Purpose Polymeric micelles are attractive nanocarriers for tumor-targeted delivery of paclitaxel (PTX). High antitumor efficacy and low toxicity require that PTX mainly accumulated in tumors with little drug exposure to normal tissues. However, many PTX-loaded micelle formulations suffer from low stability, fast drug release, and lack of tumor-targeting capability in the circulation. To overcom...

BACKGROUND Life at altitude depends on adaptation to ambient hypoxia. In the Andes, susceptibility to chronic mountain sickness (CMS), a clinical condition that occurs to native highlanders or to sea level natives with prolonged residence at high altitude, remains poorly understood. We hypothesized that hypoxia-associated gene expression in children of men with CMS might identify markers that p...

BACKGROUND Chronic mountain sickness (CMS) has a higher incidence in the plateau region. The one of its principal characters is excessive erythrocytosis. The PI3K-Akt pathway plays an important role in the process of erythropoiesis, and could downregulate apoptosis by regulating apoptosis-related molecules. In this paper, we explored the change in apoptosis of erythroblasts and the effect of th...

BACKGROUND Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) can recapitulate features of ion channel mutations causing inherited rhythm disease. However, the lack of maturity of these cells is considered a significant limitation of the model. Prolonged culture of hiPSC-CMs promotes maturation of these cells. We studied the electrophysiological effects of the I230T mutation...

Enhancing the maturation of human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hPSC-CMs) will facilitate their applications in disease modeling and drug discovery. Previous studies suggest that cell alignment could enhance hPSC-CM maturation; however, the robustness of this approach has not been well investigated. To this end, we examined if the anisotropic orientation of hPSC-CMs imposed by t...

BACKGROUND Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) derived from blastocysts can propagate indefinitely in culture while maintaining pluripotency, including the ability to differentiate into cardiomyocytes (CMs); therefore, hESCs may provide an unlimited source of human CMs for cell-based therapies. Although CMs can be derived from hESCs ex vivo, it remains uncertain whether a functional syncytium ca...

Colistin methanesulfonate (CMS), the inactive prodrug of colistin, is administered by inhalation for the management of respiratory infections. However, limited pharmacokinetic data are available for CMS and colistin following pulmonary delivery. This study investigates the pharmacokinetics of CMS and colistin following intravenous (i.v.) and intratracheal (i.t.) administration in rats and deter...

The quarantine bacterium Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. sepedonicus (Cms) causes bacterial ring rot (BRR) in potato but is difficult to detect, hampering the diagnosis of this disease. ELISA immunoassays have not been widely used to detect Cms because commercially available anti-Cms antibodies detect mainly EPS-producing bacteria and can fail to detect strains that do not produce EPS. In the ...

The aim of the present study was to examine cerebral vasoconstriction in patients with chronic high altitude disease [cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR)], and to evaluate differences in alterations of brain vascular contractile reactivity of chronic mountain sickness (CMS) patients and healthy controls. Alterations of endothelin (ET) and its receptor, as well as endothelial nitric oxide synthase ...