NF-κB signaling is key in the wound healing processes of silk fibroin

Park, Ye Ri,Sultan, Md. Tipu,Park, Hyun Jung,Lee, Jung Min,Ju, Hyung Woo,Lee, Ok Joo,Lee, Dong Jin,Kaplan, David L.,Park, Chan Hum Elsevier Science B.V. Amsterdam 2018 ACTA BIOMATERIALIA Vol. No.

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>Silk fibroin (SF) is a well-studied biomaterial for tissue engineering applications including wound healing. However, the signaling mechanisms underlying the impact of SF on this phenomenon have not been determined. In this study, through microarray analysis, regulatory genes of NF-ĸB signaling were activated in SF-treated NIH3T3 cells along with other genes. Immunoblot analysis confirmed the activation of the NF-ĸB signaling pathway as SF induced protein expression levels of IKKα, IKKβ, p65, and the degradation of IκBα. The treatment of NIH3T3 cells with SF also increased the expression of cyclin D1, vimentin, fibronectin, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). The expression of these factors by SF treatment was abrogated when NF-ĸB was inhibited by a pharmacological inhibitor Bay 11-7082. Knockdown of NF-ĸB using siRNA of IKKα and IKKβ also inhibited the SF-induced wound healing response of the NIH3T3 cells in a wound scratch assay. Collectively, these results indicated that SF-induced wound healing through the canonical NF-κB signaling pathway via regulation of the expression of cyclin D1, vimentin, fibronectin, and VEGF by NIH3T3 cells. Using an <I>in vivo</I> study with a partial-thickness excision wound in rats we demonstrated that SF-induced wound healing via NF-κB regulated proteins including cyclin D1, fibronectin, and VEGF. The <I>in vitro</I> and <I>in vivo</I> data suggested that SF induced wound healing via modulation of NF-ĸB signaling regulated proteins.</P> <P><B>Statement of Significance</B></P> <P>Silk fibroin has been effectively used as a dressing for wound treatment for more than a century. However, mechanistic insight into the basis for wound healing via silk fibroin has not been elucidated. Here we report a key mechanism involved in silk fibroin induced wound healing both <I>in vitro</I> and <I>in vivo.</I> Using genetic- and protein-level analyses, NF-κB signaling was found to regulate silk fibroin-induced wound healing by modulating target proteins. Thus, the NF-κB signaling pathway may be utilized as a therapeutic target during the formulation of silk fibroin-based biomaterials for wound healing and tissue engineering.</P> <P><B>Graphical abstract</B></P> <P>[DISPLAY OMISSION]</P>

Evaluation of e-commerce websites using fuzzy hierarchical TOPSIS based on E-S-QUAL

Kang, D.,Jang, W.,Park, Y. Elsevier Science, B.V 2016 Applied soft computing Vol.42 No.-

<P>In the wake of the rapid emergence of e-commerce, its evaluation is of great theoretical and practical importance. Among the various types of e-commerce, business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce has become a key, and especially influential, retailing channel. Its ascendancy raises core issues with respect to how the customer is to be satisfied by, and therefore inclined to trust, e-commerce websites. B2C e-commerce website evaluation, therefore, is an important related issue. First, while a number of studies have studied B2C e-commerce website evaluation using various multiple-criteria-decision-making (MCDM) methods, they have focused only on the perceived service quality of B2C e-commerce websites. In fact, it is generally recognized that service quality is determined by the difference between the expected service level (which expectation is derived from information obtained before the service experience) and the actual, perceived service level; this concept, then, should be also be afforded due consideration in B2C e-commerce website evaluation. Second, among the various MCDM approaches, TOPSIS, which involves the consideration of both the positive-ideal solution (PIS) and the negative-ideal solution (NIS), is especially pertinent to the complex decision-making entailed in the evaluation of B2C e-commerce websites. Third, the human element of subjectivity in the evaluation of B2C e-commerce websites needs to be considered in order to enable modeling of real-life website-evaluation situations. Finally, the hierarchical structure of the evaluation criteria between the main dimensions and their sub-criteria should be considered. To reflect these issues, in this paper, we present a fuzzy hierarchical TOPSIS based on E-SERVQUAL (E-S-QUAL). This approach effectively considers the raised issues and preserves the core concept of E-S-QUAL (the extended version of SERVQUAL) for measurement of electronic service quality in the e-commerce environment. The empirical case study of B2C e-commerce provides the researchers and practitioners to understand in a better way the evaluation process from a practical point of view. In addition, core finding of this study is that the comparison results with other MCDM methods further verify the robustness of the proposed approach. It implies that this method potentially can be applied to performance evaluation of similar service sectors. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.</P>

Increase of glucocorticoids is not required for the acquisition, but hinders the extinction, of lithium-induced conditioned taste aversion

Kim, K. N.,Kim, B. T.,Kim, Y. S.,Lee, J. H.,Jahng, J. W. Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam. 2014 european journal of pharmacology Vol.730 No.-

Lithium chloride at doses sufficient to induce conditioned taste aversion (CTA) causes c-Fos expression in the paraventricular nucleus and increases the plasma level of corticosterone with activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. This study was conducted to define the role of glucocorticoid in the acquisition and extinction of lithium-induced CTA. In experiment 1, Sprague-Dawley rats received dexamethasone (2 mg/kg) or RU486 (20 mg/kg) immediately after 5% sucrose access, and then an intraperitoneal injection of isotonic lithium chloride (12 ml/kg) was followed with 30 min interval. Rats had either 1 or 7 days of recovery period before the daily sucrose drinking tests. In experiment 2, rats were conditioned with the sucrose-lithium pairing, and then received dexamethasone or vehicle at 30 min before each drinking test. In experiment 3, adrenalectomized (ADX or ADX+B) rats were subjected to sucrose drinking tests after the sucrose-lithium pairing. Dexamethasone, but not RU486, pretreatment blunted the formation of lithium-induced CTA memory. Dexamethasone prior to each drinking test suppressed sucrose consumption and prolonged the extinction of lithium-induced CTA. Sucrose consumption was significantly suppressed not only in ADX+B rats but also in ADX rats during the first drinking session; however, a significant decrease was found only in ADX rats on the fourth drinking session. These results reveal that glucocorticoid is not a necessary component in the acquisition, but an important player in the extinction, of lithium induced CTA, and suggest that a pulse increase of glucocorticoid may hinder the extinction memory formation of lithium induced CTA. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.

Image-based handwritten signature verification using hybrid methods of discrete Radon transform, principal component analysis and probabilistic neural network

Ooi, S.Y.,Teoh, A.B.J.,Pang, Y.H.,Hiew, B.Y. Elsevier Science, B.V 2016 Applied soft computing Vol.40 No.-

<P>Image-based handwritten signature verification is important in most of the financial transactions when a hard copy of signature is needed. Considering the lack of dynamic information from static signature images, we proposed a working framework through hybrid methods of discrete Radon transform (DRT), principal component analysis (PCA) and probabilistic neural network (PNN). The proposed framework aims to distinguish forgeries from genuine signatures based on the image level. Extensive experiments are conducted on our own independent signature database, and a public signature database- MYCT. Equal error rates (EER) of 1.51%, 3.23% and 13.07% are reported, respectively, for random, casual and skilled forgeries of our own database. When working on the MYCT signature database, our proposed approach manages to achieve an EER of 9.87% with 10 training samples. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.</P>

Simultaneous determination of nine bioactive compounds in Yijin-tang via high-performance liquid chromatography and liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry

Yang, Hye Jin,Yim, Nam-Hui,Lee, Kwang Jin,Gu, Min Jung,Lee, Bohyoung,Hwang, Youn-Hwan,Ma, Jin Yeul Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam 2016 Integrative medicine research Vol.7 No.4

<P><B>Background</B></P><P>Yijin-tang (YJ) has been used traditionally for the treatment of cardiovascular conditions, nausea, vomiting, gastroduodenal ulcers, and chronic gastritis. In this study, a simple and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed for the quantitation of nine bioactive compounds in YJ: homogentisic acid, liquiritin, naringin, hesperidin, neohesperidin, liquiritigenin, glycyrrhizin, 6-gingerol, and pachymic acid.</P><P><B>Methods</B></P><P>Chromatographic separation of the analytes was achieved on an RS Tech C<SUB>18</SUB> column (4.6 mm × 250 mm, 5 μm) using a mobile phase composed of water containing 0.1% (v/v) trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and acetonitrile with a gradient elution at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min.</P><P><B>Results</B></P><P>Calibration curves for all analytes showed good linearity (R<SUP>2</SUP> ≥ 0.9995). Lower limits of detection and lower limits of quantification were in the ranges of 0.03–0.17 μg/mL and 0.09–0.43 μg/mL, respectively. Relative standard deviations (RSDs; %) for intra- and interday assays were < 3%. The recovery of components ranged from 98.09% to 103.78%, with RSDs (%) values ranging from 0.10% to 2.59%.</P><P><B>Conclusion</B></P><P>This validated HPLC method was applied to qualitative and quantitative analyses of nine bioactive compounds in YJ and fermented YJ, and may be a useful tool for the quality control of YJ.</P>

Boronic acid-tethered amphiphilic hyaluronic acid derivative-based nanoassemblies for tumor targeting and penetration

Jeong, Jae Young,Hong, Eun-Hye,Lee, Song Yi,Lee, Jae-Young,Song, Jae-Hyoung,Ko, Seung-Hak,Shim, Jae-Seong,Choe, Sunghwa,Kim, Dae-Duk,Ko, Hyun-Jeong,Cho, Hyun-Jong Elsevier Science B.V. Amsterdam 2017 ACTA BIOMATERIALIA Vol. No.

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>(3-Aminomethylphenyl)boronic acid (AMPB)-installed hyaluronic acid–ceramide (HACE)-based nanoparticles (NPs), including manassantin B (MB), were fabricated for tumor-targeted delivery. The amine group of AMPB was conjugated to the carboxylic acid group of hyaluronic acid (HA) <I>via</I> amide bond formation, and synthesis was confirmed by spectroscopic methods. HACE-AMPB/MB NPs with a 239-nm mean diameter, narrow size distribution, negative zeta potential, and >90% drug encapsulation efficiency were fabricated. Exposed AMPB in the outer surface of HACE-AMPB NPs (in the aqueous environment) may react with sialic acid of cancer cells. The improved cellular accumulation efficiency, <I>in vitro</I> antitumor efficacy, and tumor penetration efficiency of HACE-AMPB/MB NPs, compared with HACE/MB NPs, in MDA-MB-231 cells (CD44 receptor-positive human breast adenocarcinoma cells) may be based on the CD44 receptor-mediated endocytosis and phenylboronic acid-sialic acid interaction. Enhanced <I>in vivo</I> tumor targetability, infiltration efficiency, and antitumor efficacies of HACE-AMPB NPs, compared with HACE NPs, were observed in a MDA-MB-231 tumor-xenografted mouse model. In addition to passive tumor targeting (based on an enhanced permeability and retention effect) and active tumor targeting (interaction between HA and CD44 receptor), the phenylboronic acid-sialic acid interaction can play important roles in augmented tumor targeting and penetration of HACE-AMPB NPs.</P> <P><B>Statement of Significance</B></P> <P>(3-Aminomethylphenyl)boronic acid (AMPB)-tethered hyaluronic acid-ceramide (HACE)-based nanoparticles (NPs), including manassantin B (MB), were fabricated and their tumor targeting and penetration efficiencies were assessed in MDA-MB-231 (CD44 receptor-positive human adenocarcinoma) tumor models. MB, which exhibited antitumor efficacies <I>via</I> the inhibition of angiogenesis and hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-1, was entrapped in HACE-AMPB NPs in this study. Phenylboronic acid located in the outer surface of HACE-AMPB/MB NPs (in the aqueous <I>milieu</I>) may react with the sialic acid over-expressed in cancer cells and intramolecular B‒O bond can be formed. This phenylboronic acid-sialic acid interaction may provide additional tumor targeting and penetration potentials together with an enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect (passive tumor targeting) and HA-CD44 receptor interaction (active tumor targeting). Developed HACE-AMPB NP may be one of promising nanocarriers for the imaging and therapy of CD44 receptor-expressed cancers.</P> <P><B>Graphical abstract</B></P> <P>[DISPLAY OMISSION]</P>

A new sparse model for traffic sign classification using soft histogram of oriented gradients

Kassani, P.H.,Teoh, A.B.J. Elsevier Science, B.V 2017 Applied soft computing Vol.52 No.-

<P>Traffic sign recognition (TSR) is an integrated part of driver assistance systems and it remains an active research topic in computer vision today. This paper proposes a solution for TSR problem which composed of robust traffic sign image descriptor and sparse classifiers. Specifically, we outline a variant of histogram of oriented gradients (HOG), namely Soft HOG (SHOG) which exploits the symmetry shape of traffic sign images to find the optimal locations of the cell of histogram for SHOG computation. We show that our compact SHOG feature is more discriminative than HOG. Furthermore, two sparse analytical polynomial based classifiers, namely Sparse Bayesian Multivariate polynomial model and Sparse Bayesian Reduced polynomial model are introduced. The proposed sparse classifiers enable implicit feature selection and alleviate the overfitting problem. This leads to higher accuracy performance with prudent set of features. Our solution is evaluated on publicly available German Traffic Sign Recognition Benchmark (GTSRB) dataset and 16 datasets from (UCI) repository. Experiment results demonstrated that the proposed method has satisfactory result when compared to state-of-the-art methods. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.</P>

Self-templated synthesis of hollow silica microspheres using Na2SiO3 precursor

Yoo, B. U.,Han, M. H.,Nersisyan, H. H.,Yoon, J. H.,Lee, K. J.,Lee, J. H. Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam. 2014 Microporous and mesoporous materials Vol.190 No.-

A facile synthesis method has been developed to directly convert solid Na2SiO3 hollow microspheres into non-aggregated hollow SiO2 microspheres at ambient pressure and temperature. An initial dispersion of Na2SiO3 microspheres (mean diameter: 10-50 mu m) in ethanol was prepared, and subsequent hydrolysis of Na2SiO3 was performed using a HCl solution. Other precipitants such as ammonium salts (NH4Cl, (NH4)(2)SO4) and boron oxide (B2O3) were also tested. The characteristics of the synthesized hollow microspheres were investigated in detail by thermogravimetric analysis, field emission scanning electron microscopy, N-2 adsorption-desorption isotherms, and X-ray diffraction. The as-prepared SiO2 microspheres were hollow with diameters between 10 and 50 mu m. The surface area of these microspheres, determined by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis, was in the range 193-288 m(2) g(-1). Using the proposed method, the size and shape of the obtained silica microspheres are largely determined by the size of low-cost and environmentally friendly precursor sodium silicate microspheres. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Production of bioactive hydroxyflavones by using monooxygenase from Saccharothrix espanaensis

Lee, H.,Kim, B. G.,Ahn, J. H. Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam. 2014 Journal of biotechnology Vol.176 No.-

Biocatalysts are a valuable tool for the structural modification of fine chemicals. Flavonoids possess several biological activities, which are correlated to their antioxidant activity. The numbers of hydroxyl groups in flavonoids are critical for their antioxidant activity. Development of biocatalysts for hydroxylation of flavonoids is challenging because of the difficulty in expressing flavonoid hydroxylase in Escherichiacoli. In this study, a monooxygenase from Saccharothrix espanaensis (Sam5) was used for regioselective hydroxylation of flavonoids. We found that Sam5 hydroxylated isoflavones, flavanones, and flavones but did not produce any detectable hydroxylated product with flavonols. In addition, coexpression of P450 reductase with Sam5 in E. coli enhanced hydroxylation by approximately from 34 to 50%, depending on the flavonoid used. The production of two bioactive flavonoids, 8-hydroxyluteolin and T-hydroxydaidzein was optimized using this Sam5 system. Approximately 88 mg/L of 8-hydroxyluteolin and 75 mg/L of T-hydroxydaidzein were obtained. These results indicate that the Sam5 system could be used for the production of bioactive hydroxylated flavonoids. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Influence of polar solvents on photovoltaic performance of Monascus red dye-sensitized solar cell

Lee, J. W.,Kim, T. Y.,Ko, H. S.,Han, S.,Lee, S. H.,Park, K. H. Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam. 2014 Spectrochimica acta. Part A, Molecular and biomole Vol.126 No.-

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were assembled using natural dyes extracted from Monascus red pigment as a sensitizer. In this work, we studied the adsorption characteristics for harvesting sunlight and the electrochemical behavior for electron transfer in Monascus red DSSC using different solvents. The effect of polar aprotic and protic solvents including water, ethanol, and dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) used in the sensitization process was investigated for the improvement in conversion efficiency of a cell. As for the Monascus red dye-sensitized electrode in DMSO solvent, the solar cell yields a short-circuit current density (J(sc)) of 1.23 mA/cm(2), a photovoltage (V-oc) of 0.75 V. and a fill factor of 0.72, corresponding to an energy conversion efficiency (eta) of 0.66%. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.