BACKGROUND The aim of this study is to determine the differences in optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) features of acute Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease (VKH) and acute central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC). Clinical and imaging data of patients with acute CSC and VKH in a tertiary-care institute were analyzed. Multimodal imaging including fluorescein angiography, indocyanine green a...

The construction industry in general is characterized with high fragmentation, low productivity, cost and time overruns, and conflicts compared with other manufacturing industries. Supply chain management as an innovative management mode provides a new solution for resolving these problems from systems perspective. Coordination is the core issue to improve construction performance in constructi...

Flue-curing is a post harvest conditioning process which strongly affects the tobacco leaf chemistry, and consequently the chemical properties of tobacco smoke. Several studies identified the major changes in tobacco chemistry occurring during flue-curing. It is not known how flue-curing contributes to changes in bioactivity of cigarette smoke condensate (CSC). In this study, tobacco leaves col...

Cancer stem cells (CSC) are thought to play a major role in the development and metastatic progression of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), one of the deadliest solid tumors. Likewise, the tumor microenvironment contributes critical support in this setting, including from tumor stromal cells and tumor-associated macrophages (TAM) that contribute structural and paracrine-mediated supports...

The authors studied 31 consecutive patients newly diagnosed with central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) as compared with 31 age- and gender-matched control subjects, assessing emotional distress (ED), nine psychopathological symptoms, critical life events, and alexithymia. Results showed no difference in the number of critical life events; however CSC patients showed elevated ED and elevated sc...

The cancer stem cell (CSC), or alternatively referred to as the tumor initiating cell (TIC) model, proposes that human cancers are organized in a hierarchical structure with the CSC at the apex. Cancer stem cells are functionally defined by their ability to self-renew, and to recapitulate the hierarchy of the original tumor from which they were derived. Emerging data from the literature suggest...

Sustained autophagy contributes to the metabolic adaptation of cancer cells to hypoxic and acidic microenvironments. Since cells in such environments are resistant to conventional cytotoxic drugs, inhibition of autophagy represents a promising therapeutic strategy in clinical oncology. We previously reported that the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an autophagy inhibitor under clinical in...

Epigenetic gene regulation plays essential roles in differentiation of embryonic and tissue stem cells. In these benign undifferentiated cells, some polycomb targeted genes are kept in a state of DNA hypomethylation and they have a distinct chromatin signature termed bivalent chromatin structure to maintain their plasticity. We hypothesized that cancer stem cells (CSC), the malignant counterpar...

The mainstay of treatment for ovarian cancer is platinum-based cytotoxic chemotherapy. However, therapeutic resistance and recurrence is a common eventuality for nearly all ovarian cancer patients, resulting in poor median survival. Recurrence is postulated to be driven by a population of self-renewing, therapeutically resistant cancer stem cells (CSCs). A current limitation in CSC studies is t...