• BMB Reports
• /
• v.51 no.5
• /
• pp.255-260
• /
• 2018

Wntless/GPR177 functions as WNT ligand carrier protein and activator of $WNT/{\beta}$-catenin signaling, however, its molecular role in gastric cancer (GC) has remained elusive. We investigated the role of GPR177 in gastric tumorigenesis and provided the therapeutic potential of a clinical development of anti-GPR177 monoclonal antibodies. GPR177 mRNA expression was assessed in GC transcriptome data sets (GSE15459, n = 184; GSE66229, n = 300); protein expression was assessed in independent patient tumor tissues (Yonsei TMA, n = 909). GPR177 expression were associated with unfavorable prognosis [log-rank test, GSE15459 (P = 0.00736), GSE66229 (P = 0.0142), and Yonsei TMA (P = 0.0334)] and identified as an independent risk predictor of clinical outcomes: GSE15459 [hazard ratio (HR) 1.731 (95% confidence interval; CI; 1.103-2.715), P = 0.017], GSE66229 [HR 1.54 (95% CI, 1.10-2.151), P = 0.011], and Yonsei TMA [HR 1.254 (95% CI, 1.049-1.500), P = 0.013]. Either antibody treatment or GPR177 knockdown suppressed proliferation of GC cells and sensitized cells to apoptosis. And also inhibition of GPR177 suppresses in vitro and in vivo tumorogenesis in GC cells and inhibits $WNT/{\beta}$-catenin signaling. Finally, targeting and inhibition of GPR177 with antibody suppressed tumorigenesis in PDX model. Together, these results suggest GPR177 as a novel candidate for prognostic marker as well as a promising target for treatment of GC patients.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.32-43
• /
• 2009

Acetaminophen (APAP) overdose is known to cause severe hepatotoxicity mainly through the depletion of glutathione. In this study, we compared the cytotoxic effects of APAP on both a normal murine hepatic cell line, BNL CL.2, and its SV40-transformed cell line, BNL SV A.8. Gene expression profiles for APAP-treated cells were also obtained using microarray and analyzed to identify differences in genes or profiles that may explain the differences of susceptibility to APAP in these cell lines. These two cell lines exhibited different susceptibilities to APAP (0-$5,000{\mu}M$); BNL SV A.8 cells were more susceptible to APAP treatment compared to BNL CL.2 cells. A dose of $625{\mu}M$ APAP, which produced significant differences in cytotoxicity in these cell lines, was tested. Microarray analysis was performed to identify significant differentially expressed genes (DEGs) irrespective of APAP treatment. Genes up-regulated in BNL SV A.8 cells were associated with immune response, defense response, and apoptosis, while down-regulated genes were associated with catalytic activity, cell adhesion and the cytochrome P450 family. Consistent with the cytotoxicity data, no significant DEGs were found in BNL CL.2 cells after treatment with $625{\mu}M$ APAP, while cell cycle arrest and apoptosis-related genes were up-regulated in BNL SV A.8 cells. Based on the significant fold-changes in their expression, a genes were selected and their expressions were confirmed by quantitative real-time RT-PCR; there was a high correlation between them. These results suggest that gene expression profiles may provide a useful method for evaluating drug sensitivity of cell lines and eliciting the underlying molecular mechanism. We further compared the genes identified from our current in vitro studies to the genes previously identified in our lab as regulated by APAP in both C57BL/6 and ICR mice in vivo. We found that a few genes are regulated in a similar pattern both in vivo and in vitro. These genes might be useful to develop as in vitro biomarkers for predicting in vivo hepatotoxicity. Based on our results, we suggest that gene expression profiles may provide useful information for elucidating the underlying molecular mechanisms of drug susceptibility and for evaluating drug sensitivity in vitro for extrapolation to in vivo.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
• /
• v.48 no.2
• /
• pp.64-70
• /
• 2011

Portable artificial electronic nose (E-nose) system suffers from noisy fluctuation in surroundings such as temperature, vapor concentration, and gas flow, because its measuring condition is not controled precisely as in the laboratory. It is important to develop a simple and robust vapor recognition technique applicable to this uncontrolled measurement, especially for the portable measuring and diagnostic system which are expanding its area with the improvements in micro bio sensor technology. This study used a PDA-based portable E-nose to collect the uncontrolled vapor measurement signals, and applied the image matching algorithm developed in the previous study on the measured signal to verify its robustness and improved accuracy in portable vapor recognition. The results showed not only its consistent performance under noisy fluctuation in the portable measurement signal, but also an advanced recognition accuracy for 2 similar vapor species which have been hard to discriminate with the conventional maximum sensitivity feature extraction method. The proposed method can be easily applied to the data processing of the ubiquitous sensor network (USN) which are usually exposed to various operating conditions. Furthermore, it will greatly help to realize portable medical diagnostic and environment monitoring system with its robust performance and high accuracy.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• /
• v.39 no.2
• /
• pp.82-87
• /
• 2016

As contemporary society has become more complicated, specialized, and segmented, people are experiencing more diverse types of stress. In particular, while several factors associated with job stress have been examined among nurses, who belong to a professional group, the existing research has made no quantitative assessments of stress that reflect temporal differences in individuals. Therefore, the aim of this study is to understand the effects of job stress on alpha-amylase with regard to the working hours of nurses, to assess the variations in jobs stress over time, and provide basic data to improve the quality of nursing services. Ninety nurses working in three shifts in general, emergency, and intensive care wards of a university hospital in D City participated in this study. Salivary alpha-amylase (SAA) was extracted and analyzed at two-hour intervals from 07:00 to 15:00 from nurses on the day shift and from 23:00 to 07:00 from those working the night shift. The SAA level was highest between 23:00 and 01:00 for nurses in general wards ($mean{\pm}S.D.\;39.00{\pm}14.88$) and between 11:00 and 13:00 for those in both intensive care units and emergency wards ($mean{\pm}S.D.\;67.50{\pm}62.93$ and $mean{\pm}S.D.\;39.67{\pm}35.96$, respectively). The characteristic variation in SAA was significant between 23:00 and 01:00 (p < 0.01) and for those in their fifties or older (p < 0.01). The activation ratio of alpha-amylase, a stress reactant, showed an increase when the sympathetic nervous system was activated by mental stress; in addition, job stress was manifested with the effect of awakening at different time segments and at different ages among the nurses. With the aim of raising the level of service based on the nurses maintaining their mental health, it is necessary to focus sharply on the time segment for critical control and to conduct repetitive studies to determine the divisions of eustress critical values as well as to expand the population.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.11 no.7
• /
• pp.663-669
• /
• 2017

In diagnostic medical imaging, it is essential to reduce the scattered radiation for the high medical image quality and low patient dose. Therefore, in this study, the influence of the scattered radiation on medical images was analyzed as the tube voltage increases. For this purpose, ANSI chest phantom was used to measure the scattering ratio, and the scattering effect on the image quality was investigated by RMS evaluation, RSD and NPS analysis. It was found that the scattering ratio with increasing x-ray tube voltage gradually increased to 48.8% at 73 kV tube voltage and to 80.1% at 93 kV tube voltage. As a result of RMS analysis for evaluating the image quality, RMS value according to increase of tube voltage was increased, resulting in low image quality. Also, the NPS value at 2.5 lp/mm spatial frequency was increased by 20% when the tube voltage was increased by 93 kV compared to the tube voltage of 73 kV. From this study, it can be seen that the scattering radiation have a significant effect on the image quality according to the increase of x-ray tube voltage. The results of this study can be used as basic data for the improvement of medical imaging quality.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
• /
• v.52 no.3
• /
• pp.237-244
• /
• 2020

Currently, sexually transmitted diseases (STD) are referred to as "sexually transmitted infections" (STIs) in the sense of including asymptomatic infections. STIs have a range of interrelationships. This study used the STI defined by the Minister of Health and Welfare of the Republic of Korea, and targeted syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia infection, chancroid, genital herpes simplex, condyloma, human papillomavirus, and non-gonococcal urethritis. The factors were characterized by identifying multiple and simultaneous STIs. This study used the data from the laboratory information system of a consigned inspection institution located in Seoul from 2014 to 2019. In this study, multiple STIs were identified as overlapping STIs of a double infectious source (10 types) and multiple STIs of a third infectious source (6 types). Among the 16 types of multiple STIs, U. urealyticum (9 types), HSV-2 (8 types), C. trachomatis (7 types), HPV 6, 11 (7 types), N. gonorrhoeae (6 types), and T. pallidum (1 type) were included. Therefore, additional research on interrelationship studies, such as STIs, which has the highest proportion of multiple STIs, will be necessary.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.154-162
• /
• 2006

Background: Dendritic cell (DC)-based cancer immunotherapy is studied for several years. However, it is mainly derived from autologous PBMC or leukapheresis from patient, which has limitations about yield and ability of DC production according to individual status. In order to solve these problems, inquiries about allogeneic DCs are performed but there are no preclinical trial answers for effect or toxicity of allogeneic DC to use for clinical trial. In this study, we compared the anti-tumor effect of allogeneic and autologous DCs from mouse bone marrow stem cells in mouse metastatic melanoma model. Methods: B16F10 melanoma cells ($5{\times}10^4$/mouse) were injected intravenously into the C57BL/6 mouse. Therapeutic DCs were differentiated from autologous (C57BL/6: CDC) or allogeneic (B6C3F1: BDC) bone marrow stem cells with GM-CSF, SCF and IL-4 for 13days and pulsed with B16F10 tumor cell lysate (Blys) for 18hrs. DC intra-peritoneal injections began on the 8th day after the tumor cell injection by twice with one week interval. Results: Anti-tumor response was observed by DC treatment without any toxicity especially in allogeneic DC treated mice (tumor burden score: $2.667{\pm}0.184,\;2.500{\pm}0.463,\;2.000{\pm}0.286,\;1.500{\pm}0.286,\;1.667 {\pm}0.297$ for saline, CDC/unpulsed-DC: U-DC, CDC/Blys-DC, BDC/U-DC and BDC/Blys-DC, respectively). IFN-${\gamma}$ secretion was significantly increased in allogeneic DC group stimulated with B16F10 cell lysate ($2,643.3{\pm}5,89.7,\;8,561.5{\pm}2,204.9.\;6,901.2{\pm}141.1pg/1{\times}10^6$ cells for saline, BDC/U-DC and BDC/Blys-DC, respectively) with increased NK cell activity. Conclusion: Conclusively, promising data was obtained that allogeneic DC can be used for DC-based cancer immunotherapy.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.13 no.5
• /
• pp.722-729
• /
• 2010

Prediction problems are widely used in medical domains. For example, computer aided diagnosis or prognosis is a key component in a CDSS (Clinical Decision Support System). SVMs with nonlinear kernels like RBF kernels, have shown superior accuracy in prediction problems. However, they are not preferred by physicians for medical prediction problems because nonlinear SVMs are difficult to visualize, thus it is hard to provide intuitive interpretation of prediction results to physicians. Nomogram was proposed to visualize SVM classification models. However, it cannot visualize nonlinear SVM models. Localized Radial Basis Function (LRBF) was proposed which shows comparable accuracy as the RBF kernel while the LRBF kernel is easier to interpret since it can be linearly decomposed. This paper presents a new tool named VRIFA, which integrates the nomogram and LRBF kernel to provide users with an interactive visualization of nonlinear SVM models, VRIFA visualizes the internal structure of nonlinear SVM models showing the effect of each feature, the magnitude of the effect, and the change at the prediction output. VRIFA also performs nomogram-based feature selection while training a model in order to remove noise or redundant features and improve the prediction accuracy. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) can be used to evaluate the prediction result when the data set is highly imbalanced. The tool can be used by biomedical researchers for computer-aided diagnosis and risk factor analysis for diseases.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.14 no.6
• /
• pp.2735-2742
• /
• 2013

The purpose of this study is to assess the association of vitamin D and pulse pressure in Korean adults. The data for analysis were obtained from Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2010. PP showed a significant positive correlation with Age(p<0.01), TG(p<0.01), TC(p<0.01), FBS (p<0.01), BMI(p<0.01) and Waist measurement(p<0.01). PP showed a significant negative correlation with HDL-C(p<0.01), Height(p<0.01), Weight(p<0.01) and 25(OH)D(p<0.01). When a multiple linear regression analysis was performed, PP was considered as the dependent variable, Age, Height, Weight, Waist measurement, BMI, TC, TG, HDL-C, FBS and 25(OH)D as independent parameters, PP maintained a significant association only with Age(p<0.001), Waist measurement(p<0.001), FBS(p<0.001), 25(OH)D(p<0.001), TC(p<0.001), Weight(p<0.001), HDL-C(p<0.001). In conclusion, Our results suggest that vitamin D decrease may contribute to higher PP. To maintain standard level of vitamin D may be expected that decrease in incidence of coronary arterial disease.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.96-107
• /
• 2020

This study aimed to identify the associated factors of protective behaviors for radiation exposure among some radiology technologists using the Health Belief Model. The subjects of the study were 541 radiology technologists working at hospitals or clinics in Honam Province. Using the SPSS version 18.0 program, data were analyzed using a t-test, ANOVA, Pearson's correlation analysis, and hierarchical multiple logistic regression analysis. To modify the factors, the performance of subjects who had a higher level of education and nuclear medicine rooms were higher than those who worked in simple radiography rooms. The radiation protective behaviors performance of the subjects who had more exercise, medium-level stress, and worked in higher-quality protection facilities was higher. Regarding the personal perceptions, the cues to action (β=.292, p=.0001), and perceived seriousness (β =.075, p=.010) were factors that had effects on the performance of radiation protection behaviors. Regarding the likelihood of action, the benefits (β=.168, p<.0001), self-efficacy (β=.148, p=.007), and the performance of protective behaviors were higher. In conclusion, protection education as a cue to action should be provided to stimulate protective behaviors, and the benefits of protective behaviors should be emphasized. To increase the performance of protection behaviors, self-efficacy should be enhanced, and the subjects are offered appropriate information that helps perceive seriousness.