In this paper, we design a Branch and Bound algorithm based on interval arithmetic to address nonconvex robust optimization problems. This algorithm provides the exact global solution of such difficult problems arising in many real life applications. A code was developed in MatLab and was used to solve some robust nonconvex problems with few variables. This first numerical study shows the interest of this approach providing the global solution of such difficult robust nonconvex optimization problems.
Despite the development of targeted therapies in cancer, the problem of multidrug resistance (MDR) is still unsolved. Most patients with metastatic cancer die from MDR. Transmembrane efflux pumps as the main cause of MDR have been addressed by developed inhibitors, but early inhibitors of the most prominent and longest known efflux pump P-glycoprotein (P-gp) were disappointing. Those inhibitors have been used without knowledge about the expression of P-gp by the treated tumor. Therefore the use of inhibitors of transmembrane efflux pumps in clinical settings is reconsidered as a promising strategy in the case of the respective efflux pump expression. We discovered novel symmetric inhibitors of the symmetric efflux pump MRP4 encoded by the ABCC4 gene. MRP4 is involved in many kinds of cancer with resistance to anticancer drugs. All compounds showed better activities than the best known MRP4 inhibitor MK571 in an MRP4-overexpressing cell line assay, and the activities could be related to the various substitution patterns of aromatic residues within the symmetric molecular framework. One of the best compounds was demonstrated to overcome the MRP4-mediated resistance in the cell line model to restore the anticancer drug sensitivity as a proof of concept. 相似文献
The diffusive behavior of nanoparticles inside porous materials is attracting a lot of interest in the context of understanding, modeling, and optimization of many technical processes. A very powerful technique for characterizing the diffusive behavior of particles in free media is dynamic light scattering (DLS). The applicability of the method in porous media is considered, however, to be rather difficult due to the presence of multiple sources of scattering. In contrast to most of the previous approaches, the DLS method was applied without ensuring matching refractive indices of solvent and porous matrix in the present study. To test the capabilities of the method, the diffusion of spherical gold nanoparticles within the interconnected, periodic nanopores of inverse opals was analyzed. Despite the complexity of this system, which involves many interfaces and different refractive indices, a clear signal related to the motion of particles inside the porous media was obtained. As expected, the diffusive process inside the porous sample slowed down compared to the particle diffusion in free media. The obtained effective diffusion coefficients were found to be wave vector-dependent. They increased linearly with increasing spatial extension of the probed particle concentration fluctuations. On average, the slowing-down factor measured in this work agrees within combined uncertainties with literature data.