Role of folP1 and folP2 Genes in the Action of Sulfamethoxazole and Trimethoprim Against Mycobacteria

( Tian Zhou Liu ),( Bang Xing Wang ),( Jin Tao Guo ),( Yang Zhou ),( Mugweru Julius ),( Moses Njire ),( Yuan Yuan Cao ),( Tian Wu ),( Zhi Yong Liu ),( Chang Wei Wang ),( Yong Xu ),( Tian Yu Zhang ) 한국미생물 · 생명공학회 2015 Journal of microbiology and biotechnology Vol.25 No.9

The combination of trimethoprim (TMP) and sulfamethoxazole (SMX) has been shown to be active against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) in clinical tuberculosis (TB) treatment. However, the mechanism of action of TMP-SMX against Mtb is still unknown. To unravel this, we have studied the effect of TMP and SMX by deleting the folP2 gene in Mycobacterium smegmatis (Msm), and overexpressing the Mtb and Msm folP1/2 genes in Msm. Knocking out of the folP2 gene in Msm reduced the minimum inhibitory concentration of SMX 8-fold compared with wild type. Overexpression of the folP1 genes from Mtb and Msm increased the MICs by 4- and 2-fold in Msm for SMX and TMP, respectively. We show a strong correlation between the expression of folP1 and folP2 genes and TMP-SMX resistance in mycobacteria. This suggests that a combination of FolP2 inhibitor and SMX could be used for TB treatment with a better outcome.

Hepatitis B Virus DNA Negativity Acts as a Favorable Prognostic Factor in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients

Li, Xing,Zhong, Xiang,Chen, Zhan-Hong,Xing, Yan-Fang,Wu, Dong-Hao,Chen, Jie,Ma, Xiao-Kun,Lin, Qu,Wen, Jing-Yun,Wei, Li,Wang, Tian-Tian,Ruan, Dan-Yun,Lin, Ze-Xiao,Wu, Xiang-Yuan,Dong, Min Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.22

Background: This retrospective study was aimed to investigate the efficacy of prophylactic agents in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients receiving TACE and compare the difference between lamivudine and entecavir. Materials and Methods: A consecutive series of 203 HBV-related HCC patients receiving TACE were analyzed including 91 patients given prophylactic agents. Virologic events, defined as an increase in serum HBV DNA level to more than 1 log10 IU/ml higher than the nadir level, hepatitis flares due to HBV reactivation and progression free survival (PFS) were the main endpoints. Results: Some 48 (69.6%) reached virologic response. Prophylaxis significantly reduced virologic events (8.8% vs 58.0%, p=0.000) and hepatitis flares (1.1% vs 13.4%, p=0.001). Patients presenting undetectable HBV DNA levels displayed a significantly improved PFS as compared to those who never achieved undetectable HBV DNA. Prophylaxis and e-antigen positivity were the only significant variables associated with virologic events. In addition, prophylaxis was the only independent protective factor for hepatitis flares. Liver cirrhosis, more cycles of TACE, HBV DNA negativity, a lower Cancer of the Liver Italian Program score, non-metastasis and no hepatitis flares were protective factors for PFS. Prophylactic lamivudine demonstrated similar efficacy as entecavir. Conclusions: Prophylactic agents are efficacious for prevention of HBV reactivation in HCC patients receiving TACE. Achievement of undetectable HBV DNA levels displayed a significant capability in improving PFS. Moreover, persistent tumor residual lesions, positive HBV DNA and hepatitis B flares might be causes of tumor progression in these patients.

Efficacy of Prophylactic Entecavir for Hepatitis B Virus-Related Hepatocellular Carcinoma Receiving Transcatheter Arterial Chemoembolization

Li, Xing,Zhong, Xiang,Chen, Zhan-Hong,Wang, Tian-Tian,Ma, Xiao-Kun,Xing, Yan-Fang,Wu, Dong-Hao,Dong, Min,Chen, Jie,Ruan, Dan-Yun,Lin, Ze-Xiao,Wen, Jing-Yun,Wei, Li,Wu, Xiang-Yuan,Lin, Qu Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2015 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.16 No.18

Background and Aims: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) reactivation was reported to be induced by transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) in HBV-related hepatocellular carcinonma (HCC) patients with a high incidence. The effective strategy to reduce hepatitis flares due to HBV reactivation in this specific group of patients was limited to lamivudine. This retrospective study was aimed to investigate the efficacy of prophylactic entecavir in HCC patients receiving TACE. Methods: A consecutive series of 191 HBV-related HCC patients receiving TACE were analyzed including 44 patients received prophylactic entecavir. Virologic events, defined as an increase in serum HBV DNA level to more than 1 log10 copies/ml higher than nadir the level, and hepatitis flares due to HBV reactivation were the main endpoints. Results: Patients with or without prophylactic were similar in host factors and the majorities of characteristics regarding to tumor factors, HBV status, liver function and LMR. Notably, cycles of TACE were parallel between the groups. Ten (22.7%) patients receiving prophylactic entecavir reached virologic response. The patients receiving prophylactic entecavir presented significantly reduced virologic events (6.8% vs 54.4%, p=0.000) and hepatitis flares due to HBV reactivation (0.0% vs 11.6%, p=0.039) compared with patients without prophylaxis. Kaplan-Meier analysis illustrated that the patients in the entecavir group presented significantly improved virologic events free survival (p=0.000) and hepatitis flare free survival (p=0.017). Female and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status 2 was the only significant predictors for virological events in patients without prophylactic antiviral. Rescue antiviral therapy did not reduce the incidence of hepatitis flares due to HBV reactivation. Conclusion: Prophylactic entecavir presented promising efficacy in HBV-related cancer patients receiving TACE. Lower performance status and female gender might be the predictors for HBV reactivation in these patients.

Staged Improvement in Awareness of Disease for Elderly Cancer Patients in Southern China

Li, Xing,Dong, Min,Wen, Jing-Yun,Wei, Li,Ma, Xiao-Kun,Xing, Yan-Fang,Deng, Yun,Chen, Zhan-Hong,Chen, Jie,Ruan, Dan-Yun,Lin, Ze-Xiao,Wang, Tian-Tian,Wu, Dong-Hao,Liu, Xu,Hu, Hai-Tao,Lin, Jia-Yu,Li, Zhu Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2015 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.16 No.15

Background: In mainland China, awareness of disease of elderly cancer patients largely relies on the patients' families. We developed a staged procedure to improve their awareness of disease. Materials and Methods: Participants were 224 elderly cancer patients from 9 leading hospitals across Southern China. A questionnaire was given to the oncologists in charge of each patient to evaluate the interaction between family and patients, patient awareness of their disease and participation in medical decision-making. After first cycles of treatment, increased information of disease was given to patients with cooperation of the family. Then patient awareness of their disease and participation in medical decision-making was documented. Results: Among the 224 cancer elderly patients, 26 (11.6%) made decisions by themselves and 125 (55.8%) delegated their rights of decision-making to their family. Subordinate family members tended to play a passive role in decision-making significantly. Patients participating more in medical decision-making tended to know more about their disease. However, in contrast to the awareness of disease, patient awareness of violation of medical recommendations was reversely associated with their participation in medical decision-making. Improvement in awareness of diagnosis, stages and prognosis was achieved in about 20% elderly cancer patients. About 5% participated more actively in medical decision-making. Conclusions: Chinese elderly cancer patient awareness of disease and participation in medical decision-making is limited and relies on their family status. The staged procedure we developed to improve patient awareness of disease proved effective.

Clinical Utility of Haptoglobin in Combination with CEA, NSE and CYFRA21-1 for Diagnosis of Lung Cancer

Wang, Bing,He, Yu-Jie,Tian, Ying-Xing,Yang, Rui-Ning,Zhu, Yue-Rong,Qiu, Hong Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.22

Purpose: To investigate the clinical value in lung cancer of a combination of four serum tumor markers, haptoglobin (Hp), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), neuron specific enolase (NSE) as well as the cytokeratin 19 fragment (CYFRA21-1). Materials and Methods: Serum Hp (with immune-turbidimetric method), CEA, NSE, CYFRA21-1 (with chemiluminescence method) level were assessed in 193 patients with lung cancer, 87 patients with benign lung disease and 150 healthy controls. Differences of expression were compared among groups, and joint effects of these tumor markers for the diagnosis of lung cancer were analyzed. Results: Serum tumor marker levels in patients with lung cancer were obviously higher than those with benign lung disease and normal controls (p<0.01). The sensitivities of Hp, CEA, NSE and CYFRA21-1 were 43.5%, 40.9%, 23.3% and 41.5%, with specificities of 90.7%, 99.2%, 97.9% and 97.9%. Four tumor markers combined together could produce a positive detection rate of 85.0%, significantly higher than that of any single test. With squamous carcinomas, the positive detection rates with Hp and CYFRA21-1 were higher than that of other markers. In the adenocarcinoma case, the positive detection rate of CEA was higher than that of other markers. For small cell carcinomas, the positive detection rate of NSE was highest. The area under receiver operating characteristic curve ($AUC^{ROC}$) of Hp in squamous carcinoma (0.805) was higher than in adenocarcinoma (0.664) and small cell carcinoma (0.665). Conclusions: Hp can be used as a new serum tumor marker for lung cancer. Combination detection of Hp, CEA, NSE and CYFRA21-1 could significantly improve the sensitivity and specificity in diagnosis of lung cancer, and could be useful for pathological typing.

Improving Cellulase Production in Trichoderma koningii Through RNA Interference on ace1 Gene Expression

( Wang Shao Wen ),( Miao Xing ),( Gang Liu ),( Shao Wen Yu ),( Juan Wang ),( Sheng Li Tian ) 한국미생물 · 생명공학회 2012 Journal of microbiology and biotechnology Vol.22 No.8

Ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) inhibits the expression of target genes in a sequence-specific manner, and shows potential for gene knockdown in filamentous fungi, in which the locus-specific gene knockout occurs in low frequency. In this study, the function of the repressor of cellulase expression I (ACEI) was verified in Trichoderma koningii (T. koningii) YC01 through RNAi, and ace1-silenced strains with improved cellulase productivity were obtained. An expression cassette that transcribed the interfering double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) of ace1 was constructed and transformed into T. koningii, and the transformants, in which the expression of ace1 was successfully silenced, were selected. As a result of the ace1 gene silencing, the expression levels of the main cellulase and xylanase genes were elevated, and the enhanced production of total proteins, cellulase, and xylanase was observed in the cultivation. In addition, the downregulation of ace1 resulted in an increasing expression of xyr1, but no clear variation in the expression of cre1, which suggested that ACEI acted as a repressor of the xyr1 transcription, but was not involved in the regulation of the cre1 expression. The results of this work indicate that ace1 is a valid target gene for enhancing enzyme production in T. koningii, and RNAi is an appropriate tool for improving the properties of industrial fungi.

Risk Factors, Patterns and Long-Term Prognosis of Early and Late Recurrence in Patients with Hepatitis B Virus-Associated Hepatocellular Carcinoma

( Tian Yang ),( Ming-da Wang ),( Chao Li ),( Lei Liang ),( Hao Xing ),( Li-yang Sun ),( Bing Quan ),( Han Wu ),( Xin-fei Xu ),( Timothy M ),( Pawlik ),( Wan Yee Lau ),( Feng Shen ) 대한간학회 2020 춘·추계 학술대회 (KASL) Vol.2020 No.1

Aims: Survival after liver resection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains poor due to a high incidence of recurrence. We sought to investigate risk factors, patterns, and long-term prognosis among patients with early and late recurrence after liver resection for hepatitis B virus (HBV)-associated HCC. Methods: Data of consecutive patients undergoing curative resection for HBV-associated HCC were analyzed. According to the time to recurrence after surgery, recurrence was divided into early (≤ 2 years) and late recurrence (> 2 years). Characteristics, patterns of initial recurrence and post-recurrence survival (PRS) were compared between patients with early and late recurrence. Risk factors of early and late recurrence, and predictors of PRS were identified by univariable and multivariable Cox-regression analyses. Results: mong 894 patients, 322 (36.0%) and 282 (31.5%) developed early and late recurrence, respectively. On multivariable analyses preoperative HBV-DNA>104 copies/ml was associated with both early and late recurrence, while postoperative no/ irregular antiviral therapy was associated with late recurrence. Compared with patients with late recurrence, patients with early recurrence had a lower proportion of intrahepatic only recurrence (72.0% vs. 91.1%, P<0.001), as well as a lower chance of receiving potentially-curative treatments for recurrence (33.9% vs. 50.7%, P<0.001) and a worse median PRS (19.1 vs. 37.5 months, P<0.001). Multivariable analysis demonstrated that early recurrence was independently associated with worse PRS (HR 1.361, 95%CI 1.094-1.692, P=0.006). Conclusions: Although risk factors associated with early recurrence and late recurrence were different, a high preoperative HBV-DNA load was an independent hepatitis-related risk for both early and late recurrence. Early recurrence was associated with

Seafloor terrain detection from acoustic images utilizing the fast two-dimensional CMLD-CFAR

Wang Jiaqi,Li Haisen,Do Weidong,Xing Tianyao,Zhou Tian 대한조선학회 2021 International Journal of Naval Architecture and Oc Vol.13 No.1

In order to solve the problem of false terrains caused by environmental interferences and tunneling effect in the conventional multi-beam seafloor terrain detection, this paper proposed a seafloor topography detection method based on fast two-dimensional (2D) Censored Mean Level Detector-statistics Constant False Alarm Rate (CMLD-CFAR) method. The proposed method uses s cross-sliding window. The target occlusion phenomenon that occurs in multi-target environments can be eliminated by censoring some of the large cells of the reference cells, while the remaining reference cells are used to calculate the local threshold. The conventional 2D CMLD-CFAR methods need to estimate the background clutter power level for every pixel, thus increasing the computational burden significantly. In order to overcome this limitation, the proposed method uses a fast algorithm to select the Regions of Interest (ROI) based on a global threshold, while the rest pixels are distinguished as clutter directly. The proposed method is verified by experiments with real multi-beam data. The results show that the proposed method can effectively solve the problem of false terrain in a multi-beam terrain survey and achieve a high detection accuracy.

Control Method of Self-Frequency Recovery and Active Power Sharing for an Isolated Microgrid Based on VSGs

Pengxiang Xing,Fan Ma,Chunzheng Tian,Changqing Xu,Lili Wang 대한전기학회 2019 Journal of Electrical Engineering & Technology Vol.14 No.1

The concept of virtual synchronous generator (VSG) is emerging as an attractive solution for renewable energies to enhance the microgrid inertia and damping property by emulating the essential behaviors of conventional synchronous generators. However, in the isolated microgrid based on VSGs, there will be a frequency deviation when the power demand varies because of the droop characteristic of the VSG in active power–frequency regulation. In this paper, a control method for VSGs to implement self-frequency recovery and active power sharing in isolated microgrid is proposed. With this method, the VSGs regulate their power baseline values over multiple iterations through local-feedback of the frequency deviation until the microgrid frequency restores to normal value, and simultaneously share the power demand variation according to the ratio of their power baseline values. Compared to the previous studies, the proposed method can eliminate the output power and frequency oscillations in secondary control, and additionally, reduce the dependence of the microgrid on communication system, which is beneficial to enhance the robustness of the microgrid operation. Simulation results proved the proposed method to be effective.

Efficient adsorption on Cr(VI) and electrochemical application of N, P co-doped carbon spheres

Luo Tian,Xing Xianjun,Zhang Xuefei,Yue Wang,Ma Xiufen 한국화학공학회 2023 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.40 No.12

A nitrogen and phosphorus co-doped carbon sphere was synthesized and prepared by a two-step hydrothermal activation pyrolysis method using agricultural materials, in which forestry waste walnut shells, urea, and phosphoric acid were used as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus sources, respectively, for the efficient treatment of heavy metals Cr(VI) in wastewater. On this basis, a supercapacitor with high capacitive performance was investigated. The adsorption capacity of the N, P co-doped carbon sphere (N2PC) was optimal for Cr(VI), and the abundant functional groups on the surface of the carbon spheres significantly promoted the adsorption and reduction of Cr(VI). The adsorption capacity of the carbon material was up to 100.55 mg/g at 318 K, and the pseudo-second-order kinetic model and the Langmuir adsorption isotherm model were used to describe the adsorption process. Before and after adsorption, the material was applied to the electrode material of the supercapacitor, and the capacitive performance of the adsorbed material was satisfactory as well as with excellent cycling stability which 93% capacity retention even after 5000 cycles.