Delivery of cisplatin by folic acid-targeted liposomal nanoparticles into liver cancer cell line

This study aimed to prepare cisplatin-loaded PEGylated liposomal nanoparticles targeted with folic acid and evaluate their efficacy on liver cancer cell line PLC/PRF/5 (Alexander hepatoma cell line). Nanoparticles were prepared by reverse phase evaporation technique and characterized by dynamic light scattering, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide techniques. Nanoscale particles with appropriate drug encapsulation efficiency (13%) were prepared. Cytotoxicity results indicated that the superior potency of targeted cisplatin-loaded nanoparticles compared to the nontargeted counterpart with 23% more cytotoxicity. Findings of this study confirmed the potency of targeted PEGylated liposomal nanoparticles.     

Antioxidant action of a lipophilic nitroxyl radical,cyclohexane-1-spiro-2′-(4′-oxyimidazolidine-1′-oxyl)-5′-spiro-1″-cyclohexane,against lipid peroxidation under hypoxic conditions

Nitroxyl radicals are known to act as radical scavenging antioxidants. In the present study, a lipophilic nitroxyl radical, cyclohexane-1-spiro-2′-(4′-oxyimidazolidine-1′-oxyl)-5′-spiro-1″-cyclohexane (nitroxyl radical I) was synthesized and its antioxidant capacity was assessed in comparison with a hydrophilic nitroxyl radical, 4-hydroxy-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-N-oxyl (Tempol). Both nitroxyl radical I and Tempol inhibited methyl linoleate oxidation induced by free radicals, and the efficacy increased with decreasing partial pressure of oxygen, the effect being more pronounced for nitroxyl radical I than Tempol. Their hydroxylamines inhibited lipid peroxidation more effectively than their corresponding parent nitroxyl radicals. In liposomal membranes, a synergistic effect was observed in the combination of nitroxyl radical I with ascorbic acid, whereas only an additive effect was observed between Tempol and ascorbic acid. The present study suggests that nitroxyl radical I and its hydroxylamine may act as potent antioxidants, especially in combination with ascorbic acid under hypoxic conditions.     

High Levels of the Cleaved Form of Galectin-9 and Osteopontin in the Plasma Are Associated with Inflammatory Markers That Reflect the Severity of COVID-19 Pneumonia

Numbers of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have increased rapidly worldwide. Plasma levels of full-length galectin-9 (FL-Gal9) and osteopontin (FL-OPN) as well as their truncated forms (Tr-Gal9, Ud-OPN, respectively), are representative inflammatory biomarkers. Here, we measured FL-Gal9, FL-OPN, Tr-Gal9, and Ud-OPN in 94 plasma samples obtained from 23 COVID-19-infected patients with mild clinical symptoms (CV), 25 COVID-19 patients associated with pneumonia (CP), and 14 patients with bacterial infection (ID). The four proteins were significantly elevated in the CP group when compared with healthy individuals. ROC analysis between the CV and CP groups showed that C-reactive protein had the highest ability to differentiate, followed by Tr-Gal9 and ferritin. Spearman’s correlation analysis showed that Tr-Gal9 and Ud-OPN but not FL-Gal9 and FL-OPN, had a significant association with laboratory markers for lung function, inflammation, coagulopathy, and kidney function in CP patients. CP patients treated with tocilizumab had reduced levels of FL-Gal9, Tr-Gal9, and Ud-OPN. It was suggested that OPN is cleaved by interleukin-6-dependent proteases. These findings suggest that the cleaved forms of OPN and galectin-9 can be used to monitor the severity of pathological inflammation and the therapeutic effects of tocilizumab in CP patients.     

Stimulation of THP-1 Macrophages with LPS Increased the Production of Osteopontin-Encapsulating Exosome

Osteopontin (OPN) mediates bone remodeling and tissue debridement. The OPN protein is cleaved, but it is unclear how full-length (FL)-OPN or its cleaved form perform their biological activities in target cells. We, therefore, performed the molecular characterization of OPN in exosomes (Exo). The Exo were isolated from lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA)-differentiated THP-1 macrophages. The Exo were also isolated from PMA-differentiated THP-1 macrophages. The Exo were identified using the qNano multiple analyzer (diameter 59–315 nm) and western blotting with a CD9 antibody. LPS-stimulated cells produced more particles than non-stimulated cells. The presence of the FL or the cleaved form of OPN was confirmed using western blot analysis. A mixture of FL and cleaved OPN was also measured using an ELISA system (Ud-OPN) and their presence in the Exo was confirmed. Ud/FL ratios became low after LPS stimulation, indicating the enhanced encapsulation of FL-OPN in the Exo by LPS. These findings suggest that LPS stimulation of human macrophages facilitates the synthesis of FL-OPN, which is cleaved in cells or the Exo after release. These findings indicate that Exo is a suitable vehicle to transfer OPN to the target cells.     

Modulation of tyrosine kinase activity has multiple actions on insulin release from the pancreatic beta-cell: studies with lavendustin A

The reproductive function of spinal cord injured males is not the primary concern of health professionals responsible for the management of these young adults. However, the fertility of these patients is threatened right from the first days after trauma, as indicated by abnormalities of the sperm count, reflecting the histological alterations observed on testicular biopsy. The factors predisposing to asthenoteratospermia, responsible for impaired fertility, are analysed and discussed. Urinary tract infection is the leading factor. This acute situation must be managed early, by preventing urinary tract infection and by obtaining a semen donation as soon as possible, after improvement of the general status.     

Electro-optic properties of InGaAs/GaAs multiquantum wells for modulator applications

A study of the application of InGaAs/GaAs multiquantum wells for modulators using the electroabsorption ( Delta alpha ) and the electrofraction ( Delta n) effects is presented. The important parameters for these devices were measured directly in both waveguide and surface-normal configurations. The Delta n and Delta alpha spectra were shown to satisfy the Kramers-Kronig relations.<>     

Quantitative analysis of branching in poly(ortho ester) networks

A direct method to quantify the branching attributable to fully reacted hexane-1,2,6-triol (HT) in poly(ortho ester) networks is reported. The method was based on the presence of free hydroxyl groups on incompletely reacted HT in the poly(ortho ester) matrix that were “tagged” prior to matrix hydrolysis. HT molecules that were completely reacted, i.e., acting as cross-linker, within the polymer matrix would have no free hydroxyl groups available for “tagging” and posthydrolysis would be present as free HT. Experimentally, the matrix was swollen in p-dioxane, then phenyl isocyanate (PhCNO) was added to “tag” the hydroxyl groups in the presence of a stannous octoate catalyst. After removal of excess PhCNO, the matrix was hydrolyzed under mild acidic conditions. Any “untagged” HT was subsequently derivatized into trimethylsilyl ethers and analyzed by gas chromatography (GC). The level of branching determined by this direct chemical method correlated well with conventional swell ratio measurements. Furthermore, the extent of hydrolysis of the polymer backbone covalent bonds were also measured by this method since the resulting hydroxyl groups were “tagged” by PhCNO. All polyols were analyzed simultaneously by GC. Application of this method in characterization of the solid-state hydrolysis of a poly(ortho ester) network was demonstrated. The degradation profiles of the branch sites and other backbone ortho ester bonds showed that the hydrolysis was initially slow, becoming progressively rapid. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Deep interactive encoding with capsule networks for image classification

With new architectures providing astonishing performance on many vision tasks, the interest in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) has grown exponentially in the recent past. Such architectures, however, are not problem-free. For instance, one of the many issues is that they require a huge amount of labeled data and are not able to encode pose and deformation information. Capsule Networks (CapsNets) have been recently proposed as a solution to the issues related to CNNs. CapsNet achieved interesting results in images recognition by addressing pose and deformation encoding challenges. Despite their success, CapsNets are still an under-investigated architecture with respect to the more classical CNNs. Following the ideas of CapsNet, we propose to introduce Residual Capsule Network (ResNetCaps) and Dense Capsule Network (DenseNetCaps) to tackle the image recognition problem. With these two architectures, we expand the encoding phase of CapsNet by adding residual convolutional and densely connected convolutional blocks. In addition to this, we investigate the application of feature interaction methods between capsules to promote their cooperation while dealing with complex data. Experiments on four benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach performs better than existing solutions.