Invasion characteristics and clinical significance of tumor-associated macrophages in gastrointestinal Krukenberg tumors.

Background: Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) have been used as potential drug targets in preclinical research and clinical trials of various cancers. However, their distribution in Krukenberg tumors (KTs) remains unclear. We investigated the expression and prognostic value of TAMs in patients with gastrointestinal cancer with KTs. Methods: The infiltration of various types of TAMs was detected in surgical tissues of 35 patients with KTs using immunohistochemical staining. The level of infiltration of TAMs in tumor nests (TN), tumor stroma (TS), and invasive margin (IM) areas was evaluated. The Kaplan-Meier method and univariate/multivariate Cox regression risk models were used to analyze the relationship between the degree of TAMs invasion and overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). Results: The distribution of TAMs exhibited spatial heterogeneity between TN, TS, and IM regions in primary tumor (PT) and KT tissues. TAMs infiltrated in the TN had greater prognostic value and were barely influenced by preoperative neoadjuvant therapy, despite similar grades of invasion in PT and KT tissues. Moreover, the number of CD68+ TAMs in TN of KT tissues was an independent risk factor affecting patient OS, whereas tumor resection scope might be an independent risk factor affecting patient PFS. Conclusions: In view of the close relationship between TAMs, the tumor microenvironment and patient prognosis, targeting TAMs combined with chemotherapy is expected to become a new approach for the treatment of patients with KTs.

Oncology Outcomes of Total Mesorectal Excision with Preservation of Both the Superior Rectum Artery and Left Colonic Artery for Upper-Rectal and Sigmoid Colon Cancers: A Meta-Analysis.

Background: Total mesorectal resection (TME) has become the standard surgical procedure for resection of colorectal cancer tumors. We presented a systematic meta-analysis to evaluate the surgical outcomes of laparoscopic TME surgery with preservation or nonpreservation of both the superior rectum artery (SRA) and left colonic artery (LCA) for upper-rectal and sigmoid colon cancers. Methods: The comparative studies were systematically searched on PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, Wanfang Data, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) up to April 2021. Primary outcomes were oncology outcomes. And secondary outcomes involved surgical outcomes of interest and postoperative recovery. Results: Five relevant studies with a total of 761 patients undergoing laparoscopic TME surgery were eligible for meta-analysis. Three hundred seven patients received TME with preservation of both SRA and LCA (Group A), and 454 received TME surgery alone (Group B), respectively. Our results indicated that Group A had a less total postoperative complications (P = .000), lower anastomotic leakage rate (P = .002), shorter length of stay (P = .008), and longer operative time (P = .002). However, there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of lymph node dissections (P = .188), intraoperative bleeding (P = .474), the first postoperative defecation (P = .943), recurrence rate (P = .547), and conversive rate (P = .504). Conclusions: Based on our meta-analysis, laparoscopic TME surgery with preservation of both the SRA and LCA for upper-rectal and sigmoid colon cancers may significantly receive better clinical and surgical outcomes. More well-designed large sample studies are required to replicate the short-term benefits and long-term oncologic outcomes.

Upregulation of ADAM12 Is Associated With a Poor Survival and Immune Cell Infiltration in Colon Adenocarcinoma.

BACKGROUND: A disintegrin and metalloprotease 12 (ADAM12) is a member of the multidomain protein family, but the mechanisms by which it affects prognosis and immune cell infiltration in patients with colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) remain unclear. Here, our study aimed to analyze the prognostic value of ADAM12 and investigate the correlation between ADAM12 expression and immune cell infiltration in patients with COAD. METHODS: Differential expression analyses were performed using the Oncomine and UALCAN databases, and prognostic analyses were conducted using PrognoScan, Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA), and Kaplan-Meier Plotter. Then, the cBioPortal database was used to analyze alterations in the ADAM12 gene, and the STRING and Metascape websites were used to conduct Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analyses. Additionally, relationships between ADAM12 and the immune microenvironment were evaluated based on the TIMER, GEPIA, and TISIDB databases. RESULTS: ADAM12 was overexpressed in COAD tissues, and higher ADAM12 expression correlated with a worse prognosis for patients with COAD. The gene regulatory network suggested that ADAM12 was mainly enriched in extracellular matrix (ECM) organization, ECM proteoglycans, skeletal system development, and ossification, among other pathways. Moreover, ADAM12 expression significantly correlated with the abundance of CD4+ T cells, B cells, CD8+ T cells, neutrophils, macrophages, dendritic cells, and their markers, as well as lymphocytes, immunomodulators, and chemokines. CONCLUSIONS: In colorectal tumors, ADAM12 may play vital roles in regulating the ECM and the recruitment of immune cells, and we suggest that ADAM12 will become a reliable biomarker for determining response to immunotherapy and the prognosis of patients with COAD.

Comparison between 3-dimensional and 2-dimensional endoscopic thyroidectomy for benign and malignant lesions: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: The use of 3-dimensional (3D) endoscopic thyroidectomy (ET) has been increasing, but its feasibility and safety have not been well documented for thyroidectomy. Hence, to systematically investigate the comparative outcomes during 3D-ET and 2-dimensional (2D) ET for benign and malignant lesions, we conducted this meta-analysis. METHODS: Based on the PRISMA guidelines, a systematic database search of the PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Chinese Wanfang databases was performed. The eligible studies were published in English and Chinese up to October 2020. The major endpoints evaluated were procedure time, blood loss, postoperative drainage, postoperative hospitalization, postoperative complications, total number of lymph node dissections (LNDs), and total cost. RESULTS: A total of 15 relevant studies including 1190 patients (583 for 3D-ET and 607 for 2D-ET) compared the application of 3D and 2D laparoscopic systems in thyroid surgery, of which 8 were endoscopic benign thyroidectomy (EBT) and 7 were endoscopic malignant thyroidectomy (EMT). Our meta-analysis indicated that 3D-ET generally had advantages over 2D-ET in terms of procedure time (P = 0.000), blood loss (P = 0.000), postoperative drainage (P = 0.000), postoperative complications (P = 0.000), and LNDs (P = 0.006). However, there were no significant differences between the two systems in terms of total cost (P = 0.245) or postoperative hospitalization (P = 0.068). Subgroup analysis showed consistency of the overall outcomes in each subset, but a shorter postoperative hospitalization in 3D-EBT was revealed. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to 2D-ET, 3D endoscopic thyroidectomy is an efficient, safe, and reliable method with better depth perception and stereoscopic vision, and an equally satisfactory outcome. More clinical RCTs with long-term follow-up are required to reproduce these promising results.

Demonstration of distributed collaborative learning with end-to-end QoT estimation in multi-domain elastic optical networks.

This paper proposes a distributed collaborative learning approach for cognitive and autonomous multi-domain elastic optical networking (EON). The proposed approach exploits a knowledge-defined networking framework which leverages a broker plane to coordinate the operations of multiple EON domains and applies machine learning (ML) to support autonomous and cognitive inter-domain service provisioning. By employing multiple distributed ML blocks learning domain-level features and working with broker plane aggregation ML blocks (through the chain rule-based training), the proposed approach enables to develop cognitive networking applications that can fully exploit the multi-domain EON states while obviating the need for the raw and confidential intra-domain data. In particular, we investigate end-to-end quality-of-transmission estimation application using the distributed learning approach and propose three estimator designs incorporating the concepts of multi-task learning (MTL) and transfer learning (TL). Evaluations with experimental data demonstrate that the proposed designs can achieve estimation accuracies very close to (with differences less than 0.5%) or even higher than (with MTL/TL) those of the baseline models assuming full domain visibility.

High Throughput Laser Process of Transparent Conducting Surfaces for Terahertz Bandpass Ultrathin Metamaterials.

Terahertz (THz) imaging has attracted much attention within the past decade as an emerging nondestructive evaluation technique. In this paper, we present a novel Laser-based Metamaterial Fabrication (LMF) process for high-throughput fabrication of transparent conducting surfaces on dielectric substrates such as glass, quartz and polymers to achieve tunable THz bandpass characteristics. The LMF process comprises two steps: (1) applying ultrathin-film metal deposition, with a typical thickness of 10 nm, on the dielectric substrate; (2) creating a ~100-micron feature pattern on the metal film using nanosecond pulsed laser ablation. Our results demonstrate the use of laser-textured ultra-thin film with newly integrated functional capabilities: (a) highly conductive with ~20 Ω/sq sheet resistance, (b) optically transparent with ~70% transmittance within visible spectrum, and (c) tunable bandpass filtering effect in the THz frequency range. A numerical analysis is performed to help determine the fundamental mechanism of THz bandpass filtering for the LMF-built samples. The scientific findings from this work render an economical and scalable manufacturing technique capable of treating large surface area for multi-functional metamaterials.

[Micro- and nano-structures on metal induced by femtosecond laser radiation].

In the present study the authors performed surface treatment of stainless steel 65Mn (the thickness is 60 microm) by femtosecond laser (pulse duration 148 fs, wavelength 775 nm). The single-pulse threshold could be obtained directly to be about 0. 2 J x cm(-2). The authors found that the femtosecond laser produced a large number of micro-structures such as nano-pores and nano-protrusions. Then the authors discussed the influence of pulse power and the number of shots on the formed surface structures. The authors found that with the change in the power and the number of pulses, the period of multiple parallel grooved surface patterns remained unchanged, which is about on the sub-micron level. Finally the authors processed the array of holes and the lines with different speed and number of pulses.