution version. Then, a feature map cross-correlation (FMCC) matching metric is proposed to measure the similarity of the feature map between the templates and target images, and the matching position is achieved by a proposed location refinement method. Finally, the matching image and the template are both sent to the image alignment module, so as to detect printing defects. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the proposed method reaches 93.62%, which can quickly and accurately find the location of the defect. Simultaneously, it is also proven that our method achieves state-of-the-art defect detection performance with strong real-time detection and anti-interference capabilities.

Chinese herbal medicine Jia Wei Jing Xie Yin (JWJXY) ameliorates psoriasis via suppressing the Th17 cell response.

Background: Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune disease. At present, it is very difficult to treat; however, clinical trials have shown that the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatment of psoriasis has certain advantages. The Chinese herbal medicine Jia Wei Jing Xie Yin (JWJXY) has its origins in Jing Xie Yin, a medicine created by the TCM doctor Wu Jun. Previous studies have shown that JWJXY has good clinical efficacy for patients with blood-heat type psoriasis, but its mechanism is unknown. Methods: This paper aimed to further study the therapeutic effect and mechanism of JWJXY on an imiquimod (IMQ)-induced, psoriasis-like mouse model (0.4 mL, i.g., 6 days). The histopathological skin changes were observed by hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining, the infiltration of cluster of differentiation 11B (CD11b) and cluster of differentiation 4 (CD4) cells was observed by immunohistochemistry, lymphocyte subsets were detected by flow cytometry, T helper (Th)17 cell expression was perceived by flow cytometry, and Th17 cell-related gene expression was detected by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Results: JWJXY significantly reduced the skin thickness of the IMQ-induced model mouse. Compared with that in the vehicle group, the skin tissue of the mice in the JWJXY group showed significantly reduced infiltration of CD11b+ and CD4+ T cells. Flow cytometry results showed that JWJXY decreased the proportion of B220 and Th17 cells in the spleen tissue of the mice. There was no significant effect on the proportion of Th1 or regulatory T cells (Treg) cells. Compared with that in the vehicle group, the skin tissue of the mice in the JWJXY group showed significantly decreased expression of interleukin-17A (IL-17A), IL-17F, retinoic acid receptor-related orphan receptor gamma t (RORγt), IL-1ß, interferon gamma (IFN-γ), and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) messenger RNA (mRNA). Conclusions: The study confirmed the therapeutic effect of JWJXY on psoriasis. Its mechanism of action might be to inhibit the Th17 cell response but not the Th1 and Treg response.

Optimal Resource Allocation for NOMA-TDMA Scheme with α-Fairness in Industrial Internet of Things.

In this paper, a joint non-orthogonal multiple access and time division multiple access (NOMA-TDMA) scheme is proposed in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which allowed multiple sensors to transmit in the same time-frequency resource block using NOMA. The user scheduling, time slot allocation, and power control are jointly optimized in order to maximize the system α -fair utility under transmit power constraint and minimum rate constraint. The optimization problem is nonconvex because of the fractional objective function and the nonconvex constraints. To deal with the original problem, we firstly convert the objective function in the optimization problem into a difference of two convex functions (D.C.) form, and then propose a NOMA-TDMA-DC algorithm to exploit the global optimum. Numerical results show that the NOMA-TDMA scheme significantly outperforms the traditional orthogonal multiple access scheme in terms of both spectral efficiency and user fairness.

Mass transfer and chemical oxidation of naphthalene particles with zerovalent iron activated persulfate.

The usage of zerovalent iron (ZVI) activated persulfate to induce sulfate radical (SO(4)(-)·) oxidation of both aqueous and solid phase naphthalene (Nap) was investigated. It was determined that the removal of Nap particles occurred through an indirect route. Specifically, Nap released through dissolution from the pure Nap particles was subsequently oxidized in the aqueous phase by SO(4)(-)·. Rapid destruction of dissolved Nap created a greater concentration gradient between the solid and aqueous phases. This caused more Nap particles to be dissolved which were then available for the subsequent oxidative destruction of dissolved Nap. The rate constant (k(obs,Nap)) of ZVI activated persulfate degradation of dissolved Nap was determined to be 3.74 min(-1). The overall dissolution mass transfer coefficients (k(L)a) for the Nap particles were determined, 3.0 × 10(-2) min(-1) with initial 10 mg Nap in 40 mL water, and found to be proportional to the quantities of the Nap particles present. The results indicate that the k(obs,Nap) is much greater than the k(L)a. The net result of the dissolution of Nap particles and the destruction of dissolved Nap by oxidation was the removal of Nap particles. Sequential additions of ZVI at a lower concentration to slow down the formation of SO(4)(-)· can prevent the scavenging of SO(4)(-)· by ZVI and enhance the removal of Nap particles. The results of the mass balance analysis during the oxidized, aqueous and solid phases of Nap were consistent with experimental observations.