Current Status and Progress in Stem Cell Therapy for Intracerebral Hemorrhage.

Intracerebral hemorrhage is a highly prevalent and prognostically poor disease, imposing immeasurable harm on human life and health. However, the treatment options for intracerebral hemorrhage are severely limited, particularly in terms of improving the microenvironment of the lesion, promoting neuronal cell survival, and enhancing neural function. This review comprehensively discussed the application of stem cell therapy for intracerebral hemorrhage, providing a systematic summary of its developmental history, types of transplants, transplantation routes, and transplantation timing. Moreover, this review presented the latest research progress in enhancing the efficacy of stem cell transplantation, including pretransplantation preconditioning, genetic modification, combined therapy, and other diverse strategies. Furthermore, this review pioneeringly elaborated on the barriers to clinical translation for stem cell therapy. These discussions were of significant importance for promoting stem cell therapy for intracerebral hemorrhage, facilitating its clinical translation, and improving patient prognosis.

Ultralight Porous Cu Nanowire Aerogels as Stable Hosts for High Li-Content Metal Anodes.

Using porous copper (Cu) as the host is one of the most effective approaches to stabilize Li metal anodes. However, the most widely used porous Cu hosts usually account for the excessive mass proportion of composite anodes, which seriously decreases the energy density of Li metal batteries. Herein, an ultralight porous Cu nanowire aerogel (UP-Cu) is reported as the Li metal anode host to accommodate a high mass loading of Li content of 77 wt %. Specifically, the Li/UP-Cu electrode displays a satisfactory gravimetric capacity of 2715 mAh g-1, which is higher than that of the most reported Li metal composite anodes. The UP-Cu host achieves a high Coulombic efficiency of ∼98.9% after 250 cycles in the half cell and exceptional electrochemical stability under high-current-density and deep-plating-stripping conditions in the symmetrical cell. The Li/UP-Cu|LiFePO4 battery displays a specific capacity of 102 mAh g-1 at 5 C for 5000 cycles. The Li/UP-Cu|LiFePO4 pouch cell achieves a significantly high capacity of 146.3 mAh g-1 with a high capacity retention of 95.83% for 360 cycles. This work provides a lightweight porous host to stabilize Li-metal anodes and maintain their high mass-specific capacity.

Porous Metal Current Collectors for Alkali Metal Batteries.

Alkali metals (i.e., Li, Na, and K) are promising anode materials for next-generation high-energy-density batteries due to their superior theoretical specific capacities and low electrochemical potentials. However, the uneven current and ion distribution on the anode surface probably induces undesirable dendrite growth, which leads to significant safety hazards and severely hinders the commercialization of alkali metal anodes. A smart and versatile strategy that can accommodate alkali metals into porous metal current collectors (PMCCs) has been well established to resolve the issues as well as to promote the practical applications of alkali metal anodes. Moreover, the proposal of PMCCs can meet the requirement of the dendrite-free battery fabrication industry, while the electrode material loading exactly needs the metal current collector component as well. Here, a systematic survey on advanced PMCCs for Li, Na, and K alkali metal anodes is presented, including their development timeline, categories, fabrication methods, and working mechanism. On this basis, some significant methodology advances to control pore structure, surface area, surface wettability, and mechanical properties are systematically summarized. Further, the existing issues and the development prospects of PMCCs to improve anode performance in alkali metal batteries are discussed.

Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption, Sodium Fluorescein, And Fluorescence-Guided Surgery Of Gliomas.

PURPOSE: Sodium fluorescein (SF) is an ideal dye for intraoperative guided-resection of high-grade gliomas (HGGs). However, it is not well understood whether the SF-guided technique is suitable for different grades of gliomas, and the correlation between fluorescence and pathology is also not yet clear. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, we investigated 28 patients, including 23 patients with HGG and 5 patients with low-grade glioma (LGG). All patients were treated using the SF-guided technique on a Pentero 900 microscope (Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen, Germany). Claudin-5 immunohistochemical (IHC) staining for the tumours and peritumour tissues was analyzed. RESULTS: Intraoperative yellow fluorescence was noted in all the HGGs but not in the LGGs. Claudin-5 expression in the blood brain barrier endothelial cells was downregulated and disconnected in the HGGs (p < 0.05), but had no difference or slightly decreased in the LGGs (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The SF-guided technique is suitable for HGG surgery but not for LGG surgery. Downregulation of claudin-5 expression may contribute to the presence of yellow fluorescence in the glioma in SF-guided surgery.

Upregulations of CRH and CRHR1 in the Epileptogenic Tissues of Patients with Intractable Infantile Spasms.

AIM: Infantile spasms (IS) are an age-specific epileptic syndrome with specific clinical symptom and electroencephalogram (EEG) features, lacking treatment options, and a poor prognosis. Excessive endogenous corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) in infant brain might result in IS. However, the data from human IS are limited. In our study, we investigated the expressions of CRH and its receptor type 1 (CRHR1) in surgical tissues from patients with IS and autopsy controls. METHODS: Specimens surgically removed from 17 patients with IS, and six autopsy controls were included in the study. Real-time PCR, Western blotting, and immunostaining were used to detect the expressions of mRNA, protein expression, and distribution. The correlation between variates was analyzed by Spearman rank correlation. RESULTS: The expressions of CRH and CRHR1 were significantly upregulated in the epileptogenic tissues of IS patients compared with the control group. CRH was distributed mainly in neurons, while CRHR1 was distributed in neurons, astrocytes, and microglia. The expression levels of CRH and CRHR1 were positively correlated with the frequency of epileptic spasms. Moreover, the expression of protein kinase C (PKC), which was an important downstream factor of CRHR1, was significantly upregulated in the epileptogenic tissues of patients with IS and was positively correlated with the CRHR1 expression levels and the frequency of epileptic spasms. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that the CRH signal transduction pathway might participate in the epileptogenesis of IS, supporting the hypothesis that CRH is related to the pathogenesis of IS.

High CD133 Expression Is Associated with Worse Prognosis in Patients with Glioblastoma.

The CD133 antigen has been identified as a putative stem cell marker in gliomas. However, the prognostic significance of CD133 expression in glioblastoma patients remained controversial. A meta-analysis of published data was performed to comprehensively assess the prognostic role of CD133 expression in glioblastoma patients. Publications assessing the prognostic significance of CD133 expression in glioblastoma patients were identified in PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science up to November 2014. The pooled hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) was calculated using meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic significance of CD133 expression in glioblastoma. Ten studies with a total of 715 glioblastoma patients were included into the meta-analysis. Overall, high CD133 expression was associated with poorer overall survival in patients with glioblastoma (HR = 1.96, 95% CI 1.46-2.64, P < 0.001). In addition, high CD133 expression was also associated with poorer progression-free survival in patients with glioblastoma (HR = 2.03, 95% CI 1.43-2.88, P < 0.001). Meta-analyses of studies with high quality showed that high CD133 expression was associated with both poorer overall survival (HR = 2.39, 95% CI 1.77-3.23, P < 0.001) and poorer progression-free survival (HR = 2.17, 95% CI 1.60-2.94, P < 0.001) in patients with glioblastoma. Meta-analysis of studies with adjusted estimates further showed that high CD133 expression was an independent prognostic factor of glioblastoma. High CD133 expression is associated with worse prognosis in patients with glioblastoma. More prospective studies with well-design are needed to confirm this finding.

[Longitudinal gracilis musculocutaneous flaps with a crossing boundary blood supply from the obturator artery].

OBJECTIVE: The traditional gracilis musculocutaneous flap is supplied by a branch of deep femoral artery, which enters the muscle in between the upper and middle third of it. So the flap barely reaches the pelvis and perineum region for reconstruction. By exploring the blood supply pattern we tried to rotate the flap Upon at the higher point starting at the obturator foramen in order to let it cover a bigger area. METHODS: anatomical reviewing of the blood supply of the gracilis branches of obturator, medial femoral circumflex and deep femoral arteries. Based on this a new type of longitudinal gracilis musculocutaneous flap supported only by the obturator artery was designed to reach the pelvis, female genitalia, pubic symphysis, inguinal area easily. RESULTS: The new kind of flap has been applied to 9 patients for deformity repairing and tissue replacement in the pelvic and perineal area. All the flaps survived and achieved satisfactory result with 3 months to 3 years' follow up. CONCLUSIONS: Longitudinal gracilis musculocutaneous flaps supplied by the obturator artery can be used as regular musculocutaneous flap clinically.