• Korean Journal of Pharmacognosy
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.350-353
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• 1996

The effects of acid hydrolysis product of Panax ginseng and MeOH extract of Euphorbia humifusa on the growth of human brain tumor cells were evaluated using U-373 MG human astrocytoma and SK-N-MC human neuroblastoma cells as model cellular systems. These plant extracts induced cytotoxicity in both cells in a dose-dependent manner. These cytotoxic effects were significantly inhibited by GSH, an antioxidant, in both cells. BAPTA/AM, an intracellular $Ca^{2+}$ chelator, significantly blocked the cytotoxic effects of these extracts in U-373 cells, but enhanced these effects in SK-N-MC cells. These results suggest that the plant extracts may be a valuable choice for the studies on the treatment of human brain tumors.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.128-133
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• 2009

Brain drain of scientists and technologists to the United States from other countries is a phenomenal issue due to the potential developmental impacts it could have on sending countries. Immigration policies undoubtedly play the major part to shape the human resource outcomes. There has been a common sense explanation to the brain drain trend, which states that the lower English language requirements in the scientific and technology jobs compared to other high skill brain drain jobs offer immigrants more favorable employment opportunities. These and other language related variables are used with standard human capital model variables to assess the validity of the common sense proposition.

• Archives of Pharmacal Research
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.159-163
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• 1995

Previously, we have reported that methylene blue (MB) induces cytotoxicity in human brain tumor cells through the generation of free radicals. In this study the effect of deferoxamine (DFO), an iron chelator, on MB-induced cytotoxicity was investigated using SK-N-MC human neuroblastoma and U-373 MG human astrocytoma cells as model cellular systems. The cytotoxic effect of MB was potentiated by DFO. The potentiation effect of DFO was significantly blocked by either stoichiometric amounts of ferric ion, various antioxidants, hydroxyl radical scavengers or intracellular $Ca^{2+}$ release blockers. These results suggest that hydroxyl radical and intracellular $Ca^{2+}$ may act as important mediators of the enhanced cytotoxicity by MB and DFO. These results further suggest that the combined treatment with MB and DFO may be useful for the therapeutical applications of human brain tumors.

• Natural Product Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.384-389
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• 2007

Treatment of mice with Korean Red Ginseng (KRG) changed glutamic acid and GABA content in the mouse brain tissue with pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-induced convulsion. KRG were orally administered at a dose of 50, 100 mg/kg for two weeks. The electroconvulsions (MES) and PTZ-induced convulsion were reduced but those induced by strychnine, bicuculine and picrotoxin were not. PTZ-induced convulsion decreased the $\~{a}$-aminobutyric acid (GABA) content in brain compared to control group while the content was increased in KRG-treated group compared to PTZ group. In the PTZ-treated group, the GABA-transaminase (GABA-T) activity was increased by 59.6%, while no effect was observed on glutamate decarboxylase (GAD) activity. These results support that the KRG decreased the GABA contents and modulated the glutamic acid contents in the brain.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.87-104
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• 2024

Most functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies in resting state have assumed that the functional connectivity (FC) between time series from distinct brain regions is constant. However, increased interest has recently been in quantifying possible dynamic changes in FC during fMRI experiments. FC study may provide insight into the fundamental workings of brain networks to brain activity. In this work, we focus on the specific problem of estimating the dynamic behavior of pairwise correlations between time courses extracted from two different brain regions. We compare the sliding-window techniques such as moving average (MA) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA), dynamic causality with vector autoregressive (VAR) model, dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) based on volatility, and the proposed alternative methods to use differencing and recursive residuals. We investigate the properties of those techniques in a series of simulation studies. We also provide an application with major depressive disorder (MDD) patient fMRI data to demonstrate studying dynamic correlations.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.898-908
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• 2010

Purpose: The neuroprotective effects of erythropoietin (EPO) have been recently shown in many animal models of brain injury, including hypoxic-ischemic (HI) encephalopathy, trauma, and excitotoxicity; however, limited data are available for such effects during the neonatal periods. Therefore, we investigated whether recombinant human EPO (rHuEPO) can protect against perinatal HI brain injury via an antiapoptotic mechanism. Methods: The left carotid artery was ligated in 7-day-old Sprague-Dawley (SD) rat pups ($in$ $vivo$ model). The animals were divided into 6 groups: normoxia control (NC), normoxia sham-operated (NS), hypoxia only (H), hypoxia+vehicle (HV), hypoxia+rHuEPO before a hypoxic insult (HE-B), and hypoxia+rHuEPO after a hypoxic insult (HE-A). Embryonic cortical neuronal cell culture of SD rats at 18 days gestation ($in$ $vitro$ model) was performed. The cultured cells were divided into 5 groups: normoxia (N), hypoxia (H), and 1, 10, and 100 IU/mL rHuEPO-treated groups. Results: In the $in$ $vivo$ model, Bcl-2 expressions in the H and HV groups were lower than those in the NC and NS groups, whereas those in the HE-A and HE-B groups were greater than those of the H and HV groups. The expressions of Bax and caspase-3 and the ratio of Bax/Bcl-2 were in contrast to those of Bcl-2. In the $in$ $vitro$ model, the patterns of Bcl-2, Bax, and caspase-3 expression and Bax/Bcl-2 ratio were similar to the results obtained in the in vivo model. Conclusion: rHuEPO exerts neuroprotective effect against perinatal HI brain injury via an antiapoptotic mechanism.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.161-170
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• 2017

Meningitis caused by Streptococcus suis serotype 2 (S. suis 2) is a great threat to the pig industry and human health. Virulence factors associated with the pathogenesis of meningitis have yet to be clearly defined, even though many potential S. suis 2 virulence factors have been identified. This greatly hinders the progress of S. suis 2 meningitis pathogenesis research. In this study, a co-culture blood-brain barrier (BBB) model was established using primary porcine brain microvascular endothelial cells and astrocytes, and the whole genome library of S. suis 2 was constructed using phage display technology. Finally, a total of 14 potential virulence factors contributing to S. suis 2 adherence to and invasion of the BBB were selected by analyzing the interactions between the phage library and the co-culture model. Twelve of these factors have not been previously reported in meningitis-related research. The data provide valuable insight into the pathogenesis of S. suis 2 meningitis and potential targets for the development of drug therapies.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.135-138
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• 2012

The pathophysiology of functional gastrointestinal disorder(FGID) is not completely understood, but the importance of the 'Brain-Gut Axis(BGA)' model in FGID is being increasingly recognized. The BGA model is a bidirectional, hard-wired and homeostatic relationship between the central nervous system(CNS) and the enteric nervous system(ENS) via neural, neurohormonal and neuroimmunological pathways. In addition, the BGA model would provide a rationale for the use of psychotropics on FGID. The authors experienced two cases in which duloxetine, a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, was effective in relieving FGID symptoms as well as psychiatric symptoms such as depression and hypochondriacal anxiety. Therefore we discuss the vignettes from the perspective of BGA theory. Duloxetine showed efficacy in these two patients by reducing visceral hypersensivity (bottom-up regulation) and by relieving depression and anxiety(top-down regulation).

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.89-97
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• 2013

Developing an animal model for a specific disease is very important in the understanding of the underlying mechanism of the disease and allows testing of newly developed new drugs before human application. However, which of the plethora of experimental animal species to use in model development can be perplexing. Administration of 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) is a very well known method to induce the symptoms of Parkinson's disease in mice. But, there is very limited information about the different sensitivities to MPTP among mouse strains. Here, we tested three different mouse strains (C57BL/6, Balb-C, and ICR) as a Parkinsonian model by repeated MPTP injections. In addition to behavioral analysis, endogenous levels of dopamine and tetrahydrobiopterin in mice brain regions, such as striatum, substantia nigra, and hippocampus were directly quantified by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Repeated administrations of MPTP significantly affected the moving distances and rearing frequencies in all three mouse strains. The endogenous dopamine concentrations and expression levels of tyrosine hydroxylase were significantly decreased after the repeated injections, but tetrahydrobiopterin did not change in analyzed brain regions. However, susceptibilities of the mice to MPTP were differed based on the degree of behavioral change, dopamine concentration in brain regions, and expression levels of tyrosine hydroxylase, with C57BL/6 and Balb-C mice being more sensitive to the dopaminergic neuronal toxicity of MPTP than ICR mice.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.99-106
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• 2019

Amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) allows early and accurate diagnosis in suspected cases of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and contributes to future treatment plans. In the present study, a method of implementing a diagnostic system to distinguish ${\beta}$-Amyloid ($A{\beta}$) positive from $A{\beta}$ negative with objectiveness and accuracy was proposed using a machine learning approach, such as the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). $^{18}F$-Florbetaben (FBB) brain PET images were arranged in control and patients (total n = 176) with mild cognitive impairment and AD. An SVM was used to classify the slices of registered PET image using PET template, and a system was created to diagnose patients comprehensively from the output of the trained model. To compare the per-slice classification, the PCA-SVM model observing the whole brain (WB) region showed the highest performance (accuracy 92.38, specificity 92.87, sensitivity 92.87), followed by SVM with gray matter masking (GMM) (accuracy 92.22, specificity 92.13, sensitivity 92.28) for $A{\beta}$ positivity. To compare according to per-subject classification, the PCA-SVM with WB also showed the highest performance (accuracy 89.21, specificity 71.67, sensitivity 98.28), followed by PCA-SVM with GMM (accuracy 85.80, specificity 61.67, sensitivity 98.28) for $A{\beta}$ positivity. When comparing the area under curve (AUC), PCA-SVM with WB was the highest for per-slice classifiers (0.992), and the models except for SVM with WM were highest for the per-subject classifier (1.000). We can classify $^{18}F$-Florbetaben amyloid brain PET image for $A{\beta}$ positivity using PCA-SVM model, with no additional effects on GMM.