Cytokines and Venous Leg Ulcer Healing—A Systematic Review

Venous leg ulcers (VLUs) are the most common type of leg ulcers with a significant socioeconomic burden due to slow healing. Cytokines may be involved in the pathogenesis of VLUs. In this systematic review, our objective was to investigate the association between cytokine levels, including growth factors, with the healing of VLUs. PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane Library were searched from their inception to August 2021. We retrieved 28 articles investigating 38 different cytokines in 790 patients. Cytokines were most commonly investigated in wound fluid and less frequently in biopsies and serum. The studies were judged as having a moderate to high risk of bias, and the results were often inconsistent and sometimes conflicting. A meta-analysis was not performed due to clinical and methodological heterogeneities. We found weak evidence for elevated IL-1α, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α and VEGF levels in non-healing VLUs, an elevation that declined with healing. TGF-β1 levels tended to increase with VLU healing. Other cytokines warranting further investigations include EGF, FGF-2, GM-CSF, IL-1β, IL-1Ra and PDGF-AA/PDGF-BB. We conclude that non-healing VLUs may be associated with an elevation of a palette of pro-inflammatory cytokines, possibly reflecting activated innate immunity in these wounds. There is a paucity of reliable longitudinal studies monitoring the dynamic changes in cytokine levels during wound healing.     

Promising Anticancer Activity of [Bis(1,8-quinolato)palladium (II)] Alone and in Combination

Due to similar coordination chemistry of palladium and platinum, a large number of palladium compounds as well have been investigated for their anticancer activity. In the present study, we describe synthesis, characterization, and anticancer activity of palladium complex [Bis(1,8-quinolato)palladium (II)], coded as NH3 against seven different cancer cell lines. NH3 is found to have higher antitumor activity than cisplatin against both parent ovarian A2780 cell line and cisplatin-resistant cell lines. Also, NH3 has the lower IC₅₀ value in HT-29 colorectal cancer cell line. The higher antitumor activity of NH3 is due to the presence of bulky 8-Hydroxyquinoline ligand, thus reducing its reactivity. Proteomic study has identified significantly expressed proteins which have been validated through bioinformatics. NH3 has been found to be less toxic than cisplatin at 2.5 mg/kg and 5 mg/kg dosages on mice models. Binary combinations of NH3 with curcumin and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) have demonstrated dose and sequence-dependent synergism in ovarian and colorectal cancer models. All of the preclinical studies indicate promising therapeutic potential of NH3 [Bis(1,8-quinolato)palladium (II)] as an anticancer drug.     

Fabrication of BioFET linear array for detection of protein interactions

An extended-gate MOSFETs (metal–oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors) based biosensing linear array has been fabricated for label-free protein interaction detection. The device was realized using a combination of very low leakage current MOSFET transistors and an external gate where the chemical reaction would take place. Peptide aptamers that recognize cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK), a protein cancer marker, were used as a biological test system. The test results showed a high sensitive in the detection of CDK.     

Characterization of Failed Surface of Ti and Imidex (PI) Film for Different Inter-layer Thicknesses of Ti Film

For miniaturized biomedical devices, laser joining of dissimilar materials offers excellent potential to make precise joints. An important system for consideration is titanium (Ti) coated glass joined with biocompatible imidex polyimide (PI). Metallic Ti with various thicknesses was deposited on top of pyrex 7740 borosilicate glass by using DC-magnetron sputtering deposition method. Effect of bond strength between Ti coated glass and imidex polyimide (PI), due to thickness variation of sputtered Ti coating was studied. Three different Ti inter-layer thicknesses were considered, 50, 200, and 400?nm. Tests results indicated that the thinner film produced lower shear strength and higher thickness produced higher shear strength. It has been observed that thicker film (200 and 400?nm) enhanced considerably the bond strength with enhancing the film roughness as well. Higher roughness resulted in more contact area at the interface, results higher number of chemical bonds and increased mechanical interlocking; which in turn increase the laser joint strength. For stronger bond with higher thickness, mixed mode failure was observed which included cohesive failure of polymer, interface failure of Ti/glass and failure on the glass itself. On the other hand, for weak bond with thinner film, mostly interface failure was observed for this system of Ti coated glass/imidex. For thicker film, chemical bond of Ti-C and Ti-O were observed. The role of both surface characteristics and chemical bonding for laser joints were investigated by using advanced techniques such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersive spectroscopy.     

Improved Bat Algorithm with Deep Learning-Based Biomedical ECG Signal Classification Model

With new developments experienced in Internet of Things (IoT), wearable, and sensing technology, the value of healthcare services has enhanced. This evolution has brought significant changes from conventional medicine-based healthcare to real-time observation-based healthcare. Bio-medical Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are generally utilized in examination and diagnosis of Cardiovascular Diseases (CVDs) since it is quick and non-invasive in nature. Due to increasing number of patients in recent years, the classifier efficiency gets reduced due to high variances observed in ECG signal patterns obtained from patients. In such scenario computer-assisted automated diagnostic tools are important for classification of ECG signals. The current study devises an Improved Bat Algorithm with Deep Learning Based Biomedical ECG Signal Classification (IBADL-BECGC) approach. To accomplish this, the proposed IBADL-BECGC model initially pre-processes the input signals. Besides, IBADL-BECGC model applies NasNet model to derive the features from test ECG signals. In addition, Improved Bat Algorithm (IBA) is employed to optimally fine-tune the hyperparameters related to NasNet approach. Finally, Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) classification algorithm is executed to perform ECG classification method. The presented IBADL-BECGC model was experimentally validated utilizing benchmark dataset. The comparison study outcomes established the improved performance of IBADL-BECGC model over other existing methodologies since the former achieved a maximum accuracy of 97.49%.     

Genetic-Frog-Leaping Algorithm for Text Document Clustering

In recent years, the volume of information in digital form has increased tremendously owing to the increased popularity of the World Wide Web. As a result, the use of techniques for extracting useful information from large collections of data, and particularly documents, has become more necessary and challenging. Text clustering is such a technique; it consists in dividing a set of text documents into clusters (groups), so that documents within the same cluster are closely related, whereas documents in different clusters are as different as possible. Clustering depends on measuring the content (i.e., words) of a document in terms of relevance. Nevertheless, as documents usually contain a large number of words, some of them may be irrelevant to the topic under consideration or redundant. This can confuse and complicate the clustering process and make it less accurate. Accordingly, feature selection methods have been employed to reduce data dimensionality by selecting the most relevant features. In this study, we developed a text document clustering optimization model using a novel genetic frog-leaping algorithm that efficiently clusters text documents based on selected features. The proposed approach is based on two metaheuristic algorithms: a genetic algorithm (GA) and a shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (SFLA). The GA performs feature selection, and the SFLA performs clustering. To evaluate its effectiveness, the proposed approach was tested on a well-known text document dataset: the “20Newsgroup” dataset from the University of California Irvine Machine Learning Repository. Overall, after multiple experiments were compared and analyzed, it was demonstrated that using the proposed algorithm on the 20Newsgroup dataset greatly facilitated text document clustering, compared with classical K-means clustering. Nevertheless, this improvement requires longer computational time.     

Flavonone 3-hydroxylase Relieves Bacterial Leaf Blight Stress in Rice via Overaccumulation of Antioxidant Flavonoids and Induction of Defense Genes and Hormones

Efficient accumulation of flavonoids is important for increased tolerance to biotic stress. Although several plant defense mechanisms are known, the roles of many pathways, proteins, and secondary metabolites in stress tolerance are unknown. We generated a flavanone 3-hydroxylase (F3H) overexpressor rice line and inoculated Xanthomonas Oryzae pv. oryzae and compared the control and wildtype inoculated plants. In addition to promoting plant growth and developmental maintenance, the overexpression of F3H increased the accumulation of flavonoids and increased tolerance to bacterial leaf blight (BLB) stress. Moreover, leaf lesion length was higher in the infected wildtype plants compared with infected transgenics. Kaempferol and quercetin, which scavenge reactive oxygen species, overaccumulated in transgenic lines compared with wildtypes in response to pathogenic infection, detected by scanning electron microscopy and spectrophotometry. The induction of F3H altered the antioxidant system and reduced the levels of glutathione peroxidase activity and malondialdehyde (MDA) contents in the transgenic lines compared with the wildtypes. Downstream gene regulation analysis showed that the expression of F3H increased the regulation of flavonol synthase (FLS), dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (DFR), and slender rice mutant (SLR1) during BLB stress. The analysis of SA and JA signaling revealed an antagonistic interaction between both hormones and that F3H induction significantly promoted SA and inhibited JA accumulation in the transgenic lines. SA-dependent nonexpressor pathogenesis-related (NPR1) and Xa1 showed significant upregulation in the infected transgenic lines compared with the infected control and wildtype lines. Thus, the overexpression of F3H was essential for increasing BLB stress tolerance.     

Systematic significance of pollen morphology and foliar epidermal anatomy of medicinal plants using SEM and LM techniques

Alternative medicinal source is a hot issue within medicine community now a days due to various side effects of allotropic drugs; most importantly the multidrug resistance phenomena. Medicinal plants provide an attractive and effective alternative to modern synthetic drugs as they contain different types of bioactive compounds, having great potential in treatment of various diseases. The present study deals with identification of micromorphological characteristics of 10 ethnomedicinally important plants of Northern Pakistan, that is, Aster himalaicus C. B. Clarke, Artemisia maritima (Berg.) Wellkomm, Isodon rugosus (Wall. ex Benth.), Myricaria squamosal Desv, Pedicularis groenlandica Retz. Polygonum aviculare L, Salvia himmelbauer E. Peter, Swertia kingie Hook. f., Tanacetum dolichophyllum (Kitam) Kitam, Verbascum epixanthinum Boiss. & Heldr. as potential source for pharmaceutical industry. The characters studied were shape and size of pollen, polar diameter and equatorial diameter, epidermal cell shape and size, stomata width and length, trichome shapes, and type. Most of the species had tricolporate pollen type but hexacolporate pollen was also observed in Isodon rugosus, Polygonum aviculare, Salvia himmelbauer. Different types of exine sculpturing observed were foveolate, scabrate, lophate, regular, steriate, and alveolate. Minimum equatorial diameter was noted in Tanacetum dolichophyllum (12.4 μm) and maximum in Myricaria squamosal (20.9 μm). Shape of epidermis cell ranged from rectangular and irregular, polygonal and pentagonal. Different types of stomata like anisocytic, actinocytic, paracytic, and diacytic were noticed. Variations in microscopic characters observed in the current study have great potential to be used as identification tools by the taxonomists for further studies.