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Background Depiction of bypass blood flow in patients who received extracranial–intracranial (EC–IC) bypass surgery is important for patient care. Purpose To develop a vessel-encoded arterial spin labeling (VE-ASL) method using surgical staples as a magnetic resonance (MR)-conditional product in patients who received EC–IC bypass surgery. Material and Methods Pseudo-continuous labeling was used for VE-ASL acquisition with a 3-T MR unit. First, an experimental study was conducted to determine the appropriate number of surgical staples to obtain a spatially sufficient saturation effect. Thereafter, four healthy normal volunteers underwent a VE-ASL study to confirm the sufficiency of the saturation effect to the right or left common carotid artery. Finally, VE-ASL scanning was performed in seven patients after EC–IC bypass surgery to confirm the ability of VE-ASL to visualize the territorial bypass perfusion. All qualitative evaluation was performed by two neuroradiologists using a 3-point grading system (2 = good, 1 = moderate, 0 = poor). Results A quantity of 200 staples was found to be appropriate for VE-ASL scanning. In healthy volunteers, one neuroradiologist rated the images of all four cases as good, while the other rated three cases as good and one case as moderate. For the seven patients after EC–IC bypass surgery, one neuroradiologist rated all seven cases as good, and the other rated six cases as good and one case as moderate. Conclusion VE-ASL using surgical staples might be useful for the evaluation of territorial bypass perfusion in patients after EC–IC bypass surgery.

To improve the production of recombinant human antithrombin III (AT-III) in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, the genes encoding transcription factors, ATF4 (activating transcription factor 4) and XBP-1s (the spliced form of X-box binding protein 1), which were involved in the mammalian unfolded protein response (UPR), were cloned from CHO-K1 cells. Overexpression of ATF4 significantly enhanced the production of recombinant AT-III in CHO 13D-35D cells. The specific rate of AT-III production in the ATF4-overexpressed CHO 13D-35D cells reached approximately 23 pg/cell/day. After 144 h of incubation, the AT-III concentration in the culture supernatant was twofold greater compared to that observed with parental CHO 13D-35D cells. In contrast, ectopic expression of XBP-1s failed to enhance the production of recombinant AT-III in CHO 13D-35D cells. RT-PCR analysis revealed that high levels of XBP-1s mRNA were present in the CHO cells, regardless of ectopic expression of XBP-1s. Our results indicate that overexpression of the UPR transcription factor ATF4 is a promising means for improving the production of secreted protein pharmaceuticals in CHO cells. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2008;100: 317–324. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We herein report a simple method using intestinal clamps to prevent intraoperative contamination during an immediate mucocutaneous suture of the intestinal stoma. Using this technique, a protruded intestinal stoma can be constructed reliably without soiling. The technique can be used both for constructing an end as well as a loop intestinal stoma.

There has been an increase in the number of recognized early gastric cancers with the recent advance in diagnostic modalities1. In some cases, less aggressive procedures are indicated and local resection, with or without limited lymph node dissection, is one of the treatments of choice. It is, however, sometimes difficult to ensure adequate excision with tumour-free margins because such lesions are movable and may not be firmly fixed to the muscle layer. A simple technique to determine the sites to be incised to allow adequate resection of the tumorous lesion with ease and safety is reported here.