Differentiation of human amniotic epithelial cells into corneal epithelial-like cells in vitro

·AIM: To explore the feasibility that human amniotic epithelial cells (hAECs) have the potential to differentiate into corneal epithelial -like cells under the microenvironment replicated by spontaneously immortalized human corneal epithelial cells (S-ihCECs). ·METHODS: hAECs were isolated by enzyme digestion, and flow cytometry was used to analysis the expression of CD29/90/166/73/34 and HLA -DR. Recovered and cultured S -ihCECs, immunocytochemistry was used to detect the expression of CK3/12. The proliferation of S - ihCECs handled by different concentrations of mitomycin was detected by CCK -8. The proliferation of hAECs cultured by S-ihCECs culture media collected at different time was analyzed by CCK -8. After filtered out the optimal conditions, we collected S-ihCECs culture media for 5 days, then prepared conditioned medium to incubate hAECs, inverted phase contrast microscope and scanning electron microscope were used to observe the change of morphology in hAECs. Quantitative real -time reverse transcription -polymerase chain reaction (QRT - PCR) was carried out to evaluate the expression of Oct - 4, NANOG, PAX6, and CK12 in the differentiation period. Immunocytochemistry and western bloting were used to detect the expression of CK3/12. ·RESULTS: The culture media collected every 12h, from 20μg/mL mitomycin pretreatment S -ihCECs could significantly promote the proliferation of hAECs. In the period of differentiation, the morphology of differentiated hAECs was obviously different compared with the control group, and the distinctive CK3/12 for corneal epithelial cells was detected.·CONCLUSION: This study showed that hAECs can differentiate into corneal epithelial -like cells by replication of the corneal epithelial microenvironment, using the culture media collected from S -ihCECs, and it is possible that S -ihCECs culture media could be used in corneal tissue engineering. ·

CBLN2 rs2217560 was Associated with Pulmonary Arteria Hypertension in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

To the Editor:Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH)is a hemodynamic disorder with elevated pressure of pulmonary circulation.Genetic studies in familial PAH (fPAH)and idiopathic PAH (iPAH)have discovered that transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) superfamily plays an important role,and the identified mutations occur in bone morphogenetic protein type 2 receptor (BMPR2), activin receptor-like kinase type 1 (ALK1),Endoglin,and SMAD9. A genome-wide association study (GWAS)in patients without BMPR2 mutations discovered that one single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)rs2217560 had a significant association with i/fPAH,which located 52-kb downstream of the CBLN2 gene.

Primary Adrenal Insufficiency Due to Bilateral Adrenal Hematomas in a Patient with Primary Antiphospholipid Syndrome

To the Editor： In 2016, a 35-year-old Chinese man was admitted to our hospital who had experienced multiple thromboses for 9 years, severe fatigue, and oliguria for a total of 3 weeks. The patient had been diagnosed with pulmonary embolism and multiple deep vein thromboses at a local hospital 9 years ago. The patient was prescribed warfarin, and the international normalized ratio （INR） was maintained between 2.42 and 3.18. While laboratory findings revealed a prolonged case （77.8 s） of activated partial thromboplastin time （APTT） at that time, no further investigations were carried out and anticoagulation therapy for the patient was terminated alter 3 months.

Synthetic Lethal Interactions Prediction Based on Multiple Similarity Measures Fusion

The synthetic lethality(SL)relationship arises when a combination of deficiencies in two genes leads to cell death,whereas a deficiency in either one of the two genes does not.The survival of the mutant tumor cells depends on the SL partners of the mutant gene,thereby the cancer cells could be selectively killed by inhibiting the SL partners of the oncogenic genes but normal cells could not.Therefore,there is an urgent need to develop more efficient computational methods of SL pairs identification for cancer targeted therapy.In this paper,we propose a new approach based on similarity fusion to predict SL pairs.Multiple types of gene similarity measures are integrated and/c-nearest neighbors algorithm(k-NN)is applied to achieve the similarity-based classification task between gene pairs.As a similarity-based method,our method demonstrated excellent performance in multiple experiments.Besides the effectiveness of our method,the ease of use and expansibility can also make our method more widely used in practice.