Objective To study the short-term clinical efficacy of treating patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancer with lentinan injection and javanica oil emulsion injection.Methods Clinical information of 42 patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancer were retrospectively collected.The 42 patients were divided into two groups according to treatments,with 21 case in the control group who were treated with javanica oil emulsion injection,as well as 21 case in the treatment group treated with lentinan injection and javanica oil emulsion injection.The efficacy,quality of life (QOL) and adverse effects were observed after treatment for 3 weeks.Results 81.0％ (17/21)of patients in the treatment group improved in QOL,which was much higher than that in the control group 47.6％ ( 10/21 ) ( x2 =5.081,P =0.024 ).The objective remission rate was 19.0％ (4/21)and 14.3％ (3/21)in the treatment group and the control group respectively,with no significant differece bwtween the two groups( x2 =0.171,P =0.679 ).the disease control rate was 85.7％ (18/21)in the treatment group,which was significantly higher than that of 61.9％ (12/21)in the control group( x2 =4.200,P =0.040 ).The incidence of adverse effect related to hematological toxicity,liver and kidney function,the digestive tract and itching of skin were similar between the two groups (Ps ＞ 0.05 ).Phlebitis in the treatment group was not as frequent as that in the control group(P ＜0.05).Conclusion Treating patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancer with lentinan injection and javanica oil emulsion injection had high efficacy than treating only with javanica oil emulsion injection,and it improved QOL signifiantly with safety.

Objective To develop an albumin aptamer that may potentially serve as a selective ligand for albumin removal from experimental samples.Methods A single-stranded 59nt DNA library that contains 21 random oligo nucleotides was synthesized in vitro.An albumin aptamer A6 was developed by SELEX technique using bovine serum albumin (BSA) as target.The enrichment of aptamer and evaluation of its binding properties were monitored by flow cytometry.The secondary structure of A6 was predicted by MFord software.Results The aptamer A6 strongly bound to BSA with a Kd of 77.4 nmol/L,and had minimal cross reactivity with control proteins including ovalbu min,IgG,and trypsin.Conclusions Aptamer A6 may be a potential tool in albumin removal.

Pacemaking dysfunction has become a significant disease that may contribute to heart rhythm disorders, syncope, and even death. Up to now, the best way to treat it is to implant electronic pacemakers. However, these have many disadvantages such as limited battery life, infection, and fixed pacing rate. There is an urgent need for a biological pacemaker (bio-pacemaker). This is expected to replace electronic devices because of its low risk of complications and the ability to respond to emotion. Here we survey the contemporary development of the bio-pacemaker by both experimental and computational approaches. The former mainly includes gene therapy and cell therapy, whilst the latter involves the use of multi-scale computer models of the heart, ranging from the single cell to the tissue slice. Up to now, a bio-pacemaker has been successfully applied in big mammals, but it still has a long way from clinical uses for the treatment of human heart diseases. It is hoped that the use of the computational model of a bio-pacemaker may accelerate this process. Finally, we propose potential research directions for generating a bio-pacemaker based on cardiac computational modeling.

Pacemaking dysfunction has become a significant disease that may contribute to heart rhythm disorders, syncope, and even death. Up to now, the best way to treat it is to implant electronic pacemakers. However, these have many disadvantages such as limited battery life, infection, and fixed pacing rate. There is an urgent need for a biological pacemaker (bio-pacemaker). This is expected to replace electronic devices because of its low risk of complications and the ability to respond to emotion. Here we survey the contemporary development of the bio-pacemaker by both experimental and computational approaches. The former mainly includes gene therapy and cell therapy, whilst the latter involves the use of multi-scale computer models of the heart, ranging from the single cell to the tissue slice. Up to now, a bio-pacemaker has been successfully applied in big mammals, but it still has a long way from clinical uses for the treatment of human heart diseases. It is hoped that the use of the computational model of a bio-pacemaker may accelerate this process. Finally, we propose potential research directions for generating a bio-pacemaker based on cardiac computational modeling.

Objective:To evaluate the performance of magnetic beads extraction method (MGE) for the measurement of catecholamine metabolites by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.Methods:This is a methodological evaluation study. The linearity, limit of quantitation, recovery, precision, and matrix effect of catecholamine metabolites 3-methoxyepinephrine (MN), 3-methoxynorepinephrine (NMN) and 3-methoxytyramine (3-MT) extracted by MGE method were evaluated according to CLSI C62-A. Consensus of method development and validation of liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry in clinical laboratories and other guidelines, 132 clinical residual plasma samples were collected and extracted by automated MGE and traditional solid phase extraction (SPE) method to compare the harmonization of the two extraction methods.Results:The linearity of MN, NMN and 3-MT extracted by automated MGE was>0.99, and the LOQ for MN, NMN and 3-MT were 0.033 5 nmol/L, 0.054 7 nmol/L and 0.011 0 nmol/L, respectively. The repeatability of MN, NMN and 3-MT were 1.3%-5.1%, 2.2%-5.6% and 1.7%-7.1%, respectively. The total imprecision in the laboratory were 1.5%-8.2%, 2.2%-7.7%, 2.1%-11.2%. Although the absolute recovery is low, the average relative recoveries of MN, NMN and 3-MT were 91.5%-108.5%, 92.0%-108.6%, and 89.3%-104.1%, respectively, and the percentage deviation from the expected concentration was within 15%. After isotope internal standard correction, the relative matrix effect is close to 100%, which can compensate for the potential matrix effect. The results of MGE and SPE of MN, NMN and 3-MT showeda good correlation (correlation coefficient r>0.99). The average relative deviations of MN, NMN and 3-MT were 0.2%, -1.4% and 1.0%, respectively. Conclusion:The automatic MGE method hasa good performance in extracting catecholamine metabolites, and is expected to be used in high-throughput analysis of samples in clinical in the future.