Tumor-specific promoters can induce high-efficiency and specific expression of exogenous genes in tumor cells. At present, commonly used promoters include alpha-fetoprotein promoter, carcinoembryonic antigen promoter,prostate specific antigen promoter,human telomerase reverse transcriptase promoter and multidrug resistance gene promoter and etc. Dual promoters, enhancer, regulatory element and other physical or chem-ical factors could be used to reconstruct or modify promoters to increase the expression and location of exogenous genes in tumor cells. Tumor-specific promoters play an important role in cancer gene targeted therapy by cou-pling with suicide gene, anti- oncogene, antiseuse nucleic acid, apoptosis gene and RNA interference.

Objective To observe the effect of interferon (IFN) λ1 on the function of peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) derived dendritic cells (DC) in adolescents with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.Methods A total of 34 adolescent patients with chronic HBV infection including 16 cases in immune clearance phase and 18 cases in immune tolerant phase,and 10 healthy youths were enrolled in the study.PBMC from all samples were isolated and then cultured according to the following 3 groups.IFN-λ1 group:cultured with IFN-λ1 only; normal group:cultured with recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (rhGM-CSF) and recombinant human interleukin-4 (rhIL-4); combination group:cultured with IFN-λ1,rhGM-CSF and rhIL-4.The shape of DC was observed and the phenotypic patterns of CD83,CD80,CD86 and human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-DR were characterized by flow cytometry.The levels of interleukin 12 (IL-12) and IFN-γ in the supernatant produced by DC were analyzed with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).Independent-samples t test was used to compare means between two groups and one-way ANOVA was used to compare means among multiple groups.Results In the IFN-λ1 group,the shape of adherent cells showed no change after 7 days of culture.In the normal group and combination group,typical morphology of mature state DC was observed.The expressions of phenotypic patterns of CD83,CD80,CD86 and HLA-DR in DC from immune tolerant phase patients were lower than those from healthy control youths and immune clearance phase patients (F=14.82-46.32,all P＜0.01).Co-stimuation of IFN-λ1 with rhGM-CSF and rhIL-4 up-regulated the expressions of phenotypic patterns on DC.Among patients both in immune tolerant phase and immune clearance phase,the expressions of CD83,CD80,CD86 and HLA-DR in the combination group were higher than those in normal group (t=3.16-5.69,all P＜0.01).In the normal group,the levels of IL-12 and IFN-γ in culture supernatants from healthy aldolescents were (287.25 ± 19.78) pg/mL and (56.38 ± 15.27)pg/mL,respectively; those from patients in immune tolerant phase were (198.42±22.28) pg/mL and (29.36±8.45) pg/mL,respectively; those from patients in immune clearance phase were (256.12±18.43) pg/mL and (38.38±9.72) pg/mL,respectively (F=69.22 for IL-12,F=20.29 for IFN-γ,both P＜0.01).IFN-λ1 combined with rhGM-CSF and rhIL-4 significantly up-regulated the secretion of IL-12 and IFN-γ by matured DC from patients both in immune tolerant phase and immune clearance phase (t=4.69-8.55,all P＜0.01).Conclusions In adolescent patients with chronic HBV infection,the DC function is markedly impaired in those in immune tolerant phase,compared with patients in immune clearance phase and healthy youths.IFN-λ1 can promote the maturation and phenotypic pattern expression of PBMC derived DC in adolescents with chronic HBV infection both in immune tolerant phase and immune clearance phase.

Objective To explore the difference in efficacy between multiparametric MRI (Mp-MRI) based on prostate imaging reporting and data system version 2 (PI-RADS v2) and abbreviated biparametric MRI (Bp-MRI) in detecting prostate cancer (PCa) and clinically significant prostate cancer (csPCa), and to evaluate the consistency of image interpretation between different readers. Methods The imaging, pathological and clinical data of patients with prostatic Mp-MRI in our hospital from February 2015 to June 2018 were retrospectively analyzed. At the beginning, 250 patients were randomly selected. Two radiologists visually evaluated the images of those patients using two 5-point scoring schemes based on Mp-MRI and Bp-MRI. The remaining cases were independently proceeded by one of the radiologists using two schemes respectively. Weighted Kappa test was used to assess the consistency of the results interpreted by the two radiologists. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the efficiency of the two scoring schemes in detecting PCa and csPCa, and with Z test to investigate whether there was any difference in detection efficiency between the two schemes. Results Nine hundred and seventy eight patients were eventually enrolled in the study. The results of the consistency assessment showed that there was good agreement between the two radiologists, whether using Mp-MRI or Bp-MRI, with the weighted Kappa coefficient of 0.800 and 0.812, respectively. The ROC curve analysis showed that the area under the curve (AUC) of PCa detected by Mp-MRI and Bp-MRI was 0.873 and 0.879, respectively, and the AUC of csPCa detected was 0.922 and 0.932, respectively. In addition, there was no statistically significant difference between the AUC of PCa and csPCa detected by the two schemes (P>0.05). Conclusion The Bp-MRI scoring scheme has good stability in the evaluation of benign and malignant prostate, and its detection efficiency of PCa or csPCa is not lower than that of standard Mp-MRI based on PI-RADS v2.