Autologous lymphokine-activated killer cell therapy of Epstein-Barr virus-positive and -negative lymphoproliferative disorders arising in organ transplant recipients

Lymphoreticular malignancies, collectively called posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorders (PTLD), eventually develop in 2-5% of organ transplant recipients. They frequently undergo regression when immunosuppression is reduced or stopped. This feature has been associated with a previous or de novo Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection. We herein describe immunotherapy with autologous lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells in seven patients with PTLD (four EBV-positive patients and three EBV-negative patients). Autologous peripheral blood mononuclear cells were obtained by leukapheresis, depleted of monocytes, and cultured in the presence of interleukin 2 for 10 to 11 days. A single dose of 5.2 x 10(9) to 5.6 x 10(10) LAK cells was given intravenously. Systemic interleukin 2 was not administered. The four patients with EBV+ PTLD had complete tumor regression; two of them developed controllable rejection. Three patients are well 13-16 months after treatment; the fourth patient died of pneumonia 41 days after infusion. Three patients with EBV- lymphomas had no response despite prior evidence that their tumors also were subject to immune surveillance. Two of these three patients died after being given other treatment, and the third patient has persistent tumor. In conclusion, autologous LAK cell infusion was effective for treatment of four EBV+ organ transplant recipients. LAK cell efficacy for three patients with EBV- PTLD was not evaluable under the management circumstances in which this treatment was utilized.     

Behaviors and mechanism of electrolyte electrophoresis during electrophoretic deposition

Electrochemical experiments, including cyclic voltammetry (CV) experiments, galvanostatic experiments, potentiostatic experiments, and kinetic experiments of the LSM electrode, were used to investigate the influence of a deposit on the electrode surface on the electrophoresis of protons in a porous media during electrophoretic deposition (EPD).     

A guided search genetic algorithm using mined rules for optimal affective product design

Affective design is an important aspect of new product development, especially for consumer products, to achieve a competitive edge in the marketplace. It can help companies to develop new products that can better satisfy the emotional needs of customers. However, product designers usually encounter difficulties in determining the optimal settings of the design attributes for affective design. In this article, a novel guided search genetic algorithm (GA) approach is proposed to determine the optimal design attribute settings for affective design. The optimization model formulated based on the proposed approach applied constraints and guided search operators, which were formulated based on mined rules, to guide the GA search and to achieve desirable solutions. A case study on the affective design of mobile phones was conducted to illustrate the proposed approach and validate its effectiveness. Validation tests were conducted, and the results show that the guided search GA approach outperforms the GA approach without the guided search strategy in terms of GA convergence and computational time. In addition, the guided search optimization model is capable of improving GA to generate good solutions for affective design.     

Building a Platform to Bridge Low End Mobile Phones and Cloud Computing Services

Two waves of technology are dramatically changing daily life: cloud computing and mobile phones. New cloud computing services such as webmail and content rich data search have emerged. However, in order to use these services, a mobile phone must be able to run new applications and handle high network bandwidth. Worldwide, about 3.45 billion mobile phones are low end phones;they have low bandwidth and cannot run new applications. Because of this technology gap, most mobile users are unable to experience cloud computing services with their thumbs. In this paper, a novel platform, Thumb-in-Cloud, is proposed to bridge this gap.Thumb-in-Cloud consists of two subsystems: Thumb-Machine and Thumb-Gateways. Thumb-Machine is a virtual machine built into a low end phone to enable it to run new applications. Thumb-Gateways can tailor cloud computing services by reformatting and compressing the service to fit the phone' s profile.     

Solution‐Processed Small‐Molecule Bulk Heterojunction Ambipolar Transistors

Solution‐processed small‐molecule bulk heterojunction (BHJ) ambipolar organic thin‐film transistors are fabricated based on a combination of [2‐phenylbenzo[d,d']thieno[3,2‐b;4,5‐b']dithiophene (P‐BTDT) : 2‐(4‐n‐octylphenyl)benzo[d,d ']thieno[3,2‐b;4,5‐b']dithiophene (OP‐BTDT)] and C₆₀. Treating high electrical performance vacuum‐deposited P‐BTDT organic semiconductors with a newly developed solution‐processed organic semiconductor material, OP‐BTDT, in an optimized ratio yields a solution‐processed p‐channel organic semiconductor blend with carrier mobility as high as 0.65 cm² V^?1 s^?1. An optimized blending of P‐BTDT:OP‐BTDT with the n‐channel semiconductor, C₆₀, results in a BHJ ambipolar transistor with balanced carrier mobilities for holes and electrons of 0.03 and 0.02 cm² V^?1 s^?1, respectively. Furthermore, a complementary‐like inverter composed of two ambipolar thin‐film transistors is demonstrated, which achieves a gain of 115.     

Intracellularly Degradable Hydrogen‐Bonded Polymer Capsules

The assembly of low‐fouling polymer capsules with redox‐responsive behavior and intracellular degradability is reported. Thiol‐containing poly(2‐ethyl‐2‐oxazoline) (PEtOxMA_SH) brushes are synthesized by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) of oligo(2‐ethyl‐2‐oxazoline)methacrylate and glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) and subsequent ring‐opening reaction of the GMA. Sequential deposition of PEtOxMA_SH/poly(methacrylic acid) (PMA) multilayers onto silica (SiO₂) particle templates and crosslinking through disulfide formation yield stable capsules after the removal of the SiO₂ templates by buffered hydrofluoric acid (HF). The redox‐responsive nature of the disulfide crosslinking groups enables the degradation of these capsules under simulated intracellular conditions at pH 5.9 and 5 mm glutathione (GSH). Furthermore, capsule degradation is observed after incubation with dendritic (JAWS II) cells. Even at high capsule‐to‐cell ratios, PEtOxMA_SH capsules show only negligible cytotoxicity. Quartz crystal microgravimetry (QCM) studies, using 100% human serum, reveal that films prepared from PEtOxMA_SH exhibit low‐fouling properties. The degradation and low‐fouling properties are promising for application of PEtOxMA_SH films/capsules for the delivery and triggered release of therapeutics.     

Role of nuclear medicine in liver transplantation

Orthotopic liver transplantation is now a very well-established technique for treating patients with end-stage liver disease. Since 1967, more than 26,000 liver transplants have been performed, including 15,000 in the United States. The overall 1-year survival rate is approximately 80% and 5-year survival is 70%. Nuclear imaging plays an important role in the management of liver transplant recipients before and after liver transplantation. The evaluation of candidates potentially includes liver-spleen scan for liver volume, multiple gated acquisition scan, adenosine or stress thallium study, bone scan, and quantitative ventilation perfusion scan for hepatopulmonary syndrome. In the post-transplant phase, the deconvolution analysis (which corrects for the problem of recirculation) is a promising tool for diagnosing rejection, although its role in the transplant population has to be established. A variety of nuclear medicine techniques are helpful in the postoperative diagnosis of biliary complications. By performing a semiquantitative analysis to discriminate hepatocyte dysfunction from biliary disease and measuring hepatocyte extraction fraction by deconvolution analysis and excretion, (T1/2 values measured by the nonlinear list squares technique) have been very promising.