BACKGROUND: Tissue engineering is the best way to repair or replace organ failure or tissue defects. From the theoretical point of view to the research in many fields, tissue engineering has developed very rapidly. As cardiovascular disease has become one of the most dangerous factors that endanger human health, research on cardiac tissue engineering has made tremendous progress. OBJECTIVE: To provide advices and references for the development and innovation of cardiac tissue engineering based on patent analysis in the field of cardiac tissue engineering that reveals the global competitive situation of cardiac tissue engineering. METHODS: We qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the number and development tendency, technology birthplaces, target markets, applicants, inventors and technical fields of patents in the field of liver tissue engineering in nearly 20 years. The data visualization method is used to present the current status and tendency of global cardiac tissue engineering technology development and China's development status. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The technology for cardiac tissue engineering has been evolved rapidly and highly innovative, with invention patents accounting for 93.91%. The scale of technological development in the field of cardiac tissue engineering in China is not expanded as large as that in the United States, but the growth rate is far faster than that in the United States, and it has accumulated a certain number of high-quality technological achievements, becoming the second largest source of technology in the world. The United States is the most concerned target market in the field of cardiac tissue engineering, and the Chinese market currently ranks fourth. Chinese cardiac tissue engineering has developed rapidly in recent years, growing much faster than that in the United States. There are three institutions in China that has mounted to the front of the world in terms of technology development. Due to a lack of technological achievements with high potential market value, there is still a certain gap between China and the United States. Chinese inventors have achieved certain results in this field, mainly in enterprises. The main fields of technological innovation in this field are heart valve covering materials and cell scaffolds. Through an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of patents in the field of cardiac tissue engineering, it can be found that the global development of cardiac tissue engineering is active and innovative, but generally lacks high-quality results. The United States is the most concerned target market in this field and the most important technology birthplace, whereas China is at a stage of rapid development in this field. In order to improve technological competitiveness, enterprises and universities should strengthen cooperation and focus on research hot spots.

Objective To detect plasma interleukins-35 (IL-35 )level in the patients with active tuberculosis complicated with bronchiectasis and to analyze its clinical significance.Methods Peripheral blood of patients with active tuberculosis from depart-ment of Dongguan 6th People′s hospital were collected,assigned to the active tuberculosis complicated with bronchiectasis group and active tuberculosis group.The healthy volunteers served as the control group.The plasma IL-35 level was measured by ELISA, and peripheral blood neutrophils and lymphocytes were detected by hematology analyzer.Results The levels of plasma IL-35 signif-icantly increased in both patients with active tuberculosis complicated with bronchiectasis and patients with active tuberculosis.The level of plasma IL-35 of patients with active tuberculosis complicated with bronchiectasis was significantly higher than that of the patients with active tuberculosis.The absolute value and percentage of peripheral blood neutrophils of patients with active tubercu-losis complicated with bronchiectasis were significantly higher than those of healthy volunteers.However,the percentage of periph-eral blood lymphocytes of patients with active tuberculosis complicated with bronchiectasis was significantly lower than that of healthy volunteers.Pearson correlation analysis showed that the absolute value of peripheral blood neutrophils of patients with ac-tive tuberculosis was positively correlated to the level of plasma IL-35.Conclusion IL-35 may play an important role in the progres-sion of active tuberculosis complicated with bronchiectasis.The determination of IL-35 may be helpful to the diagnosis of patients with active tuberculosis complicated with bronchiectasis.

Objective To explore the technology frontiers for neuroblastoma treatment from the perspective of patent citation network. Methods Through patent analysis for neuroblastoma treatment, highly cited patents and highly cited papers in the citation network were taken as the research objects. The title and abstract of the citing patents were analyzed by text clustering to identify the technology frontiers. Through social network analysis, the core patents were identified from the indices of degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, and eigenvector centrality. Results A total of 6240 patent applications for neuroblastoma treatment were found, including 71304 patent citations and 88698 journal-article citations. Four technology frontiers were identified based on patent citation network, namely, drug target, drug design, tumor-indication expansion, and gene-expression regulation. Three technology frontiers were identified based on journal-article citation network. They were drug target, drug design, and tumor-indication expansion. Conclusion The development of technology for neuroblastoma treatment continues to be active. Drug target and drug design are the most important technology frontiers. This study could provide certain reference for neuroblastoma treatment from the perspective of information science.

OBJECTIVE: In this study,computational modelling was used to study whether different conduction pathways have impact on the AF initiation and maintenance based on a human atrial model. METHODS: MRI images from one patient who has atrial fibrillation were used to reconstruct the human atrial anatomical model.The number of MRI images was 112.In order to study the effect of different conduction pathways to AF,4 different atrial models were generated in this study,which were biatrial conduction via only LFO;biatrial conduction via only CS;biatrial conduction via both LFO and CS;model without biatrial conduction. RESULTS: In the case of biatrial conduction simulation via only LFO,the same re-entries were induced as in the LFO and CS case.But for the two cases of only CS conduction and both LFO and CS cannot conduct electricity,one stimulus site induced unsustained re-entry which only lasted for 2 cycles,and then terminated.The other two sites induced the same re-entries as in the previously described two cases,which were biatrial conduction simulation via both LFO and CS and only LFO. CONCLUSIONS Our simulation showed that these conduction pathways played a minor role in the re-entry initiation and maintenance,the possible explanation is that all the re-entries induced in our simulation is local drivers and maintained by fibrosis.
Atrial Fibrillation ; Catheter Ablation ; instrumentation ; Heart Atria ; Heart Rate ; Humans