• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.335-340
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• 1997

Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) techniques allow the enumeration of chromosome abnormalities and from a great potential for many clinical applications. In order to produce quantitative and reproducible results, expensive tools such as a cooled CCD camera and a computer software are required. We have developed a Chromosome Image Processing System (Chips) using FISH that allows the detection and mapping of the genetic aberrations. The aim of our study, therefore, is to evaluate the capabilities of our original system using a black-and-white video camera. As a model system, three repetitive DNA probes (D18Z1, DXZ1, and DYZ3) were hybridized to variety different clinical samples such as human metaphase spreads and interphase nuclei obtained from uncultured peripheral blood lymphocytes, uncultured amniocytes, and germ cells. The visualization of the FISH signals was performed using our system for image acquisition and pseudocoloring. FISH images were obtained by combining images from each of probes and DAPI counterstain captured separately. Using our original system, the aberrations of single or multiple chromosomes in a single hybridization experiment using chromosomes and interphase nuclei from a variety of cell types, including lymphocytes, amniocytes, sperm, and biopsied blastomeres, were enabled to evaluate. There were no differences in the image quality in accordance with FISH method, fluorochrome types, or different clinical samples. Always bright signals were detected using our system. Our system also yielded constant results. Our Chips would permit a level of performance of FISH analysis on metaphase chromosomes and interphase nuclei with unparalleled capabilities. Thus, it would be useful for clinical purposes.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.19
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• pp.8041-8046
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• 2014

In-depth analysis of how TRAIL signals through death receptors to induce apoptosis in cancer cells using high throughput technologies has added new layers of knowledge. However, the wealth of information has also highlighted the fact that TRAIL induced apoptosis may be impaired as evidenced by experimental findings obtained from TRAIL resistant cancer cell lines. Overwhelmingly, increasing understanding of TRAIL mediated apoptosis has helped in identifying synthetic and natural compounds which can restore TRAIL induced apoptosis via functionalization of either extrinsic or intrinsic pathways. Increasingly it is being realized that biologically active phytochemicals modulate TRAIL induced apoptosis, as evidenced by cell-based studies. In this review we have attempted to provide an overview of how different phytonutrients have shown efficacy in restoring apoptosis in TRAIL resistant cancer cells. We partition this review into how the TRAIL mediated signaling landscape has broadened over the years and how TRAIL induced signaling machinery crosstalks with autophagic protein networks. Subsequently, we provide a generalized view of considerable biological activity of coumarins against a wide range of cancer cell lines and how coumarins (psoralidin and esculetin) isolated from natural sources have improved TRAIL induced apoptosis in resistant cancer cells. We summarize recent updates on piperlongumine, phenethyl isothiocyanate and luteolin induced activation of TRAIL mediated apoptosis. The data obtained from pre-clinical studies will be helpful in translation of information from benchtop to the bedside.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.197-205
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• 2016

Adipose tissue is one of the major endocrine gland. More recently, local production of steroids in adipocytes differentiated from mouse 3T3-L1 cell-line was reported. We hypothesized that rat adipocytes have steroidogenic machinery and the expression patterns of the components might be differentially regulated, depending on the distribution and sex. To verify this hypothesis, we collected the adipose tissues depot-and sex-specifically at postnatal day (PND) 30, and performed quantitative RT-PCRs. In overall aspects, the abundances of the transcripts were lower in the brown adipose of both sexes. $3{\beta}-HSD$ transcript levels in female abdominal and reproductive adipose, CYP17 transcript levels in female reproductive adipose, $17{\beta}-HSD$ transcript levels in female abdominal and reproductive adipose, and CYP19 transcript levels in female abdominal adipose were significantly lower than those of male counterparts. Similar to steroidogenic factors, the abundance of the $ER-{\alpha}$ transcripts were generally lower in the brown adipose of both sexes. $ER-{\beta}$ transcripts were more abundant in male white adipose depots than their female counterparts. The levels of LHR transcripts in female reproductive adipose were significantly higher than those of male counterpart. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that the expressions of steroidogenesis-related genes were depot- and sex-specifically occurred in the immature male and female rat adipose tissues. Our study suggested that the adipose tissues are not only targets but de novo synthesizing sites of sex steroid(s), though the synthesizing activities could be much less than in gonads. Further researches in this field will be helpful for understanding the adipose physiology and for medical application such as sex-specific steroid supplement therapies for older populations.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.373-393
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• 2015

Background: Cellulose is a ubiquitous, renewable and environmentally friendly biopolymer, which has high promise to fulfil the rising demand for sustainable and biocompatible materials. Particularly, the recent progress in the synthesis of highly crystalline cellulose-based nanoscale biomaterials, namely cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), draws significant attention from many research communities, ranging from bioresource engineering, to materials science and engineering, to biological and biomedical engineering to bionanotechnology. The feasibility of harnessing CNCs' unique biophysicochemical properties has inspired their basic and applied research, offering much promise for new biomaterials with diverse advanced functionalities. Purpose: This review focuses on vital issues and topics on the recent advances in CNC-based biomaterials with potential, in particular, for bionanotechnology and biological and biomedical engineering. The challenges and limitations of CNC technology are discussed as well as potential strategies to overcome them, providing an essential source of information in the exploration of possible and futuristic applications of the CNC-based functional "green" nanomaterials. Conclusion: CNCs offer exciting possibilities for advanced "green" nanomaterials, driving innovative research and development in a wide range of fields, including biological and biomedical engineering.

• BMB Reports
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.78-81
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• 2003

The prevention of cancer is one of the most important public health and medical practices of the $21^{st}$ century. We have made much progress in this new emerging field, but so much remains to be accomplished before widespread use and practice become common place. Cancer chemoprevention encompasses the concepts of inhibition, reversal, and retardation of the cancer process. This process, called carcinogenesis, requires 20-40 years to reach the endpoint called invasive cancer. It typically follows multiple, diverse and complex pathways in a stochastic process of clonal evolution. These pathways appear amenable to inhibition, reversal or retardation at various points. We must therefore identify key pathways in the evolution of the cancer cell that can be exploited to prevent this carcinogenesis process. Basic research is identifying many genetic lesions and epigenetic processes associated with the progression of precancer to invasive disease. Many of these early precancerous lesions favor cell division over quiescence and protect cells against apoptosis when signals are present. Many oncogenes are active during early development and are reactivated in adulthood by aberrant gene promoting errors. Normal regulatory genes are mutated, making them insensitive to normal regulatory signals. Tumor suppressor genes are deleted or mutated rendering them inactive. Thus there is a wide range of defects in cellular machinery which can lead to evolution of the cancer phenotype. Mistakes may not have to appear in a certain order for cells to progress along the cancer pathway. To conquer this diverse disease, we must attack multiple key pathways at once for a predetermined period of time. Thus, agent combination prevention strategies are essential to decrease cancer morbidity. Furthermore, each cancer type may require custom combination of prevention strategies to be successful.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.144-149
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• 2008

Despite versatile activity (cancericidal, antimicrobial, hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) inhibition, immune deactivation of DNA bis-intercalation agent, echinomycin, its specific mechanism has been elusive. Of these novel mechanisms, we reported that using human colon cancer cells (HT-29), apoptotic machinery induced by echinomycin might be dependent of caspase-3 pathway. Despite a partial enlightenment of prototypic signal path triggered by echinomycin, the role of Bcl-2 in this signaling pathway is unclear. To address this issue, we explored whether or not echinomycin would overcome the anti-apoptotic impact of Bcl-2 in HT-29 cells by the controlled Bcl-2 overexpression. Prior to this proof, we confirmed that echinomycin induces mitochondrial depolarization, then triggering the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis with an involvement of upstream cas-pases-3. Transiently transfection with inactive Bax-DNA failed to prevent echinomycin-induced apoptosis in HT-29 cells. To dissect the role of Bcl-2 in echinomycin-induced apoptosis, HT-29 cells were transiently transfected with Bcl-2 DNA for overexpression and then treated with echinomycin for 24h. Combined analyses of DNA fragmentation and flow cytometric analysis clearly verified that echinomycin-induced apoptosis was drastically attenuated by Bcl-2 overexpression, whereas a control vector rarely affected echinomycin-induced apoptosis. Collectively, these data verify that Bcl-2 regulates echinomycin-induced apoptosis in HT-29 cells. To my knowledge, this is the first evidence that of diverse, structured minor groove binders (MGB), the prototypic echinomycin might control the apoptotic signaling via Bcl-2-mitochondrial pathway.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.27-34
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• 2006

Planning for the space of the Media Medical Department requires the details about the efficiency of the equipment and the operation in professional sector. For that, as designing, it is necessary to keep communicating with the experts on the technology and the officials from the company producing the equipment. One of the common concerns is not only how to insure enough room for the future extension and the upgrade of the equipment, as concerning the scale of the hospital, but the plan to cover movie cameras. As technology has been developed, despite the fact that machinery tend to be small, it can be possible to require continuously about the concerns of the scale because the camera taking body-picture tend to be much bigger and more complicated than before. Currently used diagnostic media techniques are divided by the method and the feature of the equipment such as Diagnostic X-ray, Ultrasound, CT, MRI, Angiography. The general and special photographing units which are used more than the other diagnostic parts, must be planned not for experiencing any inconvenience and unnecessary risks for the patients and must accept technical requirements. Also, it must be designed not to be seen as a clinic zone, as concerning the psychological stability of the patients. However, study of the general and special photographing units among the domestic general hospitals is insufficient. Also, as there is shortage of the material considering the development of the equipment, when planning, it's involving a lot of difficulties. Thus, this study has got a purpose on giving the basic material which is essential for further study, as suggesting the planning guidelines and the alternative plans for the general and special photographing units in a general hospital.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.510-517
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• 1988

With the ligation of a patent ductus arteriosus by Gross in 1938, surgeons first entered the field of congenital heart disease, and treatment of the patent ductus is representative of the rapid advance made in thoracic surgery in the last 40 years. We have had clinical experiences about 36 cases of this in the department of Thoracic & Cardiovascular surgery, Pusan Paik Hospital, Inje medical college from March 1891 to June 1987. And the results were summarized as follows. 1. There were 11 males, 25 females. The age range of the patients were from 8 months to 36 years with the mean age of 7.9 years. 2. The chief complaints of the patients on admission were frequent URI[50%], dyspnea on exertion[29.8%], chest pain[11.1% k 1%], growth retardation[2%], cough[2.8%], anorexia[2.8%]. But there were 11 patients[30.6%] having no subjective symptoms. 3. In auscultation, the usual continuous machinery murmur was noticed in 30 patients[83.3%], only systolic murmur in 6[16.7%]. 4. In the preoperative chest P-A views, there were noticed cardiomegaly in 20 cases, enlarged pulmonary conus and / or pulmonary plethora in 22 patients[61.1%]. 5. In the preoperative EGG findings, there were noticed pattern of LVH in 8 patients[22.2`], RVH in 2[5.6%], BVH in 4[11.5%] and normal in 19[52.89o]. 6. The size of PDA[mean] was 9.5 mm[length] and 8.8 mm[width], the range of length was from 4 to 29 mm and the range of width was from 4 to 18 mm. 7. There were noticed 6 cases which were combined with other anomalies[VSD in 2 cases, Coarctation of aorta in 2, Mitral regurgitation in 1, and AP window in 1]. 8. On operation, simple ligation of the ductus was performed in 30 cases[83.3%], division and suture-ligation in 5[13.9%]. 9. Postoperative complications were noticed in 4 cases[pneumonia in one case, wound infection or disruption in 3], but there were no mortality.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.168-177
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• 2016

In this paper we present an implantable pressure sensor to measure real-time blood pressure by monitoring mechanical movement of artery. Sensor is composed of inductors (L) and capacitors (C) which are formed by microfabrication and direct bonding on two biocompatible substrates (quartz). When electrical potential is applied to the sensor, the inductors and capacitors generates a LC resonance circuit and produce characteristic resonant frequencies. Real-time variation of the resonant frequency is monitored by an external measurement system using inductive coupling. Structural and electrical simulation was performed by Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) programs, ANSYS and HFSS, to optimize geometry of sensor. Ultrafast laser (femto-second) cutting and MEMS process were executed as sensor fabrication methods with consideration of brittleness of the substrate and small radial artery size. After whole fabrication processes, we got sensors of $3mm{\times}15mm{\times}0.5mm$. Resonant frequency of the sensor was around 90 MHz at atmosphere (760 mmHg), and the sensor has good linearity without any hysteresis. Longterm (5 years) stability of the sensor was verified by thermal acceleration testing with Arrhenius model. Moreover, in-vitro cytotoxicity test was done to show biocompatiblity of the sensor and validation of real-time blood pressure measurement was verified with animal test by implant of the sensor. By integration with development of external interrogation system, the proposed sensor system will be a promising method to measure real-time blood pressure.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.340-347
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• 2008

Dipstick urinalysis is used as a routine test for a screening test of UTI (urinary tract infection) in primary practice because urine dipstick test is simple. The result of dipstick urinalysis brings medical professionals to make a microscopic examination and urine culture for exact UTI diagnosis, therefore it is emphasized on a role of screening test. The objective of this study was to the classification between UTI patients and normal subjects using hybrid neural network classifier with enhanced clustering performance in urine dipstick screening test. In order to propose a classifier, we made a hybrid neural network which combines with RBF layer, summation & normalization layer and L VQ artificial neural network layer. For the demonstration of proposed hybrid neural network, we compared proposed classifier with various artificial neural networks such as back-propagation, RBFNN and PNN method. As a result, classification performance of proposed classifier was able to classify 95.81% of the normal subjects and 83.87% of the UTI patients, total average 90.72% according to validation dataset. The proposed classifier confirms better performance than other classifiers. Therefore the application of such a proposed classifier expect to utilize telemedicine to classify between UTI patients and normal subjects in the future.