BACKGROUND Hemangioma in infants has a benign self-limited course, but the 10% of cases with complications need further treatment. Successful treatment with propranolol in western countries has been reported over the past few years. We evaluated the efficacy of propranolol for treating infantile hemangioma in Taiwanese newborns and young infants. METHODS Patients below 1 year of age treated with propanolol between November 2009 and March 2011 were enrolled. Demographic data, clinical features, imaging findings, treatment regimens of propranolol, and outcome were investigated. RESULTS Thirteen patients were treated with propranolol at a dose of 2-3 mg/kg/day. Seven (53.8%) patients had solitary hemangioma and six had multiple ones. The indications for treatment were risk of local event in nine patients, functional risk in four, local complication in one, and life-threatening complication in one. The median age for starting propranolol was 4 months (range: 1-11 months). Responses to propranolol, such as decolorization, regression in tumor size, or improvement of hemangioma-associated complications were observed in all patients within 1-2 weeks after treatment. Propranolol-associated adverse effects occurred in two patients. One infant had occasional tachypnea, and the other had occasional pale-looking appearance. The symptoms resolved after dosage tapering. CONCLUSION Propranolol may be a promising therapeutic modality for infantile hemangioma. Therapeutic strategies are needed to evaluate the optimal treatment protocol and long-term adverse effects.

Microfluidic devices fabricated using poly(dimethylsiloxane)(PDMS) polymer are routinely used for in vitro cell culture for a wide range of cellular assays. These assays typically involve the incubation of cultured cells with a drug molecule or a fluorescent marker while monitoring a cellular response. The accuracy of these assays depends on achieving a consistent and reproducible concentration of solute molecules in solution. However, hydrophobic therapeutic and fluorescent molecules tend to diffuse into the PDMS walls of the microfluidic devices, which reduce their concentration in solution and consequently affect the accuracy and reliability of these assays. In this paper, we quantitatively investigate the relationship between the partition coefficient (log P) of a series of markers routinely used in in vitro cellular assays including [3H]-dexamethasone,[3H]-diazepam,[14C]-mannitol,[3H]-phenytoin, and rhodamine 6G and their absorption into PDMS microfluidic channels. Our results show that the absorption of a given solute into PDMS depends on the hydrophilic/hydrophobic balance defined by its log P value. Specifically, results demonstrate that molecules with log P less than 2.47 exhibit minimal absorption (<10%) into PDMS channels whereas molecules with log P larger than 2.62 exhibit extensive absorption (>90%) into PDMS channels. Further investigations showed that TiO(2) and glass coatings of PDMS channels reduced the absorption of hydrophobic molecules (log P > 2.62) by 2- and 4.5-folds, respectively.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Epithelial barrier dysfunction is involved in a number of diseases in the body. The mechanism is to be further understood. The present study aimed to investigate the role of one of the common microbial products, flagellin (FGN), in the induction of intestinal epithelial barrier dysfunction. METHODS: We collected the colon epithelium specimens from 40 patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), 40 patients with Crohn's disease (CD) and 40 healthy volunteers. The expression of toll like receptors (TLR)5 of the specimens was assessed by RT-PCR and western blotting. The expression of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) and its role in compromising the barrier function in the intestinal epithelial cells, T84 cells, were observed by a cell culture model. RESULTS: The results showed that the expression of TLR5 was observed in the colon epithelium of healthy subjects that was increased in UC patients and further increased in CD patients. Treating T84 cells with FGN increased the expression of TNFα in the cells that caused the T84 cell apoptosis as well as compromised the T84 monolayer barrier function, which could be prevented by knocking down the gene of TNFα in T84 cells. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the human colon epithelial cells express detectable TLR5 that is increased in patients with CD and UC. The exposure to FGN can increase the expression of TNFα that further compromises the intestinal epithelial barrier function.

Neaumycin, a new 30-membered macrolide featuring an internal diester bridge, a molecular architecture that is unprecedented among known macrolide natural products, was isolated from a soil actinomycete strain Streptomyces sp. NEAU-x211. The structure of neaumycin was elucidated on the basis of comprehensive mass and NMR spectroscopic interpretation, including the relative stereochemistry of four independent coupling systems.

BACKGROUND This retrospective study uses the LAT-M (One Lambda Inc., Calif) screen assay to reexamine the impacts (a), of pretransplant human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antibody on long-term graft survival;(b) posttransplant HLA antibody on long-term graft survival and (c) immunosuppressive regimen on posttransplant HLA antibody development. PATIENTS AND METHODS Pretransplant sera from 222 renal transplant recipients and posttransplant sera from 216 renal transplant recipients were studied for the impact of HLA antibody on long-term graft survival. RESULTS Among the patients who did not display pretransplant HLA antibodies, 85% enjoyed 5-year and 59% 10-year graft survival, whereas the patients who tested positive were 83% and 83%(P =.5596). Among the patients who did not show posttransplant HLA antibodies, 99% enjoyed 5-, 91% 10-, and 65% 15-year graft survival, whereas for the 44 patients who tested positive they were 59%, 44%, and 30%, respectively (P <.0001). Patients prescribed cyclosporine + myfortic (odds ratio 0.17, P =.05) or FK + Cellcept (odds ratio 0.36, P =.04) showed the lowest posttransplant HLA antibody development. CONCLUSION Both regimens improve graft survival.

BACKGROUND Mycophenolic acid (MPA) pharmacokinetics using the mycophenolate mofetil (CellCept) formulation are known to differ between patients receiving tacrolimus (FK) or cyclosporine (CyA), but only limited data exist concerning concomitant use of FK or CyA with enteric-coated mycophenolate sodium (EC-MPS; Myfortic). This retrospective study compared the drug interactions with the mycophenolic acid blood levels using different immunosuppressants and their relation to graft survival. PATIENTS AND METHODS We studied MPA levels in posttransplant sera from 298 renal transplant recipients. RESULTS Patients receiving immunosuppression with CyA + Myfortic showed 94% at 5- and 10-year graft survivals, which were better than CyA + CellCept (75%, 63%). This combination suppressed posttransplant human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antibody development significantly (P =.03) with higher MPA levels. CONCLUSION Patients immunosuppressed with CyA + Myfortic showed higher MPA levels and lower posttransplant HLA antibody development as well as the best graft survival. CyA + Myfortic or FK + Cellcept may be better combinations.

BACKGROUND: The absence of biallelic TCRγ deletion (ABD) is a characteristic of early thymocyte precursors before V(D)J recombination. The ABD was reported to predict early treatment failure in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). This study aimed to investigate its prognostic value in Taiwanese patients with T-cell ALL. PROCEDURE: Forty-five children with T-cell ALL were enrolled from six medical centers in Taiwan. Quantitative DNA polymerase chain reaction (Q-PCR) was performed to check the status of TCRγ deletion. The threshold for homozygous deletions by Q-PCR was defined as a fold-change <0.35. RESULTS: ABD was found in 20 patients [20:45] who had higher incidences of induction failure than those without ABD (P = 0.03; hazard ratio [HR] = 8.13; 95% confidence interval [95% CI] = 1.23-53.77) after multivariate regression analysis. Patents with ABD also had inferior EFS and OS (P = 0.071 and 0.0196, respectively). Multivariate Cox analysis indicated that the association between ABD and overall survival was independent of age and leukocyte count on presentation (P = 0.036; HR = 4.25; 95% CI = 1.10-16.42). CONCLUSIONS: The absence of TCRγ deletion is a predictor of a poor response to induction chemotherapy for pediatric patients with T-cell ALL in Taiwan. Providing patients with T-cell ALL and ABD with alternative regimens may be worthwhile to test in future clinical trials. Pediatr Blood Cancer © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Four new doramectin congeners, 1-4, were isolated from Streptomyces avermitilis NEAU1069. The structures of 1-4 were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic analysis, including 1D- and 2D-NMR as well as HR-ESI-MS, ESI-MS, UV, and IR, and comparison with literature data. All compounds exhibited noticeable acaricidal and insecticidal activities. Especially compound 2 was found to be the most potent pesticide of the compounds evaluated with the IC(50) values of 10.2, 65.1 and 124.4 μg/ml against adult two-spotted spider mites (Tetranychus urticae Koch), two-spotted spider mite eggs, and Mythimna separata, respectively, which are comparable to those of commercial pesticide milbemycin A(3)/A(4) as positive reference.

The ν-Support Vector Machine (ν-SVM) for classification proposed by Schölkopf et al. has the advantage of using a parameter ν on controlling the number of support vectors and margin errors. However, comparing to standard C-Support Vector Machine (C-SVM), its formulation is more complicated, up until now there are no effective methods on solving accurate on-line learning for it. In this paper, we propose a new effective accurate on-line algorithm which is designed based on a modified formulation of the original ν-SVM. The accurate on-line algorithm includes two special steps: the first one is relaxed adiabatic incremental adjustments; the second one is strict restoration adjustments. The experiments on several benchmark datasets demonstrate that using these two steps the accurate on-line algorithm can avoid the infeasible updating path as far as possible, and successfully converge to the optimal solution. It achieves the fast convergence especially on the Gaussian kernel and is faster than the batch algorithm.

As a continuous work to find more epothilone congeners produced by the epothilones A and B producing Sorangium cellulosum strain So0157-2 in the large-scale fermentation (5000 L), we reinvestigated the chemical compositions of the fermentation broth. Consequently, two new epothilone variants (1-2) and one new natural epothilone derivative (3) were isolated from the fermentation broth. Their structures were established as 16-ethyl epothilone B (1), 6-desmethyl-16-hydroxymethyl epothilone C (2) and 20-ethyl epothilone A (3), respectively, by an extensive NMR analysis.