Numerical simulation flow dynamics of an intracranial aneurysm.

BACKGROUND: Computational fluid dynamics provides a new method for the study of the blood flow characteristics of the formation and development of intracranial aneurysms. OBJECTIVE: To compare blood flow characteristics between the healthy internal carotid artery and normal intracranial aneurysms. METHODS: The internal carotid arteries were simulated to obtain hemodynamic parameters in one patient. RESULTS: The internal carotid artery associated with aneurysm presents low wall shear stress, high oscillatory shear index, and high particle retention time compared with the normal internal carotid artery. CONCLUSIONS: There are differences in blood flow between the normal internal carotid artery and intracranial aneurysm. The vortex of the aneurysm will produce turbulence, indicating that it is unstable, which results in the growth and rupture of the aneurysm.

Upregulation of centromere protein K is crucial for lung adenocarcinoma cell viability and invasion.

BACKGROUND: Identification of functional genes or biomarkers may be helpful for developing new treatment strategies in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). The centromere protein K (CENPK) gene has been discovered to be overexpressed and could influence tumor progression in several tumor types. However, its role in LUAD has never been revealed. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of the current study was to detect the effects of CENPK and its mechanisms in the progression of LUAD. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Oncomine databases was used to analyze the expression of CENPK. The relationship between CENPK expression and the prognosis of LUAD was investigated using Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analyses. The cell viability was monitored with Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) and colony forming assays, while migration and invasion were analyzed with a transwell assay. The effect of CENPK on the expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers were estimated using western blotting. RESULTS: CENPK was significantly overexpressed in LUAD tissues and cells (p < 0.01). The overall survival rate in the low CENPK expression group was significantly higher than in the high CENPK expression group (p = 0.003). Furthermore, the overexpression of CENPK facilitated cell viability, migration and invasion of tumor cells, while knockdown of CENPK prevented these behaviors (p < 0.01). Moreover, upregulation of CENPK decreased the expression of E-cadherin and enhanced the expression of N-cadherin, vimentin and Snail in LUAD cells (p < 0.01). Conversely, knockdown of CENPK resulted in the opposite trend (p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: CENPK was upregulated in LUAD tissues and cells, and the enhancement of CENPK promoted the viability, migration, invasion, and EMT of LUAD cells.

High-throughput system metabolomics method reveals new mechanistic insights of chlorogenic acid by using liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry.

It has increasingly been recognized that metabolism is highly interconnected with disease, and system metabolomics studies have aimed to discover metabolic biomarkers and analyze the pathways of metabolome phenotypes. To better understand the metabolic alteration related with disease, a urine metabolic profile using a high-throughput system metabolomics technology approach was applied to probe the underlying molecular mechanisms of alcohol-induced liver injury and the therapeutic effects of chlorogenic acid (CA). In this study, endogenous low-molecular-weight metabolites were characterized using liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS). The acquired data was parsed by principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) to identify potential biomarkers. A total of 19 biomarkers were identified in a model of alcohol-induced liver injury rats, and it was found that chlorogenic acid had a regulatory effect on 14 of them, associated with multiple metabolic pathways. Comprehensive pathway analysis suggests that CA has the ability to regulate abnormal metabolic states. In addition, accessory examinations such as biochemical analysis and histopathological observations were also performed that showed similar results. As a natural product agent against ethanol-induced liver injury, CA was validated in the rebalancing of a wide range of metabolic disorders. High-throughput system metabolomics represents a powerful approach for revealing new mechanistic insights of natural products.