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Background and objectives: Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) affects thousands worldwide with increasing incidence. SPARC (secreted protein acidic and rich in cysteine) plays an important role in cellular matrix interactions, wound repair, and cellular migration, and has been reported to prevent malignancy from growth. SPARC undergoes epigenetic silencing in pancreatic malignancy, but is frequently expressed by stromal fibroblasts adjacent to infiltrating pancreatic adenocarcinomas. CCA is also a desmoplastic tumor, similar to pancreatic adenocarcinoma. SPARC's clinical influence on clinicopathological characteristics of mass-forming (MF)-CCA still remains unclear. In this study, we evaluate the expression of SPARC in tumor and stromal tissue to clarity its relation with prognosis. Methods: Seventy-eight MF-CCA patients who underwent hepatectomy with curative intent were enrolled for an immunohistochemical study of SPARC. The expression of immunostaining of SPARC was characterized for both tumor and stromal tissues. We conducted survival analysis with 16 clinicopathological variables. The overall survival (OS) was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression modeling. Results: Thirty-three men and 45 women with MF-CCA were studied. Within total 78 subjects, 12 (15.4%) were classified as tumor negative/stroma negative, 37 (47.4%) as tumor positive/stroma negative, four (5.1%) as tumor negative/stroma positive, and 25 (32.1%) as tumor positive/stroma positive. With a median follow-up of 13.6 months, the 5-year OS was 14.9%. Cox proportional hazard analysis revealed that SPARC tumor positive and stromal negative immunostaining and curative hepatectomy predicted favorable OS in patients with MF-CCA after hepatectomy. Conclusion: MF-CCA patients with SPARC tumor positive and stromal negative expression may have favorable OS rates after curative hepatectomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated whether the intensity of thymidylate synthase (TS) staining in tissue samples obtained from gastric cancer (GC) patients undergoing gastrectomy could predict response to 5-FU-based adjuvant chemotherapy after gastrectomy. Clinicopathological features of 124 patients with histologically proven GC who underwent radical gastrectomy were retrospectively reviewed. Tissue samples obtained from these patients were immunohistochemically stained for assessing TS expression. We arbitrarily classified the TS staining results as low (<20% cytoplasmic immunostaining) and high (≥20% cytoplasmic immunostaining) TS expression. The clinicopathological features of the low TS expression group patients were typically similar to those of the high TS expression group patients. However, multivariate forward stepwise logistic regression analysis revealed that low TS expression was independently associated with females and responders to 5-FU-based adjuvant chemotherapy. The median follow-up duration for the 124 GC patients who had undergone curative resection was 41.3 months. The GC patients who showed poor tumor differentiation and high TS expression had short disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). Low TS expression is significantly associated with female GC patients and responders to 5-FU-based adjuvant chemotherapy. It predicts longer DFS and OS in selected GC patients treated with 5-FU-based adjuvant chemotherapy after curative resection. The results suggest that prospective assessment of TS staining intensity in tissue samples obtained from GC patients undergoing gastrectomy would be useful to predict the patients who would be benefited from 5-FU-based adjuvant chemotherapy after gastrectomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dielectric resonator-loaded circular microstrip patch antennas can be used as an alternative way to generate circular polarization. The dielectric resonator is placed on the edge of the circular microstrip patch antenna to result both strong coupling effect and two degenerated orthogonal modes. Then, we choose the feeding point, the placed position and size of DR, and the height of antenna as key tuning parameters; both wide circular polarization and impedance matching are achieved. Application is given for WLAN 2.4 GHz band. Both simulated and measured data are matched well. Measured results show that the center frequency is at 2.45 GHz. The impedance bandwidth is 19.2%. Besides, the axial ratio bandwidth is 3.7% (2.39–2.48 GHz). The radiation patterns are broadside radiations and high antenna gain of 8.6 dBic is achieved. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 1470–1473, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24373 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a lethal disease afflicting many thousands of patients worldwide. We have previously developed an oral thioacetamide (TAA)-induced model of rat CCA that recapitulates the histologic progression of human CCA. Our objective was to evaluate the feasibility of animal PET in detecting CCA in the setting of the TAA rat model.Procedures: Male Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 30) were used in this study. Drinking water with TAA 300 mg/l was administered orally in 26 rats, and animal PET was performed at 20 weeks after initiation of TAA. A total of four rats served as controls. Animal PET images were acquired sequentially using both C-11 acetate and 2-deoxy-2-[F-18]fluoro-D-glucose (FDG) to determine the optimal tracer. Dynamic animal PET images were collected to assess the optimal scan time based on the highest tumor-to-liver (T/L) ratio using time-activity curves. Animal PET findings were compared lesion by lesion with the results of autoradiography and the histological data.Results: FDG animal PET images had a higher T/L ratio compared to images obtained with C-11 acetate as a marker. The optimal scan time for FDG animal PET was determined as 90 min postinjection of the tracer. This was when the T/L ratio reached its peak. Necropsy and histology confirmed the presence of TAA-induced CCA in 22 rats (84.6 %). Static animal PET images showed intense FDG uptake in 17 of the 22 tumor-bearing animals (77.3%). The average T/L ratio was 1.60 +/- 0.09. The sensitivity and specificity of animal PET in the detection of CCA were 77% (17/22) and 100% (4/4), respectively.Conclusions: We conclude that animal PET in the setting of the TAA rat model seems to be feasible for the detection of CCA. Future translational studies are needed to confirm and expand our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rectangular ceramic dielectric resonator loaded into a folded thin-wire monopole antenna in a horizontal finite ground plane is presented. While in a suitable adjustment, the impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna is 67% (2.15–4.30 GHz). Moreover, the electric dipole pattern is kept in such antenna configuration. Additionally, antenna gain is about 2–4 dBi in the operating frequencies. The antenna configuration and performance is very suitable to apply in the wide-band territorial communications. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 939–942, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23268 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A four-pole quasi-elliptic function bandpass filter for a compact low-temperature cofired ceramic is proposed in this paper. The filter is constructed by the open-loop resonators and the miniaturized hairpin resonators that can be coupled through the apertures on the common ground plane, and the 0° feed structure adds two extra transmission zeros to the filter response. It is shown that the filter occupies a very small size. As a result, the proposed structure of the filter occupies a very small circuit area and has a good out-of band rejection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]