Search Our Scientific Publications & Authors

Thromb Haemost 2021 May 13. Epub 2021 May 13.

Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, United States.

Immune thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (iTTP) is caused by severe deficiency of plasma ADAMTS13 activity. Despite advances in early diagnosis and management, the mortality rate of acute iTTP remains high in a large part of world where access to some of the most novel therapies is limited. To determine the role of plasma bigEndothelin-1 (bigET-1) or its bioactive product ET-1 as a biomarker and/or a pathogenic factor in acute iTTP, plasma levels of bigET-1 were determined using an immunoassay in patients with iTTP on admission and during remission, as well as in healthy controls; moreover, the biological effect of ET-1 in thrombus formation was determined by a microfluidic assay. Read More

Neural Netw 2021 May 5;142:73-91. Epub 2021 May 5.

College of Science, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100083, PR China.

Recent advances show that two-dimensional linear discriminant analysis (2DLDA) is a successful matrix based dimensionality reduction method. However, 2DLDA may encounter the singularity issue theoretically, and also is sensitive to outliers. In this paper, a generalized Lp-norm 2DLDA framework with regularization for an arbitrary p>0 is proposed, named G2DLDA. Read More

J Surg Res 2021 May 10;266:69-76. Epub 2021 May 10.

Division of Vascular Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California; Stanford-Surgery Policy Improvement Research & Education Center, Department of Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California; Vascular Surgery Section, Department of Surgery, Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Palo Alto, California. Electronic address:

Introduction: Prior work suggests women surgical role models attract more female medical students into surgical training. We investigate recent trends of women in surgical society leadership and national conference moderator and plenary speaker roles.

Methods: Gender distribution was surveyed at 15 major surgical societies and 14 conferences from 2014 to 2018 using publicly reported data. Read More

Curr Opin Plant Biol 2021 May 10;60:102052. Epub 2021 May 10.

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA; Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA; California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, QB3, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA; Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub, San Francisco, CA, 94158, USA. Electronic address:

Delivery of proteins into walled plant cells remains a challenge with few tractable solutions. Recent advances in biomacromolecule delivery using nanotechnology may evince methods to be exploited for protein delivery. While protein delivery remains no small feat, even in mammalian systems, the ability for nanoparticles to penetrate the cell wall and be decorated with a plethora of functional moieties makes them ideal protein vehicles in plants. Read More

ESMO Open 2021 May 10;6(3):100146. Epub 2021 May 10.

Department of Gastroenterology and Gastrointestinal Oncology, National Cancer Center Hospital East, Chiba, Japan.

Background: Recent advances in adjuvant chemotherapy for early colon cancer have widened physicians' recommendations on the regimen and duration (3 or 6 months) of the treatment. We conducted this prospective study to evaluate whether the 12-gene recurrence score (12-RS) assay affected physicians' recommendations on adjuvant treatment selection.

Patients And Methods: Patients with stage IIIA/IIIB or stage II colon cancer were enrolled. Read More

J Environ Manage 2021 May 10;292:112766. Epub 2021 May 10.

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore. Electronic address:

Bioretention is a popular stormwater management strategy that is often utilized in urban environments to combat water quality and hydrological impacts of stormwater. This goal is achieved by selective designing of a system, which consists of suitable vegetation at the top planted on an engineered media with drainage system and possible underdrain at the bottom. Bibliometric analysis on bioretention studies indicates that most of the original research contributions are derived from a few countries and selected research groups. Read More

Contemp Clin Trials 2021 May 10:106432. Epub 2021 May 10.

Department of Translational and Applied Genomics, Center for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, 3800 N. Interstate Ave, Portland, OR 97227, USA.

Advances in the application of genomic technologies in clinical care have the potential to increase existing healthcare disparities. Studies have consistently shown that only a fraction of eligible patients with a family history of cancer receive recommended cancer genetic counseling and subsequent genetic testing. Care delivery models using pre-test and post-test counseling are not scalable, which contributes to barriers in accessing genetics services. Read More

Semin Cancer Biol 2021 May 10. Epub 2021 May 10.

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA. Electronic address:

Arsenic is widely present in the environment and is associated with various population health risks including cancers. Arsenic exposure at environmentally relevant levels enhances the mutagenic effect of other carcinogens such as ultraviolet radiation. Investigation on the molecular mechanisms could inform the prevention and intervention strategies of arsenic carcinogenesis and co-carcinogenesis. Read More

Bioorg Med Chem Lett 2021 May 10:128101. Epub 2021 May 10.

Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Roche Innovation Center Shanghai, Roche Pharma Research and Early Development, Shanghai, 201203, China. Electronic address:

Nucleic acid sensing pathways play an important role in the innate immune system, protecting hosts against infections. However, a large body of evidence supports a close association between aberrant activation of those pathways and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Part II of the digest series on small molecule approaches to autoimmune and inflammatory diseases concentrates on recent advances with respect to small molecule antagonists or inhibitors of the nucleic acid sensing pathways, including endosomal TLRs, NLRP3 inflammasome and cGAS-STING. Read More

Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 2021 May 10:110348. Epub 2021 May 10.

Drug Research and Development Center, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Federal University of Ceara, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil; National Institute for Translational Medicine (INCT-TM, CNPq), Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil. Electronic address:

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder with complex etiopathogenesis. Based on its neurodevelopmental features, an animal model induced by "two-hit" based on perinatal immune activation followed by peripubertal unpredictable stress was proposed. Sex influences the immune response, and concerning schizophrenia, it impacts the age of onset and symptoms severity. Read More

Radiother Oncol 2021 May 10. Epub 2021 May 10.

Department of Radiation Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY. Electronic address:

Advances in artificial intelligence-based methods have led to the development and publication of numerous systems for auto-segmentation in radiotherapy. These systems have the potential to decrease contouring variability, which has been associated with poor clinical outcomes, and increase efficiency in the treatment planning workflow. However, there are no uniform standards for evaluating auto-segmentation platforms to assess their efficacy at meeting these goals. Read More

Kidney Int 2021 May 10. Epub 2021 May 10.

Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.

Over the past few years, clinical renal imaging has seen great advances, allowing assessments of kidney structure and morphology, perfusion, function and metabolism, oxygenation, as well as microstructure and interstitium. Medical imaging is becoming increasingly important in the evaluation of kidney physiology and pathophysiology, showing promise in management of patients with renal disease, in particular with regard to diagnosis, classification, and prediction of disease development and progression, monitoring response to therapy, detection of drug toxicity, and patient selection for clinical trials. A variety of imaging modalities, ranging from routine to advanced tools, are currently available to probe the kidney both spatially and temporally, particularly ultrasonography, computed tomography, positron emission tomography, renal scintigraphy, and multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging. Read More

Structure 2021 May 11. Epub 2021 May 11.

Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank, Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA; Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA; The Bridge Institute, Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA. Electronic address:

The Protein Data Bank (PDB) was established in 1971 to archive three-dimensional (3D) structures of biological macromolecules as a public good. Fifty years later, the PDB is providing millions of data consumers around the world with open access to more than 175,000 experimentally determined structures of proteins and nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) and their complexes with one another and small-molecule ligands. PDB data users are working, teaching, and learning in fundamental biology, biomedicine, bioengineering, biotechnology, and energy sciences. Read More

ACS Nano 2021 May 13. Epub 2021 May 13.

Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 United States.

Point-of-care (POC) detection technologies that enable decentralized, rapid, sensitive, low-cost diagnostics of COVID-19 infection are urgently needed around the world. With many technologies approved for commercialization in the past 10 months, the field of COVID-19 POC diagnostics is rapidly evolving. In this Perspective, we analyze the current state of POC technologies for the diagnosis and monitoring of COVID-19 infection and discuss future challenges in COVID-19 diagnostics. Read More

Biotechnol J 2021 May 13:e2000451. Epub 2021 May 13.

Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Graduate Program in System Health Science and Engineering, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, 03760, Republic of Korea.

Background: The heavy global dependence on petroleum-based industries has led to serious environmental problems, including climate change and global warming. As a result, there have been calls for a paradigm shift towards the use of biorefineries, which employ natural and engineered microorganisms that can utilize various carbon sources from renewable resources as host strains for the carbon-neutral production of target products.

Purpose And Scope: C4 alcohols are versatile chemicals that can be used directly as biofuels and bulk chemicals and in the production of value-added materials such as plastics, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. Read More

Adv Mater 2021 May 13:e2006591. Epub 2021 May 13.

Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA.

With the recent establishment of atomically precise nanochemistry, capabilities toward programmable control over the nanoparticle size and structure are being developed. Advances in the synthesis of atomically precise nanoclusters (NCs, 1-3 nm) have been made in recent years, and more importantly, their total structures (core plus ligands) have been mapped out by X-ray crystallography. These ultrasmall Au nanoparticles exhibit strong quantum-confinement effect, manifested in their optical absorption properties. Read More

PLoS One 2021 13;16(5):e0251415. Epub 2021 May 13.

Istituto di Informatica e Telematica-CNR, Pisa, Italy.

The recent advances in language modeling significantly improved the generative capabilities of deep neural models: in 2019 OpenAI released GPT-2, a pre-trained language model that can autonomously generate coherent, non-trivial and human-like text samples. Since then, ever more powerful text generative models have been developed. Adversaries can exploit these tremendous generative capabilities to enhance social bots that will have the ability to write plausible deepfake messages, hoping to contaminate public debate. Read More

J Mol Endocrinol 2021 May 1. Epub 2021 May 1.

X Liu, Institute of Neuroscience and Translational Medicine, Zhoukou Normal University, Zhoukou, China.

Despite all modern advances in medicine, there are few reports of effective and safe drugs to treat obesity. Our objective was to screen anti-obesity natural compounds, and to verify whether they can reduce the body weight gain and investigate their molecular mechanisms. By using drug-screening methods, Phytohemagglutinin (PHA) was found to be the most anti-obesity candidate natural compound. Read More

IEEE Trans Cybern 2021 May 13;PP. Epub 2021 May 13.

The use of multiagent systems (MASs) in real-world applications keeps increasing, and diffuses into new domains, thanks to technological advances, increased acceptance, and demanding productivity requirements. Being able to automate the generation of mission plans for MASs is critical for managing complex missions in realistic settings. In addition, finding the right level of abstraction to represent any generic MAS mission is important for being able to provide general solution to the automated planning problem. Read More

Crit Rev Anal Chem 2021 May 13:1-33. Epub 2021 May 13.

Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey.

Viruses are the main pathogenic substances that cause severe diseases in humans and other living things. They are among the most common microorganisms, and consequently, antiviral drugs have emerged to prevent and treat viral infections. Antiviral drugs are an essential drug group considering their prescription and consumption rates for different diseases and indications. Read More

Circ Res 2021 May 13;128(10):1435-1450. Epub 2021 May 13.

Duke Clinical Research Institute and Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, Duke University, NC (G.M.F.).

Despite multiple attempts to develop a unifying hypothesis that explains the pathophysiology of heart failure with a reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), no single conceptual model has withstood the test of time. In the present review, we discuss how the results of recent successful phase III clinical development programs in HFrEF are built upon existing conceptual models for drug development. We will also discuss where recent successes in clinical trials do not fit existing models to identify areas where further refinement of current paradigms may be needed. Read More

Circ Res 2021 May 13;128(10):1533-1553. Epub 2021 May 13.

Center for Cardiovascular Genetics, Institute of Molecular Medicine and Department of Medicine, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a genetic disease of the myocardium characterized by a hypertrophic left ventricle with a preserved or increased ejection fraction. Cardiac hypertrophy is often asymmetrical, which is associated with left ventricular outflow tract obstruction. Myocyte hypertrophy, disarray, and myocardial fibrosis constitute the histological features of HCM. Read More

ACS Synth Biol 2021 May 13. Epub 2021 May 13.

Roche Molecular Systems, Santa Clara, California 95050, United States.

Bacterial transduction particles were critical to early advances in molecular biology and are currently experiencing a resurgence in interest within the diagnostic and therapeutic fields. The difficulty of developing a robust and specific transduction reagent capable of delivering a genetic payload to the diversity of strains constituting a given bacterial species or genus is a major impediment to their expanded utility as commercial products. While recent advances in engineering the reactivity of these reagents have made them more attractive for product development, considerable improvements are still needed. Read More

Front Med 2021 May 12. Epub 2021 May 12.

Glioma Surgery Division, Neurologic Surgery Department, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200040, China.

The protection of language function is one of the major challenges of brain surgery. Over the past century, neurosurgeons have attempted to seek the optimal strategy for the preoperative and intraoperative identification of language-related brain regions. Neurosurgeons have investigated the neural mechanism of language, developed neurolinguistics theory, and provided unique evidence to further understand the neural basis of language functions by using intraoperative cortical and subcortical electrical stimulation. Read More

Adv Exp Med Biol 2021 ;1187:613-622

Japan Breast Cancer Research Group, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.

While clinical trials have evolved and improved over time, fundamental changes are needed to reflect the outcomes of great relevance to the institutions where they are performed, by integrating scientific rationale and society's movement to increase efficiency, accountability, and transparency by fast integrating the next-generation advances offered by omics technology and artificial intelligence. Several global clinical and exploratory collaborative studies that achieved successful outcomes in terms of patients' survival, drug toxicity, efficacy, safety, biomarkers, and consensus reached to improve good clinical practices are addressed in this article. Going forward, through collaborations, cooperation, and intellectual curiosity many more advances can be made in clinical trial approaches that can bring transparency, accountability, best outcomes, and develop friendship with trust among all the involved. Read More

Adv Exp Med Biol 2021 ;1187:337-361

Department of Surgery, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Cancer is associated with gene mutations, and the analysis of tumor-associated mutations is increasingly used for diagnostic, prognostic, and treatment purposes. These molecular landscapes of solid tumors are currently obtained from surgical or biopsy specimens. However, during cancer progression and treatment, selective pressures lead to additional genetic changes as tumors acquire drug resistance. Read More

Adv Exp Med Biol 2021 ;1187:215-244

Interdisciplinary Program in Bioengineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.

Intra- and Inter-tumoral heterogeneity is one of the main hurdles in diagnosing and treating breast cancer. Selecting, sampling, and sequencing the samples appropriately provide unique opportunities in realizing precision medicine. This chapter reviews some of the past landmarks, state-of-the-art technologies, and future directions of translational research in terms of tumor sampling technologies and sequencing in breast cancer. Read More

Adv Exp Med Biol 2021 ;1187:183-204

Department of Biological Sciences, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea.

Owing to increased awareness of the importance of mammogram and advances in surgical technology, survival rate of patients with primary breast cancer has dramatically increased. Despite all these advances in breast cancer treatment, there are no currently available treatments for this disease once it metastasizes to distant organs including bones, lungs, brain, and liver. This is mainly attributed to the complexity of metastatic process. Read More

Curr Atheroscler Rep 2021 May 13;23(7):38. Epub 2021 May 13.

Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 2220 Pierce Ave. 312 Preston Research Building, Nashville, TN, 37232, USA.

Purpose Of Review: This review highlights recent advances on the mechanisms and impact of HDL-small non-coding RNAs (sRNA) on intercellular communication in atherosclerosis.

Recent Findings: Studies demonstrate that HDL-microRNAs (miRNA) are significantly altered in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), and are responsive to diet, obesity, and diabetes. Immune cells, pancreatic beta cells, and neurons are shown to export miRNAs to HDL. Read More

Appl Opt 2021 May;60(13):3865-3873

Near-infrared wavelength observations are crucial for understanding numerous fields of astrophysics, such as supernova cosmology and positronium annihilation detection. However, current ground-based observations suffer from an enormous background due to OH emission in the upper atmosphere. One promising way to solve this problem is to use ring-resonator filters to suppress OH emission lines. Read More