Curcumin targets vascular endothelial growth factor via activating the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway and improves brain hypoxic-ischemic injury in neonatal rats

Jia Li,Yan An,Jia-Ning Wang,Xiao-Ping Yin,Huan Zhou,Yong-Sheng Wang 대한생리학회-대한약리학회 2020 The Korean Journal of Physiology & Pharmacology Vol.24 No.5

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of curcumin on brain hypoxicischemic (HI) damage in neonatal rats and whether the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt/vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) signaling pathway is involved. Brain HI damage models were established in neonatal rats, which received the following treatments: curcumin by intraperitoneal injection before injury, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) by subcutaneous injection after injury, and VEGF by intracerebroventricular injection after injury. This was followed by neurological evaluation, hemodynamic measurements, histopathological assessment, TUNEL assay, flow cytometry, and western blotting to assess the expression of p-PI3K, PI3K, p-Akt, Akt, and VEGF. Compared with rats that underwent sham operation, rats with brain HI damage showed remarkably increased neurological deficits, reduced right blood flow volume, elevated blood viscosity and haematocrit, and aggravated cell damage and apoptosis; these injuries were significantly improved by curcumin pretreatment. Meanwhile, brain HI damage induced the overexpression of p-PI3K, p-Akt, and VEGF, while curcumin pretreatment inhibited the expression of these proteins. In addition, IGF-1 treatment rescued the curcumin-induced down-regulated expression of p- PI3K, p-Akt, and VEGF, and VEGF overexpression counteracted the inhibitory effect of curcumin on brain HI damage. Overall, pretreatment with curcumin protected against brain HI damage by targeting VEGF via the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in neonatal rats.

New hydroperoxylated and 20,24-epoxylated dammarane triterpenes from the rot roots of Panax notoginseng

Jia-Huan Shang,Wen-Jie Sun,Hong-Tao Zhu,Dong Wang,Chong-Ren Yang,Ying-Jun Zhang 고려인삼학회 2020 Journal of Ginseng Research Vol.44 No.3

Background: Root rot is a serious destructive disease of Panax notoginseng, a famous cultivated araliaceousherb called Sanqi or Tianqi in Southwest China. Methods: The chemical substances of Sanqi rot roots were explored by chromatographic techniques. MS,1D/2D-NMR, and single crystal X-ray diffraction were applied to determine the structures. Murinemacrophage RAW264.7 and five human cancer cell lines were used separately for evaluating the antiinflammatoryand cytotoxic activities. Results and Conclusion: Thirty dammarane-type triterpenes and saponins were isolated from the rot rootsof P. notoginseng. Among them, seven triterpenes, namely, 20(S)-dammar-25-ene-24(S)-hydroperoxyl-3b,6a,12b,20-tetrol (1), 20(S)-dammar-3-oxo-23-ene-25-hydroperoxyl-6a,12b,20-triol (2), 20(S)-dammar-12-oxo-23-ene-25-hydroperoxyl-3b,6a,20-triol (3), 20(S)-dammar-3-oxo-23-ene-25-hydroperoxyl-12b,20-diol (4), 20(S),24(R)-epoxy-3,4-seco-dammar-25-hydroxy-12-one-3-oic acid (5), 20(S),24(R)-epoxy-3,4-seco-dammar-25-hydroxy-12-one-3-oic acid methyl ester (6), and 6a-hydroxy-22,23,24,25,26,27-hexanordammar-3,12,20-trione (7), are new compounds. In addition, 12 known ones (12e16 and 19e25)were reported in Sanqi for the first time. The new Compound 1 showed comparable antiinflammatoryactivity on inhibition of NO production to the positive control, whereas the known compounds 9, 12, 13,and 16 displayed moderate cytotoxicities against five human cancer cell lines. The results will providescientific basis for understanding the chemical constituents of Sanqi rot roots and new candidates forsearching antiinflammatory and antitumor agents.

On the Vibration of Imperfect Circular Disks

Huan Suo Jia,Chong Won Lee 대한기계학회 1998 KSME International Journal Vol.12 No.2

New hydroperoxylated and 20,24-epoxylated dammarane triterpenes from the rot roots of Panax notoginseng

Shang, Jia-Huan,Sun, Wen-Jie,Zhu, Hong-Tao,Wang, Dong,Yang, Chong-Ren,Zhang, Ying-Jun The Korean Society of Ginseng 2020 Journal of Ginseng Research Vol.44 No.3

Background: Root rot is a serious destructive disease of Panax notoginseng, a famous cultivated araliaceous herb called Sanqi or Tianqi in Southwest China. Methods: The chemical substances of Sanqi rot roots were explored by chromatographic techniques. MS, 1D/2D-NMR, and single crystal X-ray diffraction were applied to determine the structures. Murine macrophage RAW264.7 and five human cancer cell lines were used separately for evaluating the antiinflammatory and cytotoxic activities. Results and Conclusion: Thirty dammarane-type triterpenes and saponins were isolated from the rot roots of P. notoginseng. Among them, seven triterpenes, namely, 20(S)-dammar-25-ene-24(S)-hydroperoxyl-3β,6α,12β,20-tetrol (1), 20(S)-dammar-3-oxo-23-ene-25-hydroperoxyl-6α,12β,20-triol (2), 20(S)-dammar-12-oxo-23-ene-25-hydroperoxyl-3β,6α,20-triol (3), 20(S)-dammar-3-oxo-23-ene-25-hydroperoxyl-12β,20-diol (4), 20(S),24(R)-epoxy-3,4-seco-dammar-25-hydroxy-12-one-3-oic acid (5), 20(S),24(R)-epoxy-3,4-seco-dammar-25-hydroxy-12-one-3-oic acid methyl ester (6), and 6α-hydroxy-22,23,24,25,26,27-hexanordammar-3,12,20-trione (7), are new compounds. In addition, 12 known ones (12-16 and 19-25) were reported in Sanqi for the first time. The new Compound 1 showed comparable antiinflammatory activity on inhibition of NO production to the positive control, whereas the known compounds 9, 12, 13, and 16 displayed moderate cytotoxicities against five human cancer cell lines. The results will provide scientific basis for understanding the chemical constituents of Sanqi rot roots and new candidates for searching antiinflammatory and antitumor agents.

Predictive maintenance of abnormal wind turbine events by using machine learning based on condition monitoring for anomaly detection

Huan Chen,Jyh-Yih Hsu,Jia-You Hsieh,Hsin-Yao Hsu,Chia-Hao Chang,Yu-Ju Lin 대한기계학회 2021 JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Vol.35 No.12

The predictive maintenance of wind turbines has become a critical issue with the rapid development of wind power generation. The early detection of abnormal operation conditions can prevent failure status, which takes a long time to recover. Energy waste can also be reduced while maintenance efficiency can be improved by using a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system to monitor the operation status of wind turbines. Massive data are generated from different sensors during wind turbine operation, and SCADA can be used to gather reports about hundreds of possible abnormal conditions. The popular maintenance methods have been mostly designed on the basis of statistical analysis and data mining. However, such schemes need not only big data but also sophisticated processing techniques. This study addresses the aforementioned challenges by proposing a deep learning model with comprehensive data preprocessing and hyperparameter tuning on batch size to achieve abnormal early detection. The necessary data preprocessing is initially conducted besides the conventional data cleaning and normalization steps, and time-series data windowing and label settings are also performed. Then, the imbalanced classes in the records are addressed by adopting an augmentation scheme called the synthetic minority oversampling technique. Principal component analysis is also used to enhance the training. Finally, the proposed deep learning method with fine-tuning is compared with three machine learning models for early anomaly event detection. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can identify potential faults 72 hours before they occur, and the precision rate exceeds 90 %.

Sinapic acid(SA) attenuated the letrozole-induced ovarian fibrosis and modulated the abolic disturbances in polycystic ovary syndrome(PCOS) SD rat

Huan Lan,Zhewen Dong,Yaqi Wu,Chaojie Chong,Zhiqiang Liu,Wanying Li,Zixian Wang,Junyang Liu,Qi Qi Pang,Jia-Le Song,Yanyuan Zhou 한국식품영양과학회 2021 한국식품영양과학회 학술대회발표집 Vol.2021 No.10

This study investigated the antifibrotic effects of SA on ovarian fibrosis in letrozole-induced PCOS in rats. SA treatment restored letrozole-induced alterations in the body weight (BW), relative weights of the ovaries, and visceral adipose tissues. Histological observation showed that SA reduced the number of atretic follicles, cystic follicles, and fibrosis of the ovaries in PCOS rats. SA treatment also modulated the serum levels of sex hormones, which decreased the luteinizing hormone (LH), and testosterone (T) and increased the follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) in PCOS rats. Administration of SA reduced letrozole-induced metabolic dysfunction by decreasing the serum levels of triglyceride (TG) and total cholesterol (TC) and increasing the levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) in PCOS rats. Finally, SA treatment appeared to increase the activity of PPAR-γ, reduce the activation of the TGF-β1/Smad pathway, and reduce the collagen I, α-SMA and CTGF levels in the ovaries of the PCOS rats. Our results demonstrated that SA significantly ameliorated ovarian fibrosis and abolic disturbances in the letrozole-induced PCOS rats.

Specific Mutations in APC, with Prognostic Implications in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

Huan Peng,Jun Ying,Jia Zang,Hao Lu,Xiaokai Zhao,Pengmin Yang,Xintao Wang,Jieyi Li,Ziying Gong,Daoyun Zhang,Zhiguo Wang 대한암학회 2023 Cancer Research and Treatment Vol.55 No.4

Purpose Loss-of-function mutations in the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene are common in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). However, the characteristic of APC specific mutations in mCRC is poorly understood. Here, we explored the clinical and molecular characteristics of N-terminal and C-terminal side APC mutations in Chinese patients with mCRC. Materials and Methods Hybrid capture-based next-generation sequencing was performed on tumor tissues from 275 mCRC pati-ents to detect mutations in 639 tumor-associated genes. The prognostic value and gene-pathway difference between APC specific mutations in mCRC patients were analyzed. Results APC mutations were highly clustered, accounting for 73% of all mCRC patients, and most of them were truncating mutations. The tumor mutation burden of the N-terminal side APC mutations group (n=76) was significantly lower than that of the C-terminal side group (n=123) (p < 0.001), further confirmed by the public database. Survival analysis showed that mCRC patients with N-terminus side APC mutations had longer overall survival than C-terminus side. Tumor gene pathway analysis showed that gene mutations in the RTK/RAS, Wnt and transforming growth factor β signaling pathways of the C-terminal group were significantly higher than those of the N-terminal group (p < 0.05). Additionally, KRAS, AMER1, TGFBR2, and ARID1A driver mutations were more common in patients with C-terminal side APC mutations. Conclusion APC specific mutations have potential function as mCRC prognostic biomarkers. There are obvious differences in the gene mutation patterns between the C-terminus and N-terminus APC mutations group, which may have certain guiding significance for the subsequent precise treatment of mCRC.

Rhamnocitrin (Rha) attenuates ovarian fibrosis in rats with letrozole-induced experimental polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)

Huan Lan,Zhewen Dong,Yaqi Wu,Chaojie Chong,Zhiqiang Liu,Wanying Li,Zixian Wang,Junyang Liu,Qi Qi Pang,Jia-Le Song,Yanyuan Zhou 한국식품영양과학회 2021 한국식품영양과학회 학술대회발표집 Vol.2021 No.10

In this study, we investigated the antifibrotic effects of Rha on letrozole-induced PCOS in rats. Rha treatment restored letrozole-induced alterations in the body weight (BW), relative weights of the ovaries, and relative weights of uterine and visceral adipose tissues. Histological observation showed that Rha reduced the number of atretic follicles, cystic follicles, and fibrosis of the ovaries in the PCOS rats. Administration of Rha reduced letrozole-induced metabolic dysfunction by decreasing the serum levels of TG and TC and increasing the levels of HDL-C in the PCOS rats. Rha treatment also modulated the serum levels of sex hormones, which decreased the LH, E2 and T and increased the FSH in PCOS rats. Finally, Rha treatment appeared to increase the activity of PPAR-γ, reduce the activation of the TGF-β1/Smad pathway, and reduce the collagen I, α-SMA and CTGF levels in the ovaries of the PCOS rats. Our results demonstrated that Rha significantly ameliorated metabolic disturbances and ovarian fibrosis in the letrozole-induced PCOS rats. Rha may be an effective compound in preventing ovarian fibrosis in the future.

Unactuated Force Control of 5-DOF Parallel Robot Based on Fuzzy PI

Shu-Huan Wen,Wei Zheng,Shi-Dong Jia,Zhi-Xin Ji,Peng-Cheng Hao,Hak-Keung Lam 제어·로봇·시스템학회 2020 International Journal of Control, Automation, and Vol.18 No.6

This paper investigates the fuzzy position/force hybrid control for a class of 5-degree-of-freedom (DOF) redundantly actuated parallel robots. The position control law is designed based on the proportional-integraldifferential (PID) for the 5-DOF redundantly actuated parallel robot. The fuzzy proportional-integral (PI) redundant actuation force control law is designed based on the position/force hybrid control structure for the 5-DOF redundantly actuated parallel robot. The optimum driving force is obtained in the presence of interference, and the force tracking performance of the fuzzy PI controller is better than the conventional PI controller under the interference condition. Based on the fuzzy position/force hybrid controller, the tracking performance of the closed-loop system for the 5-DOF redundantly actuated parallel robot is improved by using the fuzzy position/force hybrid controller and the interference is eliminated effectively in the control system design. Finally, the co-simulation results of ADAMS and MATLAB/SIMULINK are given to show the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed methodscompared with the conventional PI controller.

Negative effects on medical students’ scores for clinical performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan: a comparative study

Eunice Jia-Shiow Yuan,Shiau-Shian Huang,Chia-An Hsu,Jiing-Feng Lirng,Tzu-Hao Li,Chia-Chang Huang,Ying-Ying Yang,Chung-Pin Li,Chen-Huan Chen 한국보건의료인국가시험원 2023 보건의료교육평가 Vol.20 No.-

Purpose Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has heavily impacted medical clinical education in Taiwan. Medical curricula have been altered to minimize exposure and limit transmission. This study investigated the effect of COVID-19 on Taiwanese medical students’ clinical performance using online standardized evaluation systems and explored the factors influencing medical education during the pandemic. Methods Medical students were scored from 0 to 100 based on their clinical performance from 1/1/2018 to 6/31/2021. The students were placed into pre-COVID-19 (before 2/1/2020) and midst-COVID-19 (on and after 2/1/2020) groups. Each group was further categorized into COVID-19-affected specialties (pulmonary, infectious, and emergency medicine) and other specialties. Generalized estimating equations (GEEs) were used to compare and examine the effects of relevant variables on student performance. Results In total, 16,944 clinical scores were obtained for COVID-19-affected specialties and other specialties. For the COVID-19-affected specialties, the midst-COVID-19 score (88.51–3.52) was significantly lower than the pre-COVID-19 score (90.14–3.55) (P<0.0001). For the other specialties, the midst-COVID-19 score (88.32–3.68) was also significantly lower than the pre-COVID-19 score (90.06–3.58) (P<0.0001). There were 1,322 students (837 males and 485 females). Male students had significantly lower scores than female students (89.33–3.68 vs. 89.99–3.66, P=0.0017). GEE analysis revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic (unstandardized beta coefficient=-1.99, standard error [SE]=0.13, P<0.0001), COVID-19-affected specialties (B=0.26, SE=0.11, P=0.0184), female students (B=1.10, SE=0.20, P<0.0001), and female attending physicians (B=-0.19, SE=0.08, P=0.0145) were independently associated with students’ scores. Conclusion COVID-19 negatively impacted medical students' clinical performance, regardless of their specialty. Female students outperformed male students, irrespective of the pandemic.