The Cologne rebubbling study: a reappraisal of 624 rebubblings after Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: To analyse graft detachments prior to rebubbling, the influence of rebubbling on the postoperative outcome after Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) and the need for rebubbling on the contralateral eye. METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, out of 1541 DMEKs, optical coherence tomography scans and clinical records of 499 eyes undergoing rebubbling after DMEK at the University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany, were examined. Main Outcome measures were (a) number, localisation and size of graft detachments; (b) influence of rebubbling/s on postoperative outcome after 12 months; and (c) rebubbling risk of the contralateral eye after DMEK. RESULTS: Mean number of detachment areas was 2.02±0.9. Mean lateral diameter of all detachments was 4534.76±1920.83 µm. Mean axial diameter was 382.53±282.02 µm. Detachments were equally distributed over all regions of the cornea. Best spectacle corrected visual acuity ( BSCVA) after 12 months was 0.197±0.23 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution, endothelial cell density (ECD) was 1575.21±397.71 cells/mm2 and mean central corneal thickness (CCT) was 566.37±68.11 µm. BSCVA, CCT, ECD or endothelial cell loss of all rebubbled patients were not influenced by the number of rebubblings or the time between DMEK and rebubbling. Of the rebubbled patients, which received a DMEK subsequently on the other eye, 193 (58.8%) also received a rebubbling, which was significantly higher, when compared to the overall rebubbling rate of 32.3% (p=0.000). CONCLUSIONS: The overall number of rebubblings has no influence on the postoperative outcome after DMEK, if a rebubbling becomes necessary. Patients who received a rebubbling on one eye have an elevated risk for a rebubbling on the fellow eye.

Influence of ARHGAP29 on the Invasion of Mesenchymal-Transformed Breast Cancer Cells.

Aggressive and mesenchymal-transformed breast cancer cells show high expression levels of Rho GTPase activating protein 29 (ARHGAP29), a negative regulator of RhoA. ARHGAP29 was the only one of 32 GTPase-activating enzymes whose expression significantly increased after the induction of mesenchymal transformation in breast cancer cells. Therefore, we investigated the influence of ARHGAP29 on the invasiveness of aggressive and mesenchymal-transformed breast cancer cells. After knock-down of ARHGAP29 using siRNA, invasion of HCC1806, MCF-7-EMT, and T-47D-EMT breast cancer cells was significantly reduced. This could be explained by reduced inhibition of RhoA and a consequent increase in stress fiber formation. Proliferation of the breast cancer cell line T-47D-EMT was slightly increased by reduced expression of ARHGAP29, whereas that of HCC1806 and MCF-7-EMT significantly increased. Using interaction analyses we found that AKT1 is a possible interaction partner of ARHGAP29. Therefore, the expression of AKT1 after siRNA knock-down of ARHGAP29 was tested. Reduced ARHGAP29 expression was accompanied by significantly reduced AKT1 expression. However, the ratio of active pAKT1 to total AKT1 remained unchanged or was significantly increased after ARHGAP29 knock-down. Our results show that ARHGAP29 could be an important factor in the invasion of aggressive and mesenchymal-transformed breast cancer cells. Further research is required to fully understand the underlying mechanisms.

Design of an Integrated Subretinal Implant using Cellular Neural Networks for Binary Image Generation in a 130 nm BiCMOS Process.

Blindness caused by the eye diseases Retinitis-Pigmentosa and Age-Related-Macular-Degeneration leads to a degeneration of the photoreceptor layer while postsynaptic cells mostly stay intact. In this Paper a new concept for retinal implants is proposed. Instead of converting the incident light to a gray-scale picture with corresponding continuous-value stimulation levels, we here suggest to produce a binary image picture that only highlight edges in order to stimulate the retina solely at points which belong to an edge. An integrated test circuit is designed with a 130 nm BiCMOS process by using cellular neural networks for binary image generation. The circuit yields a simulated maximum rated power consumption of 2.61 mW for a 1000 information processing cells.