BACKGROUND:Colorectal cancer, a prevalent malignancy worldwide, poses a significant challenge due to the lack of effective prognostic tools. In this study, we aimed to develop a functional gene signature to stratify colorectal cancer patients into different groups with distinct characteristics, which will greatly facilitate disease prediction. RESULTS:Patients were stratified into high- and low-risk groups using a prediction model built based on the functional gene signature. This innovative approach not only predicts clinicopathological features but also reveals tumor immune microenvironment types and responses to immunotherapy. The study reveals that patients in the high-risk group exhibit poorer pathological features, including invasion depth, lymph node metastasis, and distant metastasis, as well as unfavorable survival outcomes in terms of overall survival and disease-free survival. The underlying mechanisms for these observations are attributed to upregulated tumor-related signaling pathways, increased infiltration of pro-tumor immune cells, decreased infiltration of anti-tumor immune cells, and a lower tumor mutation burden. Consequently, patients in the high-risk group exhibit a diminished response to immunotherapy. Furthermore, the high-risk group demonstrates enrichment in extracellular matrix-related functions and significant infiltration of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs). Single-cell transcriptional data analysis identifies CAFs as the primary cellular type expressing hub genes, namely ACTA2, TPM2, MYL9, and TAGLN. This finding is further validated through multiple approaches, including multiplex immunohistochemistry (mIHC), polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and western blot analysis. Notably, TPM2 emerges as a potential biomarker for identifying CAFs in colorectal cancer, distinguishing them from both colorectal cancer cell lines and normal colon epithelial cell lines. Co-culture of CAFs and colorectal cancer cells revealed that CAFs could enhance the tumorigenic biofunctions of cancer cells indirectly, which could be partially inhibited by knocking down CAF original TPM2 expression. CONCLUSIONS:This study introduces a functional gene signature that effectively and reliably predicts clinicopathological features and the tumor immune microenvironment in colorectal cancer. Moreover, the identification of TPM2 as a potential biomarker for CAFs holds promising implications for future research and clinical applications in the field of colorectal cancer.

Anti-PD-1 therapy has shown promising outcomes in the treatment of different types of cancer. It is of fundamental interest to analyze the efficacy of anti-PD-1 therapy in cancer patients infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) since the comorbidity of HBV and cancer is widely documented. We designed a multicenter retrospective study to evaluate the efficacy of anti-PD-1 therapy on non-liver cancer patients infected with HBV. We found anti-PD-1 therapy achieved much better outcomes in HBV+ non-liver cancer patients than their HBV- counterparts. We performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients. We found both cytotoxicity score of T cells and MHC score of B cells significantly increased after anti-PD-1 therapy in HBV+ ESCC patients. We also identified CX3CR1high TEFF, a subset of CD8+ TEFF, associated with better clinical outcome in HBV+ ESCC patients. Lastly, we found CD8+ TEFF from HBV+ ESCC patients showing higher fraction of Exhaustionhi T than their HBV- counterpart. In summary, anti-PD-1 therapy on HBV+ non-liver cancer patients is safe and achieves better outcomes than that on HBV- non-liver cancer patients, potentially because HBV+ patients had higher fraction of Exhaustionhi T, which made them more efficiently respond to anti-PD-1 therapy.

目的:AG490作为JAK2/STAT3通路的抑制剂,在对肿瘤细胞的抑制作用上所展现出的高效低毒性,使其有望成为临床上治疗肿瘤的一种可能的药物.然而,AG490的抗瘤机制尚未明确.因此,本文拟对AG490抑制淋巴瘤细胞增殖的效应及其作用机制进行进一步探讨,为AG490应用于临床提供实验依据.方法:用不同剂量的AG490处理淋巴瘤细胞(Namalwa和JeKo-1)、Ju-rkatT淋巴细胞性白血病细胞和THP-1单核细胞性白血病细胞24小时,CCK-8法检测AG490(0μM、2μM、20 μM、50 μM、200μM)对上述细胞的增殖抑制作用,实时定量PCR法检测BATF2 mRNA的变化,Western blot法检测其蛋白水平的变化,细胞转染siRNA法抑制BATF2表达后CCK8法检测AG490对Namalwa细胞的增殖抑制效应.结果:AG490呈剂量依赖性地抑制Na-malwa、JeKo-1、Jurkat细胞的增殖(P＜0.05),同时上调其BATF2 mRNA水平和蛋白水平的表达(P＜0.05).对于无显著抑制作用的THP-1细胞,BATF2的表达亦未见升高(P＞0.05).siRNA法抑制BATF2基因表达后,AG490对Namalwa细胞的增殖抑制效果明显降低(P＜0.05).结论:AG490杀肿瘤细胞的效率与其诱导的BATF2的表达呈正相关,抑制BATF2的表达后AG490抑制肿瘤细胞增殖的效率明显降低.因此,AG490可能是通过上调BATF2表达的方式抑制淋巴瘤细胞增殖.这意味着BATF2是AG490杀伤淋巴瘤细胞的作用靶点,可能为新药的开发做出一定的贡献.

This paper presents a health monitoring system by incorporating the approach of user centered design (UCD) for enhancing system usability for the elderly. The system is designed for monitoring cardiovascular diseases (CVD) related physiological signals including electrocardiogram (ECG), pulse wave (PW) and body weight (BW). Ease of use and non-obtrusiveness are two key requirements for design criteria. Our health monitoring system is designed on three levels: personal medical device layer, mobile application layer and remote central service layer. A chair-based apparatus was built for physiological signal acquisition and a mobile application was developed for data delivery and health management. Finally, usability evaluation was conducted and the system efficiency was quantitatively analyzed by system usability scale (SUS). The results demonstrate that the performance of the system is acceptable for the elderly and the UCD principle is helpful for health system design.

Background: Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are the most common mesenchymal neoplasms. However, duodenal GISTs compromise a small and rare subset and few studies have focused on them. We evaluated the surgical management of patients with duodenal GISTs treated by pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) versus local resection (LR) in our institution and analyzed the postoperative outcomes.Methods: This was a retrospective review of patients with duodenal GISTs managed in our institution from January 2006 to January 2012. Clinicopathologic findings and disease-free survival (DFS) of duodenal GIST patients were analyzed.Results: A total of 48 patients were selected. The most common presentation was bleeding (60.4%), and the second portion of the duodenum (35.4%) was the most common dominant site. Of the patients, 34 (70.8%) underwent LR while 14 (29.2%) underwent PD. The surgical margins for all studied patients were free. Patients who ultimately underwent PD were more likely to present with a larger tumor (median size: PD, 6.3 cm vs LR, 4.0 cm; P = 0.02) and more commonly presented with a tumor in the second portion of the duodenum (second portion: PD, 64.3% vs LR, 23.5%; P = 0.007). The tumors treated by PD had a higher grade of risk compared with LR as defined by National Institutes of Health (NIH) criteria (P = 0.019). PD was significantly associated with a longer operation time and a longer hospital stay compared to LR (P < 0.001 and P = 0.001, respectively). In our study, the median follow-up period was 36 months (range: 0 to 81 months). The 1- and 3-year DFS was 100% and 88%, respectively. From multivariable analysis, the only significant factor associated with a worse DFS was an NIH high risk classification (hazard ratio = 4.24).Conclusions: The recurrence of duodenal GIST was correlated to tumor biology rather than type of operation. PD was associated with a longer hospital stay and longer operation time. Therefore, LR with clear surgical margins should be considered a reliable and curative option for duodenal GIST and PD should be reserved for lesions not amenable to LR.