原发性乳腺癌患者治疗前血清TPS水平与预后之间的关系(英文)

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the correlation of pretreatment serum tissue polypeptide specific antigen (TPS) with prognosis in primary breast cancer. Methods: A total of 361 patients with grades I-III breast cancer had been followed up from January 2001 to February 2011. Serumal TPS level was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to investigate associations between pretreatment TPS level and clinicopathological parameters and patient outcomes. Results: First, at the univariate analysis, the expression of TPS was related with some clinicopathological traditional prognostic factors such as tumor size (P = 0.030), histologic grade (P = 0.001) and lymph node status (P = 0.008). Second, overall survival were significantly shorter among patients with elevated pretreatment serum TPS (P = 0.038). However, finally, multivariate Cox regression indicated that the level of pretreatment serum TPS was not an independent prognostic parameter for overall survival in primarily breast cancer patients (P > 0.05). Conclusion: The expression of pretreatment serum TPS is closely correlated with clinicopathology parameters and overall survival of patients with primarily breast cancer, but its level has no independent prognostic value.

Efficient production of chimeric mice from embryonic stem cells injected into 4-to 8-cell and blastocyst embryos

Background： Production of chimeric mice is a useful tool for the elucidation of gene function. After successful isolation of embryonic stem （ES） cell lines, there are many methods for producing chimeras, including co-culture with the embryos, microinjection of the ES ceils into pre-implantation embryos, and use of tetraploid embryos to generate the full ES-derived transgenic mice. Here, we aimed to generate the transgenic ES cell line, compare the production efficiency of chimeric mice and its proportion to yield the male chimeric mice by microinjected ES cells into 4- to 8-cell and blastocysts embryos with the application of Piezo-Micromanipulator （PMM）, and trace the fate of the injected ES cells. Results： We successfully generated a transgenic ES cell line and proved that this cell line still maintained pluripotency. Although we achieved a satisfactory chimeric mice rate, there was no significant difference in the production of chimeric mice using the two different methods, but the proportion of the male chimeric mice in the 4- to 8-cell group was higher than in the blastocyst group. We also found that there was no tendency for ES cells to aggregate into the inner cell mass using in vitro culture of the chimeric embryos, indicating that they aggregated randomly. Conclusions： These results showed that the PMM method is a convenient way to generate chimeric mice and microinjection of ES cells into 4- to 8-cell embryos can increase the chance of yielding male chimeras compared to the blastocyst injection. These results provide useful data in transgenic research mediated by ES cells.

Generation of gene-target dogs using CRISPR/Cas9 system

Dear Editor,Dogs(Canis familiaris)serve as human companions and are raised to herd livestock,aid hunters,guard homes,perform police and rescue work,and guide the blind.Dogs exhibit close similarities to humans in terms of metabolic,physiological,and anatomical characteristics,and thus are ideal genetic and clinical models to study human diseases(Tsai et al.,2007).Gene target technology is a powerful tool to create new strains of animals with favorable traits.However,thus far,gene-target dogs have not been developed due to their unique species-specific reproductive characteristics,which limits the applications of dogs especially in the field of biomedical research.Recently,clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats(CRISPRs)/CRISPR-associated(Cas)9 system was applied to edit specific genes with a high efficiency(Cong et al.,2013;Mali et al.,2013).Here we attempt to explore the feasibility of producing gene knockout(KO)dogs by using this technology.Beagle dog,the most widely used breed in biomedical research,was used as our animal model.Myostatin(MSTN)was chosen as the first gene of interest.