• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.84-90
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• 2021

Vascularized bone grafts (VBGs) are widely employed to reconstruct upper extremity bone defects. Conventional bone grafting is generally used to treat defects smaller than 5-6 cm, when tissue vascularization is adequate and there is no infection risk. Vascularized fibular grafts (VFGs) are mainly used in the humerus, radius or ulna in cases of persistent non-union where traditional bone grafting has failed or for bone defects larger than 6 cm. Furthermore, VFGs are considered to be the standard treatment for large bone defects located in the radius, ulna and humerus and enable the reconstruction of soft-tissue loss, as VFGs can be harvested as osteocutaneous flaps. VBGs enable one-stage surgical reconstruction and are highly infection-resistant because of their autonomous vascularization. A vascularized medial femoral condyle (VFMC) free flap can be used to treat small defects and non-unions in the upper extremity. Relative contraindications to these procedures are diabetes, immunosuppression, chronic infections, alcohol, tobacco, drug abuse and obesity. The aim of our study was to illustrate the use of VFGs to treat large post-traumatic bone defects and osteomyelitis located in the upper extremity. Moreover, the use of VFMC autografts is presented.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.12spc
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• pp.526-538
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• 2021

Machine and deep learning-based models are emerging techniques that are being used to address prediction problems in biomedical data analysis. DNA sequence prediction is a critical problem that has attracted a great deal of attention in the biomedical domain. Machine and deep learning-based models have been shown to provide more accurate results when compared to conventional regression-based models. The prediction of the gene sequence that leads to cancerous diseases, such as prostate cancer, is crucial. Identifying the most important features in a gene sequence is a challenging task. Extracting the components of the gene sequence that can provide an insight into the types of mutation in the gene is of great importance as it will lead to effective drug design and the promotion of the new concept of personalised medicine. In this work, we extracted the exons in the prostate gene sequences that were used in the experiment. We built a Deep Neural Network (DNN) and Bi-directional Long-Short Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) model using a k-mer encoding for the DNA sequence and one-hot encoding for the class label. The models were evaluated using different classification metrics. Our experimental results show that DNN model prediction offers a training accuracy of 99 percent and validation accuracy of 96 percent. The bi-LSTM model also has a training accuracy of 95 percent and validation accuracy of 91 percent.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.377-387
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• 2022

Benzimidazole anthelmintic agents have been recently repurposed to overcome cancers resistant to conventional therapies. To evaluate the anti-cancer effects of benzimidazole on resistant cells, various cell death pathways were investigated in 5-fluorouracil-resistant colorectal cancer cells. The viability of wild-type and 5-fluorouracil-resistant SNU-C5 colorectal cancer cells was assayed, followed by Western blotting. Flow cytometry assays for cell death and cell cycle was also performed to analyze the anti-cancer effects of benzimidazole. When compared with albendazole, fenbendazole showed higher susceptibility to 5-fluorouracil-resistant SNU-C5 cells and was used in subsequent experiments. Flow cytometry revealed that fenbendazole significantly induces apoptosis as well as cell cycle arrest at G2/M phase on both cells. When compared with wild-type SNU-C5 cells, 5-fluorouracil-resistant SNU-C5 cells showed reduced autophagy, increased ferroptosis and ferroptosis-augmented apoptosis, and less activation of caspase-8 and p53. These results suggest that fenbendazole may be a potential alternative treatment in 5-fluorouracil-resistant cancer cells, and the anticancer activity of fenbendazole does not require p53 in 5-fluorouracil-resistant SNU-C5 cells.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.357-369
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• 2023

Wound healing is a complex and dynamic process, making the accurate and timely assessment of skin wounds a crucial aspect of effective wound care management, especially for chronic wounds. Unlike conventional wound dressings that simply cover the wound area once some form of medicine is administered onto the wound, recent studies have introduced versatile approaches to smart wound dressings capable of interacting with wound fluids to monitor physicochemical and pathological parameters to determine the wound healing status. Such electrochemical wound dressings can be integrated with on-demand, closed-loop drug delivery or stimulation systems and ultimately expanded into an ideal technological platform for the prevention, treatment, and management of skin wounds or illnesses. This article briefly reviews the wound healing mechanism and recent strategies for effective wound care management. Specifically, this review discusses the following aspects of smart wound dressings: sensor-integrated smart bandages to detect wound biomarkers, smart bandages developed to accelerate wound healing, and wireless, closed-loop automatic (on-demand) wound healing systems. This review concludes by providing future perspectives on effective wound care management.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.156-162
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• 2024

This study aimed to evaluate and compare the inhibitory effects of extracts from Bombyx batryticatus (BBE) and Bombyx mori (BME) on α-glucosidase, DPP-4, and LDL oxidation activities, focusing on their potential applications in managing postprandial hyperglycemia and metabolic syndrome. The results demonstrated that both BBE and BME effectively inhibited α-glucosidase and LDL oxidation, with BBE exhibiting higher inhibitory activity than BME. HPLC analysis identified linolenic acid, linoleic acid, linolenic acid ethyl ester, pheophorbide a, and pyropheophorbide a as key compounds contributing to these effects. Notably, the identified unsaturated fatty acids and pheophorbides showed strong α-glucosidase inhibitory activity, surpassing that of acarbose, a standard diabetic drug. These results suggest that, in addition to the previously reported 1-DNJ and fibroin proteins, unsaturated fatty acids and chlorophyll-derived pheophorbides may play significant roles in glycemic control. Compounds, particularly those from BBE, present promising opportunities for the development of natural therapeutic agents for diabetes management. The study concludes that BBE and BME have strong potential as functional ingredients in future diabetes treatment strategies, possibly offering enhanced efficacy over conventional inhibitors.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.703-712
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• 2012

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) has been considered to be a very safe and efficient gene delivery system. However, the major obstacles to therapeutic usage of AAV have been to achieve highly efficient and reproducible production processes, and also to develop a reliable quantifying method of various serotypes with a simple protocol. We compared the efficiency of the conventional production protocol of AAV2 and adenovirus (Ad) co-infection to that of a new method containing AAV2 infection followed by pHelper transfection. We tested HEK293 and 293T, and further examined the time-dependent changes of AAV2 production. The new method of AAV2 and pHelper DNA gave about ten times higher production efficiency than that of the conventional protocol. The highest production efficiency in 293T was achieved as $1.61{\times}10^5$ virus genomes (v.g.)/cell by the new method of 10 MOI of AAV2 infection and 5 days post-infection. This protocol of the highest efficiency was then applied to produce various AAV serotypes and showed the efficiencies higher than $10^5$ v.g./cell. Next, we designed the universal PCR primers of highly conserved regions for various AAV serotypes to develop a simple and reliable titration method. The universal primers could amplify all the tested AAV serotypes with similar sensitivities by ten molecular copies. Therefore, this pair of universal primers can be further utilized to detect AAV contaminants in therapeutic adenoviral vectors.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.70-75
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• 2011

A new and improved analytical method involving alkaline pyridine extraction was proposed to quantity chlorophyll contents in syrup and candy type chlorella products. The performance of analytical method was compared with the conventional Korea food standard method which involves acetone extraction. The application of sonication chlorophyll extraction form alkaline pyridine sample was also explored. The analytical procedure was validated by evaluating accuracy, precision and reproducibility. For liquid samples, the pyridine extraction method showed higher accuracy and precision compared to acetone extraction method. The CV values of pyridine extract method and the acetone extraction method were 18.82 and 40.0, and the accuracy to theoretical values were 106.3% and 78.1%, respectively. When sonication extraction method was applied to the pyridine extraction, the precision was improved as indicated by reduced CV values from 18.82 to 11.36. The improved performance of pyridine-sonication extraction was also validated by recovery test of chlorophyll that was previously spiked into the sample matrix. For solid matrix, the pyridine extraction method showed better performance in analysis of chlorophyll in solid food matrix (CV = 7.05) compared to conventional acetone extraction method (CV = 30.0). However, the accuracy to theoretical values of pyridine and acetone extraction methods only showed only 62.7% an 40%, respectively. The relatively low accuracy of pyridine extraction method (62.7%) was improved to 99.4% by applying additional sonication extraction method. The improved performance of applying additional sonication extraction was validated by standard deviation, CV values and accuracy to theoretical values.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.4037-4041
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• 2016

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common cancer that is frequently diagnosed at an advanced stage. Transarterial chemoembolisation (TACE) is an effective palliative treatment for patients who are not eligible for curative treatment. The two main methods for performing TACE are conventional (c-TACE) or with drug eluting beads (DEB-TACE). We sought to compare survival rates and tumour response between patients undergoing c-TACE and DEB-TACE at our centre. Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort study of patients undergoing either treatment was carried out from January 2009 to December 2014. Tumour response to the procedures was evaluated according to the modified Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (mRECIST). Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to assess and compare the overall survival in the two groups. Results: A total of 79 patients were analysed (34 had c-TACE, 45 had DEB-TACE) with a median follow-up of 11.8 months. A total of 20 patients in the c-TACE group (80%) and 12 patients in the DEB-TACE group (44%) died during the follow up period. The median survival durations in the c-TACE and DEB-TACE groups were $4.9{\pm}3.2$ months and $8.3{\pm}2.0$ months respectively (p=0.008). There was no statistically significant difference noted among the two groups with respect to mRECIST criteria. Conclusions: DEB-TACE demonstrated a significant improvement in overall survival rates for patients with unresectable HCC when compared to c-TACE. It is a safe and promising approach and should potentially be considered as a standard of care in the management of unresectable HCC.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.11-16
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• 2021

Recently, three-dimensional (3D) cell culture systems, which are superior to conventional two-dimensional (2D) vascular systems that mimic the in vivo environment, are being actively studied to reproduce drug responses and cell differentiation in organisms. Conventional two-dimensional cell culture methods (scaffold-based and non-scaffold-based) have a limited cell growth rate because the culture cannot supply the culture medium as consistently as microvessels. To solve this problem, we would like to propose a 3D culture system with an environment similar to living cells by continuously supplying the culture medium to the bottom of the 3D cell support. The 3D culture system is a structure in which microvascular structures are combined under a scaffold (agar, collagen, etc.) where cells can settle and grow. First, we have manufactured molds for the formation of four types of microvessel-mimicking chips: width / height ①100 ㎛ / 100 ㎛, ②100 ㎛ / 50 ㎛, ③ 150 ㎛ / 100 ㎛, and ④ 200 ㎛ / 100 ㎛. By injection molding, four types of microfluidic chips were made with GPPS (general purpose polystyrene), and a 100㎛-thick PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) film was attached to the top of each microfluidic chip. As a result of observing the flow of the culture medium in the microchannel, it was confirmed that when the aspect ratio (height/width) of the microchannel is 1.5 or more, the fluid flows from the inlet to the outlet without a backflow phenomenon. In addition, the culture efficiency experiments of colorectal cancer cells (SW490) were performed in a 3D culture system in which PDMS films with different pore diameters (1/25/45 ㎛) were combined on a microfluidic chip. As a result, it was found that the cell growth rate increased up to 1.3 times and the cell death rate decreased by 71% as a result of the 3D culture system having a hole membrane with a diameter of 10 ㎛ or more compared to the conventional commercial. Based on the results of this study, it is possible to expand and build various 3D cell culture systems that can maximize cell culture efficiency by cell type by adjusting the shape of the microchannel, the size of the film hole, and the flow rate of the inlet.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.23 no.9
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• pp.911-920
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• 2022

Objective: ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL is a novel prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeting tracer based on Glu-Urea-Lys derivatives conjugated to a 1,4,7-triazacyclononane-N,N',N''-triacetic acid (NOTA) chelator via a thiourea-type short linker. This phase I clinical trial of ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL was conducted to evaluate the safety and radiation dosimetry of ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL in healthy volunteers and the lesion detection rate of ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL in patients with prostate cancer. Materials and Methods: We designed a prospective, open-label, single-arm clinical trial with two cohorts comprising six healthy adult men and six patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Safety and blood test-based toxicities were monitored throughout the study. PET/CT scans were acquired at multiple time points after administering ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL (2 MBq/kg; 96-165 MBq). In healthy adults, absorbed organ doses and effective doses were calculated using the OLINDA/EXM software. In patients with prostate cancer, the rates of detecting suspicious lesions by ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL PET/CT and conventional imaging (CT and bone scintigraphy) during the screening period, within one month after recruitment, were compared. Results: All 12 participants (six healthy adults aged 31-32 years and six prostate cancer patients aged 57-81 years) completed the clinical trial. No drug-related adverse events were observed. In the healthy adult group, ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL was rapidly distributed, with the highest uptake in the kidneys. The median effective dose coefficient was calculated as 0.025 mSv/MBq, and cumulative activity in the bladder had the highest contribution. In patients with metastatic prostate cancer, 229 suspicious lesions were detected using either ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL PET/CT or conventional imaging. Among them, ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL PET/CT detected 199 (86.9%) lesions and CT or bone scintigraphy detected 114 (49.8%) lesions. Conclusion: ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL can be safely applied clinically and has shown a higher detection rate for the localization of metastatic lesions in prostate cancer than conventional imaging. Therefore, ⁶⁸Ga-NGUL is a valuable option for prostate cancer imaging.