Down-regulation of Bcl-2 and Akt induced by combination of photoactivated hypericin and genistein in human breast cancer cells

Presented experiment considers combination of genistein and photodynamic therapy with hypericin with a view to achieve higher therapeutic outcome in human breast adenocarcinoma cell lines MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231, both identified in our conditions as photodynamic therapy resistant. Since genistein is known to suppress Bcl-2 expression, we predicted that photodynamic therapy with hypericin might benefit from mutual therapeutic combination. In line with our expectations, combined treatment led to down-regulation of Bcl-2 and up-regulation of Bax in both cell lines as well as to suppression of Akt and Erk1/2 phosphorylation induced by photoactivated hypericin in MCF-7 cells. Although Akt and Erk1/2 phosphorylation was not stimulated by photodynamic therapy with hypericin in MDA-MB-231 cells, it was effectively suppressed in combination. Variations in cell death signaling favoring apoptosis were indeed accompanied by cell cycle arrest in G₂/M-phase, activation of caspase-7, PARP cleavage and increased occurrence of cells with apoptotic morphology of nucleus. All these events corresponded with suppression of proliferation and significantly lowered clonogenic ability of treated cells. In conclusion, our results indicate that pre-treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitor genistein may significantly improve the effectiveness of photodynamic therapy with hypericin in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells.     

Chiral discrimination of β‐3‐homo‐amino acids using the kinetic method

Chiral discrimination of seven enantiomeric pairs of β‐3‐homo‐amino acids was studied by using the kinetic method and trimeric metal‐bound complexes, with natural and unnatural α‐amino acids as chiral reference compounds and divalent metal ions (Cu²⁺ and Ni²⁺) as the center ions. The β‐3‐homo‐amino acids were selected for this study because, first of all, chiral discrimination of β‐amino acids has not been extensively studied by mass spectrometry. Moreover, these β‐3‐homo‐amino acids studied have different aromatic side chains. Thus, the emphasis was to study the effect of the side chain (electron density of the phenyl ring, as well as the difference between phenyl and benzyl side chains) for the chiral discrimination. The results showed that by the proper choice of a metal ion and a chiral reference compound, all seven enantiomeric pairs of β‐3‐homo‐amino acids could be differentiated. Moreover, it was noted that the β‐3‐homo‐amino acids with benzyl side chains provided higher enantioselectivity than the corresponding phenyl ones. However, increasing or decreasing the electron density of the aromatic ring by different substituents in both the phenyl and benzyl side chains had practically no role for chiral discrimination of β‐3‐homo‐amino acids studied. When copper was used as the central metal, the phenyl side chain containing reference molecules (S)‐2‐amino‐2‐phenylacetic acid (L ‐Phg) and (S)‐2‐amino‐2‐(4‐hydroxyphenyl)‐acetic acid (L ‐4′‐OHPhg) gave rise to an additional copper‐reduced dimeric fragment ion, [Cu^I(ref)(A)]⁺. The inclusion of this ion improved noticeably the enantioselectivity values obtained. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Single-pass high-harmonic generation at 20.8 MHz repetition rate

We report on single-pass high-harmonic generation (HHG) with amplified driving laser pulses at a repetition rate of 20.8?MHz. An Yb:YAG Innoslab amplifier system provides 35?fs pulses with 20?W average power at 1030?nm after external pulse compression. Following tight focusing into a xenon gas jet, we observe the generation of high-harmonic radiation of up to the seventeenth order. Our results show that state-of-the-art amplifier systems have become a promising alternative to cavity-assisted HHG for applications that require high repetition rates, such as frequency comb spectroscopy in the extreme UV.     

Triangular summability of two-dimensional Fourier transforms

We consider the triangular summability of two-dimensional Fourier transforms, and show that the maximal operator of the triangular-??-means of a tempered distribution is bounded from H _p (?²) to L _p (?²) for all 2/(2 + ??) < p ?? ??; consequently, it is of weak type (1,1), where 0 < ?? ?? 1 is depending only on ??. As a consequence, we obtain that the triangular-??-means of a function f ?? L ₁(?²) converge to f a.e. Norm convergence is also considered, and similar results are shown for the conjugate functions. Some special cases of the triangular-??-summation are considered, such as the Weierstrass, Picar, Bessel, Fejér, de la Vallée-Poussin, Rogosinski, and Riesz summations.     

Complex Hadamard matrices and equiangular tight frames

In this paper, we give a new construction of parametric families of complex Hadamard matrices of square orders, and connect them to equiangular tight frames. The results presented here generalize some of the recent ideas of Bodmann et al. [3] and extend the list of known equiangular tight frames. In particular, a (36, 21)-frame coming from a nontrivial cube root signature matrix is obtained for the first time.     

Statistical convergence of sequences and series of complex numbers with applications in Fourier Analysis and Summability

This is a survey paper on recent results indicated in the title. In contrast to the famous examples of Kolmogorov and Fejér on the pointwise divergence of Fourier series, the statistical convergence of the Fourier series of any integrable function takes place at almost every point; and the statistical convergencr of the Fourier series of any continuous function is uniform. Furthermore, Tauberian conditions are also presented, under which ordinary convergence of any sequence of real or complex numbers follows from its statistical summability.     

On differentiability of solutions with respect to parameters in neutral differential equations with state-dependent delays

In this paper, we consider a class of nonlinear neutral differential equations with state-dependent delays in both the neutral and the retarded terms. We study well-posedness and continuous dependence issues and differentiability of the parameter map with respect to the initial function and other possibly infinite dimensional parameters in a pointwise sense and also in the C-norm.