Electrochemical Sensing Platforms for HER2‐ECD Breast Cancer Biomarker Detection

Screening and early diagnosis are crucial to increase the success of cancer patients’ treatments and improve the survival rate. To contribute to this success, distinct electrochemical immunosensing platforms were developed for the analysis of the ExtraCellular Domain of the Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2 (HER2‐ECD) through sandwich assays on nanomaterial‐modified screen‐printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs). The most promising platforms showed to be SPCEs modified with (i) gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and (ii) multiwalled carbon nanotubes combined with AuNPs. The antibody‐antigen interaction was detected using a secondary antibody labelled with alkaline phosphatase and 3‐indoxyl phosphate and silver ions as the enzymatic substrate. The electrochemical signal of the enzymatically generated metallic silver was recorded by linear sweep voltammetry. Under the optimized conditions, linear calibration plots were obtained between 7.5 and 50 ng/mL and the total assay time was 2 h 20 min, achieving LODs of 0.16 ng/mL (SPCE‐MWCNT/AuNP) and 8.5 ng/mL (SPCE‐AuNP), which are well below the established cut‐off value of 15 ng/mL for this cancer biomarker.     

乳腺组织的拉曼光谱线性模型研究

本研究甄选10个代表乳腺组织拉曼活性成分的基谱,在国内首次构建一种乳腺组织拉曼谱的线性回归模型。用2 000多个正常和非正常乳腺组织拉曼谱对该模型进行统计检验,模型显著性F检验的置信度全部为1,多元决定系数的平均值为0.95,表明线性模型假设成立、拟合效果良好。10个基谱代表脂肪、细胞质、细胞间质、DNA、血液、β-胡萝卜素、胆固醇等的拉曼谱,基谱的归一化拟合系数间接反映出这些成分的相对含量。用该模型拟合正常和肿瘤乳腺组织的拉曼宏观谱,病变前后细胞质和DNA的拟合系数增大、脂肪拟合系数减小,这反映出它们相对含量的增减,与已知的病理学结果一致。该研究有助于理解乳腺肿瘤组织的生化变化,并可能为分析该变化提供了有效手段。     

Breast cancer detection by Fourier transform infrared spectrometry

Fourier transform infrared spectra of 75 biopsies from 55 cases of breast carcinoma were studied in comparison with histo-morphometry. The spectra of carcinomatous tissues are very different from those of normal tissues. There are evident correlations between the intensity of some infrared absorption bands and the volume density of malignant cells measured by optical microscopy [7]. Very high correlation coefficients are observed for phosphate monoester and phosphodiester bands; significant correlation coefficients are also observed for amide I and II bands.     

影响剖宫产妇母乳喂养的因素及对策

对１７９例剖宫产妇进行了调查，分析了影响剖宫产妇母乳喂养因素，制订并实施了一系列促进母乳喂养的整体护理措施，包括心理疏导和支持，增强母乳喂养信心；强化母乳喂养知识宣教；根据剖宫产妇的特点，协助并指导母乳喂养的技巧，术后６ｈ进食，促进乳汁分泌；强化免疫接种，阻断母婴传播等使宫产产妇纯母乳喂养率达到９８％。     

miR-99a对乳腺癌细胞侵袭和迁移的负向调控机制研究

目的探讨miR-99a对乳腺癌细胞侵袭及迁移的影响,并初步分析其影响乳腺癌细胞侵袭及迁移的可能分子机制。方法利用荧光实时定量PCR检测乳腺癌细胞系MDA-MB-231和MCF-7中miR-99a的表达。运用脂质体介导的转染方法分别将miR-99a模拟物（miR-99amimics）、miR-99a抑制物（miR-99ainhibitors）以及相应对照miRNA转染MDA-MB-231和MCF-7细胞,通过Transwell侵袭实验检测细胞的侵袭力;采用Transwell迁移实验及划痕实验检测细胞的迁移能力;利用生物信息学方法预测miR-99a的靶基因,并对靶基因进行验证。结果（1）高转移潜能的MDA-MB-231细胞中miR-99a表达明显低于低转移潜能的MCF-7细胞,划痕实验中转染miR-99amimics的与转染controlmimics的MDA-MB-231细胞比较迁移能力显著减弱（P＜0.05）,而MCF-7细胞转染miR-99ainhibitors后迁移能力明显增强（P＜0.01）。（2）Transwell的侵袭及迁移实验显示,转染miR-99amimics后MDA-MB-231细胞的侵袭和迁移能力明显减弱（P＜0.01）;MCF-7细胞转染miR-99ainhibitors后迁移能力增强（P＜0.01）,而侵袭能力基本不变（P＞0.05）。（3）生物信息学方法预测微管相关蛋白（MTMR3）是miR-99a的靶点,实时定量PCR和3′UTR荧光素酶报告基因实验验证了该靶点。（4）干扰了MTMR3后MDA-MB-231细胞的迁移和侵袭能力明显减弱。结论（1）miR-99a对乳腺癌细胞的侵袭及迁移发挥负向调控作用。（2）miR-99a可能通过靶向于MTMR3发挥其对乳腺癌细胞迁移和侵袭的调控作用。     

HPLC method for the simultaneous determination of atenolol and chlorthalidone in human breast milk

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method was optimized and validated for the determination of atenolol and chlorthalidone (CT) in human breast milk. The milk samples were extracted and purified using ACN and phosphoric acid for precipitation of proteins followed by removal of ACN and milk fats by extraction with methylene chloride. The samples were applied, after an extraction procedure, to a cyanide column using a mobile phase consisting of ACN/water (35:65 v/v) and buffered at pH 4.0 with flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. Quantitation was achieved with UV detection at 225 nm using guaifenesin as the internal standard. The effectiveness of protein precipitation and clean up procedure were investigated. The method was validated over the range of 0.3-20 microg/mL for atenolol and 0.25-5 microg/mL for CT.     

Molecular biosensing system based on intrinsically disordered proteins

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) that undergo structural transition upon binding their target molecules are becoming increasingly known. IDPs, because of their binding specificity and induced folding properties, can serve as biological recognition elements for sensing applications. In this paper, BRCA1, an IDP, was utilized as the biological recognition element to detect tumor suppressor protein p53 through the BRCA1/p53 binding interaction to serve as a proof-of-concept for the use of IDPs as recognition elements. The binding resulted in a disordered-to-ordered BRCA1 conformational change, as seen in our circular dichroism (CD) measurements. This conformational change in BRCA1 (residues 219-498) was utilized in the detection of p53 (residues 311-393) via both intrinsic and extrinsic fluorescent probes. Intrinsic tryptophan residues within the BRCA1 sequence detected p53 (311-393) with a detection limit of 0.559 nM (0.112 pmol). Two environmentally sensitive fluorophores, tetramethylrhodamine-5-maleimide (TMR) and 6-((5-dimethylaminonaphthalene-1-sulfonyl)amino)hexanoic acid, succinimidyl ester (dansyl-X, SE) were conjugated to BRCA1 (219-498). Dansyl-X, SE-conjugated BRCA1 (219-498) detected p53 (311-393) with a detection limit of 1.50 nM (0.300 pmol). The sensitivities for TMR and dansyl-X, SE-conjugated BRCA1 for the detection of p53 were nearly threefold and twofold higher, respectively, than the sensitivity reported using intrinsic BRCA1 tryptophan fluorescence. CD measurements did not reveal a disruption of p53/dye-conjugated BRCA1 binding, thus validating the applicability of environmentally sensitive fluorophores as transduction moieties to detect molecules which bind to IDPs and induce a structural change.     

Discovery of novel indene-based hybrids as breast cancer inhibitors targeting Hsp90: Synthesis,bio-evaluation and molecular docking study

Inhibition of Heat-shock protein 90 (Hsp90) is considered an attractive route in fighting against cancer proliferation. Herein, new indene derivatives targeting Hsp90 were synthesized, and biologically evaluated. The new series of indeno-pyrimidine and indeno-pyridine were synthesized from the reaction of indene-enaminone with various heterocyclic amines and active methylene derivatives. Two breast cancer cell lines were used to examine the new compounds in vitro for their anticancer activity, namely, MCF-7 and MDA-MB231 cancer cells. The new indene derivatives 8a-c, 17a, and 25 displayed significant antitumor effect especially on MCF-7 cell line compared to doxorubicin. Derivative 8a was further subjected to Hsp90 enzyme assay aiming to ensure the inhibitory potential of such compound on Hsp90, it displayed IC₅₀ = 18.79 ± 0.68 nM relative to Alvespimycin as a reference drug. Finally, molecular modeling of the most active compounds in the Hsp90 binding site was done presenting agreement with the in vitro anti-Hsp90 activity.     

Bioinformatical evaluation of modified nucleosides as biomedical markers in diagnosis of breast cancer

It is known that patients suffering from cancer diseases excrete increased amounts of modified nucleosides with their urine. Especially methylated nucleosides have been proposed to be potential tumor markers for early diagnosis of cancer. For determination of nucleosides in randomly collected urine samples, the nucleosides were extracted using affinity chromatography and then analyzed via reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with UV-detection. Eleven nucleosides were quantified in urine samples from 51 breast cancer patients and 65 healthy women.The measured concentrations were used to train a Support Vector Machine (SVM) and a k-nearest-neighbor classifier (k-NN) to discriminate between healthy control subjects and patients suffering from breast cancer. Evaluations of the learned models by computing the leave-one-out error and the prediction error on an independent test set of 29 subjects (15 healthy, 14 breast cancer patients) showed that by using the eleven nucleosides, the occurrence of breast cancer could be forecasted with 86% specificity and 94% sensitivity when using an SVM and 86% for both specificity and sensitivity with the k-NN model.