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Simple Summary: Liver cancer continues to exhibit increasing incidence and mortality worldwide. Subsequently, there has been a concomitant effort to development novel therapeutics that effectively target and treat these malignancies. This paper aims to provide a thorough review of the available immunotherapy treatments that target liver cancer, with a specific focus on the role and potential therapeutic strategies available to the interventional radiologist. The underlying biochemical and molecular mechanisms underlying these diseases are discussed to highlight the specific targets for immunotherapy, the clinical efficacy and safety of available pharmaceutical treatments are analyzed, and future advancements in the field, such as combination therapies and personalized medicine, are explored as they pertain to the immunotherapy of liver cancer. Liver cancer, including hepatocellular carcinoma and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, is increasing in incidence and mortality across the globe. An improved understanding of the complex tumor microenvironment has opened many therapeutic doors and led to the development of novel pharmaceuticals targeting cellular signaling pathways or immune checkpoints. These interventions have significantly improved tumor control rates and patient outcomes, both in clinical trials and in real-world practice. Interventional radiologists play an important role in the multidisciplinary team given their expertise in minimally invasive locoregional therapy, as the bulk of these tumors are usually in the liver. The aim of this review is to highlight the immunological therapeutic targets for primary liver cancers, the available immune-based approaches, and the contributions that interventional radiology can provide in the care of these patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The purpose of this paper was to study the effect of electroacupuncture (EA) on choroidal blood flow (ChBF) in a guinea pig model of lens-induced myopia (LIM). Methods. Guinea pigs were randomly divided into 4 groups: normal control (NC) group, LIM group, LIM + electroacupuncture (LIM + EA) group, and LIM + sham acupoint (LIM + sham) group. Right eyes were covered with a −6D lens to induce myopia. Meanwhile, LIM + EA group and LIM + sham group were treated with EA at acupoints Hegu (LI4) and Taiyang (EX-HN5) and sham points. Refraction, axial length (AL), choroidal thickness (ChT), vessel density of choriocapillaris (CC) and choroidal layer, and scleral collagen fiber were measured. Besides, hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α), matrix metalloprotein-2 (MMP-2), and tissue inhibitor metalloprotease-2 (TIMP-2) expression in sclera were detected. Results. Refraction and AL were significantly decreased and ChT and vessel density of CC were significantly increased in LIM + EA group at 2 weeks and 4 weeks (all P < 0.05) compared with LIM group. However, no significant difference of vessel density of choroidal layer was observed between LIM and LIM + EA group at 2 weeks and 4 weeks. Scleral collagen fibrils diameters were significantly increased in LIM + EA group at 4 weeks (P < 0.001) compared with LIM group. At the end of experiment, the mRNA and protein expression of HIF-1α and MMP-2 were significantly decreased (all P < 0.05) and those of TIMP-2 were increased in LIM + EA, compared with LIM. However, there were no significant differences between LIM and LIM + sham group. Conclusions. EA can improve the vessel density of choroid and then possibly improve scleral hypoxia, which may inhibit the growth of the AL in myopia guinea pig. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cerastoderma glaucum (Poiret, 1789) represents one of the marine mollusk species found on the Romanian Black Sea soft bottom infralittoral. This species had been investigated in the past by morphological methods. Some problems concerning its biological, ecological and even behavioral aspects have remained unresolved. At the moment, molecular technique studies allow the completion of these gaps. In the present article we are aiming to identify this species by molecular methods and to perform a statistical analysis of the obtained data in order to determine the distribution of this species' haplotypes on the littoral. With the aid of the Nucleospin® Tissue kits, through the PCR technique, the extraction and amplification of DNA has been performed to obtain the necessary data. The obtained sequences have been compared to the sequences from databases such as National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) to establish similarities. After the identification of the similar sequences, we have interpreted their distribution in different stations using the Kendall rank correlation coefficient. A number of 12 haplotypes which belong to 32 individuals from 5 stations have been identified. Using the Kendall rank correlation coefficient the identified haplotypes show different degrees of concordance with the standard haplotypes of this species. A significant statistical similarity appears in 81.14% out of the total 493 compared haplotype pairs. Out of these, 18% present perfect similarity, 76.25% good and 5.75% acceptable. The stations are similar regarding haplotypes, with some exceptions that are commented in the paper, similarities established by calculating the Kendall rank correlation coefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid accumulation of gene expression data has offered unprecedented opportunities to study human diseases. The National Center for Biotechnology Information Gene Expression Omnibus is currently the largest database that systematically documents the genome-wide molecular basis of diseases. However, thus far, this resource has been far from fully utilized. This paper describes the first study to transform public gene expression repositories into an automated disease diagnosis database. Particularly, we have developed a systematic framework, including a two-stage Bayesian learning approach, to achieve the diagnosis of one or multiple diseases for a query expression profile along a hierarchical disease taxonomy. Our approach, including standardizing cross-platform gene expression data and heterogeneous disease annotations, allows analyzing both sources of information in a unified probabilistic system. A high level of overall diagnostic accuracy was shown by cross validation. It was also demonstrated that the power of our method can increase significantly with the continued growth of public gene expression repositories. Finally, we showed how our disease diagnosis system can be used to characterize complex phenotypes and to construct a disease-drug connectivity map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the recent advances in biotechnology. It cites that the advances in the biotechnology have changed the key nature of biological researches. It relates that scientists in the past used paper notebooks or simple spreadsheets to document their experiments, but at present, scientists use various new tools such as gene chips or measuring gene expression or sequence variation that brought changes and has altered their works and reveals potential associations and interactions with a variety of genes and other biological entities. It also mentions that the advances in biotechnology brought a massive increase in the scientific knowledge of scientists. The establishment of the Text Retrieval Conference in the U.S. is also discussed.

Drug-induced liver toxicity is one of the leading causes of acute liver failure in the United States, exceeding all other causes combined. The objective of this paper is to describe systems biology methods for identifying pathways involved in liver toxicity induced by free fatty acids (FFA) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-a in human hepatoblastoma cells (HepG2/C3A). Systems biology approaches were developed to integrate multi-level data, i.e., gene expression, metabolite profile, toxicity measurements and a priori knowledge to identify gene targets for modulating liver toxicity. Targets that modulate liver toxicity, in vitro, were computationally predicted and some targets were experimentally validated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractBackground:State laws in the USA mandate that blood be drawn from all newborn infants to screen for health-threatening conditions. These screening assays consume only a small portion of the blood samples, which are collected on filter paper (‘Guthrie’) cards. Many states archive unused blood spots, often in unrefrigerated storage. Objectives:While individual RNA transcripts have been identified from archived neonatal blood spots, no study to date has performed quantitative analysis of archived blood spot RNA. Methods:We demonstrate that RNA can be isolated and amplified from newborn blood spots stored unfrozen for as long as 9 years, and can be analyzed by microarray and qPCR. Results:Microarray assays of archived neonatal blood spots consistently detected 3,000–4,000 expressed genes with correlations of 0.90 between replicates. Blood spot mRNA is amenable to qPCR and we detected biologically relevant expression levels of housekeeping and immune-mediating genes. Conclusions:These experiments demonstrate the feasibility of using blood spots as a source of RNA which can be analyzed using quantitative microarray and qPCR assays. The application of these methods to the analysis of widely collected biological specimens may be a valuable resource for the study of perinatal determinants of disease development.Copyright © 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on several research papers that are to be presented from 3:30pm to 5:00pm on March 23, 2007 in the U.S. including one focuses on the process used to design the prototype multiplex genetic test, one which examines the differences in BRCA genes 1/2 testing attitudes between African Caribbean and African American Women, and one which investigates the patients' interest in gene expression analysis for breast cancer recurrence risk.

The article focuses on the DNA sequence variants that influence gene expression and disease risk in the U.S. It is pointed out that the effects of variations in DNA sequence are often subtle, such as altered levels of gene expression. Moreover, it is said that identifying those DNA sequences that determine levels of expression across individuals could have great medical potential. It also discusses one paper that illustrates the identification of DNA sequences which looks at the two major contractile proteins of the human heart.