• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.3261-3265
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• 2014

Background: To evaluate serum VEGF-A levels in squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck (SCCHN) patients and relationships with response to therapy. Materials and Methods: Serum VEGF-A levels in patients (n=72) treated with radiotherapy (RT) or radio-chemotherapy (RCT) and controls (n=40) were measured by ELISA. Results: Serum VEGF-A levels of the SCCHN cases were significantly higher (p=0.001) than in healthy controls, and in patients with positive as compared to negative lymph node status (p=0.004). Similarly, patients with advanced stage (Stage III-IV) disease had more greatly elevated levels of serum VEGF-A level than their early stage (Stage I-II) counterparts (p=0.001). In contrast, there was no significant difference (p=0.57) in serum level of VEGF-A in patients with advanced T-stage (T3-4) as compared to early stage (T1-2). Similarly, patients with distant metastasis had no significant (p=0.067) elevation in serum VEGF-A level as compared to non-metastatic disease. However, the non-responder patients had significantly higher serum VEGF-A level as compared to responders (p=0.001). Conclusions: Our results suggest that the serum VEGF-A level may be a useful biomarker for the prediction of response to therapy in SCCHN.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.109-120
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• 2014

Objectives: This study was to examine the associations between obesity level and major chronic diseases in older population in Korea, using different obesity indicators. Methods: Data was from the 2008 KloSA Biomarker pilot, a nationwide sample of 514 non-institutionalized subjects (age $63.6{\pm}9.8$ years; women 57.2%). Anthropometric information was collected by home visiting nurses. Portable bioimpedence devices(Omran HBF359) were used for measuring fat mass. Obesity cut-offs used the Asian criteria of $BMI{\geq}25$, $WC{\geq}90/85cm$, and $fat%{\geq}25/35$ for men and women. Chronic disease prevalence was defined by physician-diagnosed history of 8 specified diseases. Results: Prevalence of chronic diseases significantly increased with increment of obesity level by BMI, WC and fat %. Odds ratios of acquiring chronic diseases remained significant in the obese group (BMI OR 2.76, 95%CI 1.82-4.19; WC OR 2.73, 95%CI 1.81-4.11; Fat OR 1.87 95%CI 1.26-2.78), after adjusting for age, sex, marital status, education, work participation, household income, smoking, drinking, and exercise. Conclusions: Obesity measured by all three indicators, BMI, WC, and fat mass cannot be disregarded, accentuating the significant effect on increases in disease risks among older population. BMI and WC measure appeared better to assess the risks of chronic diseases.

• Kidney Research and Clinical Practice
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.338-346
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• 2018

Background: The most common cause of acute kidney injury (AKI) in pregnancy is preeclampsia. Serum cystatin C (CysC) is a potential biomarker of early kidney damage as its levels are not disturbed by volume status changes in pregnancy, and serum CysC levels could serve as a replacement for conventionally used creatinine. In this study, we investigated the serum levels of CysC in severe preeclampsia cases and the associations between CysC levels and poor obstetric outcomes. Methods: Our cohort included severe preeclampsia patients with a normal serum creatinine level. Creatinine was measured to calculate estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) based on the Cockcroft and Gault, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease Study (MDRD), and Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) equations, while CysC was measured to calculated eGFR based on a CysC-based equation. We then evaluated the correlations between serum CysC level, eGFR, and obstetric outcomes. Results: Twenty-six patients were evaluated of which 38.5% delivered preterm and 30.8% had low-birth weight babies. Unlike creatinine-based eGFR and CysC-based eGFR, serum CysC demonstrate significant negative correlation with gestational age. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that serum CysC is a potential biomarker of preterm delivery with a cut-off serum level of 1.48 mg/L with 80% sensitivity and 75% specificity. Conclusion: GFR estimation using CysC is likely to be inaccurate in pregnancy. However, we found a significant correlation between preterm delivery and serum CysC level. Our results suggest that serum CysC level has the potential to predict preterm delivery in severe preeclampsia patients.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.645-651
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• 2018

Lung cancer has the highest death rate of any cancer diseases in Koreans. However, patients often feel difficult to recognize their disease before facing the terminal diagnosis due to the absence of any significant symptoms. Furthermore, the clear detection of an early cancer stage is usually obscure with existing diagnostic methods. For this reason, extensive research efforts have been made on introducing a wide range of biochemical diagnostic tools for the molecular level analysis of biological fluids for lung cancer diagnoses. A chip-based biosensor, one type of the analytical devices, can be a great potential for the diagnosis, which can be used without any further expensive analytical equipments nor skilled analysts. In this mini review, we highlight recent research trends on searching biomarker candidates and bio-chip sensors for lung cancer diagnosis in addition to discussing their future aspects.

• BMB Reports
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• v.44 no.7
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• pp.473-477
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• 2011

Periodontitis is a very prevalent disease. Therefore, biomarkers for the early and standard diagnoses of periodontitis are urgently needed. TACE is a membrane-bound metalloprotease. Although a recent study suggested that TACE levels in GCF are elevated during periodontal disease, the levels of TACE in GCF at different stages of chronic periodontitis have not been determined. Here, we analyzed the protein levels of TACE in GCF from periodontal disease subjects and confirmed that the protein levels of TACE were higher in the moderate periodontitis groups. TACE is known to be a NF-${\kappa}B$ ligand that stimulates RANKL secretion in osteoblasts. To understand the effects of TACE on RANKL and OPG in osteoblasts, we treated MG63 cells with TACE. We observed an increase in RANKL protein expression but a decrease in OPG protein expression. Our data suggest that TACE can induce RANKL expression and promote osteoclastogenesis, thus worsening the outcome of periodontitis.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.205-215
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• 2017

The brain magnetic resonance images (MRI) is an important imaging biomarker in Alzheimer's disease (AD) as the cerebral atrophy has been shown to strongly associate with cognitive symptoms. The decrease of volume estimates in different structures of the medial temporal lobe related to memory correlates with the decline of cognitive functions in neurodegenerative diseases. During the past decades several methods have been developed for quantifying the disease related atrophy of hippocampus from MRI. Special effort has been dedicated to separate AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) related modifications from normal aging for the purpose of early detection and prediction. We trained a multi-class support vector machine (SVM) with probabilistic outputs on a sample (n = 58) of 20 normal controls (NC), 19 individuals with MCI, and 19 individuals with AD. The model was then applied to the cross-validation of same data set which no labels were known and the predictions. This study presents data on the association between MRI quantitative parameters of hippocampus and its quantitative structural changes examination use on the classification of the diseases.

• BMB Reports
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• v.44 no.12
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• pp.772-781
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• 2011

Branched N-glycans are produced by a series of glycosyltransferases including N-acetylglucosaminyltransferases and fucosyltransferases and their corresponding genes. Glycans on specific glycoproteins, which are attached via the action of glycosyltransferases, play key roles in cell adhesion and signaling. Examples of this are adhesion molecules or signaling molecules such as integrin and E-cadherin, as well as membrane receptors such as the EGF and TGF-${\beta}$ receptors. These molecules also play pivotal roles in the underlying mechanism of a variety of disease such as cancer metastasis, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Alterations in the structures of branched N-glycans are also hall marks and are useful for cancer biomarkers and therapeutics against cancer. This mini-review describes some of our recent studies on a functional glycomics approach to the study of branched N-glycans produced by N-acetylglucosaminyltransferases III, IV, V and IX (Vb) (GnT-III, GnT-IV, V and IX (Vb)) and fucosyltransferase 8 (Fut8) and their pathophysiological significance, with emphasis on the importance of a systems glycobiology approach as a future perspective for glycobiology.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.25.1-25.5
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• 2018

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the leading causes of death and disability all around the world. Recent studies have revealed that aberrantly regulated long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) as one of the main classes of cellular transcript plays a key regulatory role in transcriptional and epigenetic pathways. Recent reports have demonstrated that circulating lncRNAs in the blood can be potential biomarkers for CAD. HOTAIR is one of the most cited lncRNAs with a critical role in the initiation and progression of the gene expression regulation. Recent research on the role of the HOTAIR in cardiovascular disease lays the basis for the development of new studies considering this lncRNA as a potential biomarker and therapeutic target in CAD. In this study, we aimed to compare the expression of HOTAIR lncRNA in the blood samples of patients with CAD and control samples. The expression level was examined by semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction technique. Our data shows that expression of HOTAIR is up-regulated in blood samples of patients with CAD.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.13-21
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• 2022

There is an increasing interest in monitoring of specific biomarker for determining progression of a disease or efficacy of a treatment. Conventional method for quantification of specific biomarkers as enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has high material costs, long incubation periods, requires large volume of samples and involves special instruments, which necessitates clinical samples to be sent to a lab. This paper reports on the development of an electrochemical biosensor to measure total immunoglobulin E (IgE), a marker of asthma disease that varies with age, gender, and disease in concentrations from 0.3-1000 ng/mL with consuming 20 µL volume of whole blood sample. The sensor provides rapid, accurate, easy, point-of-care measurement of IgE, also, sequential monitoring of total IgE with ovalbumin (OVA) induced mice is another application of sensor. Taken together, these results provide an alternative way for detection of biomarkers in whole blood with low volumes and long-term ex-vivo assessments for understanding the progression of a disease.

• Journal of Radiopharmaceuticals and Molecular Probes
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.3-8
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• 2022

Alteration of the mGluR5 density is closely related to various brain diseases including schizophrenia, depression, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, mGluR5 is considered as a valuable imaging biomarker for brain disease and many radiopharmaceuticals have been developed so far. Among them, [¹⁸F]FPEB has favorable pharmacokinetic characteristics, and this is the most frequently used radiopharmaceutical for preclinical and clinical studies. In the present study, we want to introduce the optimized radiosynthetic method for the routine production of [¹⁸F]FPEB using a GE TRACERlabTM FXFN pro module. In addition, the entire process was monitored with a webcam to solve the problems arising from the synthetic process. As a result, [¹⁸F]FPEB was prepared by nucleophilic substitution from its nitro- precursor at 120℃ for 20 min in dimethyl sulfoxide. Radiochemical yield was 13.7 ± 5.1% (decay-corrected, n = 91) with the molar activity of 84 ± 17 GBq/µmol at the end of synthesis. The radiochemical purity was determined to be above 96%. The manufactured [¹⁸F]FPEB injection for quality controls were carried out in accordance with an KIRAMS approved protocol, as per ICH and USP guidelines.