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Background: Although the incidence of adenocarcinoma of the esophagogastric junction (AEG) has been increasing since the past decade, the proportion of AEG cases in two previous clinical trials (ACTS-GC and CLASSIC) that investigated the efficacy of adjuvant chemotherapy was relatively small. Therefore, whether AEG patients can benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy remains unclear. Methods: Patients who were diagnosed with pathological stage II/III, Siewert II/III AEG, and underwent curative surgery at three high-volume institutions were assessed. Clinical outcomes were analyzed by using Kaplan-Meier curves, log-rank test, and Cox regression model. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to reduce the selection bias. Results: A total of 927 patients were included (the chemotherapy group: 696 patients; the surgery-only group: 231 patients). The median follow-up was 39.0 months. The 5-year overall survival was 63.1% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 59.0-67.6%) for the chemotherapy group and 50.2% in the surgery-only group (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.54-0.88; p = 0.003). The 5-year, disease-free survival was 35.4% for the chemotherapy group and 16.6% for the surgery-only group (HR = 0.66, 95% CI: 0.53-0.83; p < 0.001). After PSM, the survival benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy for AEG was maintained. Multivariate analysis for overall survival and disease-free survival further demonstrated the survival benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy, with HRs of 0.63 (p < 0.001) and 0.52 (p < 0.001), respectively. Conclusions: Postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy was associated with improved overall survival and disease-free survival in patients with operable stage II or III AEG after D2 gastrectomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The present study aims to report the surgical outcome and long-term survival of conversion surgery and clarify its role in advanced gastric cancer. Patients and Methods: A total of 95 primary advanced gastric adenocarcinoma patients who underwent systemic chemotherapy and conversion surgery were reviewed retrospectively. The survival of conversion surgery was analyzed by Cox regression and the Kaplan–Meier method. Surgical outcomes were analyzed according to the Clavien–Dindo classification. Results: The median survival time (MST) of the 95 patients was 26.8 months, and the postoperative MST was 19.3 months. The MSTs of the patients in categories 1, 2, 3, and 4 were 28.8, 25.5, 43.6, and 11.3 months, respectively. The MSTs of the patients who underwent R0 resection (47 cases) and R1/2 resection (48 cases) were 49.3 months and 21.9 months, respectively. The MST of patients treated with total gastrectomy was shorter (21.9 months) than that of patients who underwent proximal (55.0 months) or distal (46.3 months) gastrectomy. Patients who received more than 6 cycles of induction chemotherapy had a longer MST than patients who received 3–5 cycles or 1–2 cycles (MST: 55.0 months versus 21.1 months versus 21.7 months). The incident postoperative complications and postoperative mortality rates were 10.5% and 1.1%, respectively. Conclusions: Advanced gastric cancer patients may obtain a survival benefit from conversion surgery, except category 4. Performing a sufficient number of cycles of induction chemotherapy (usually ≥ 6 cycles) is recommended. Surgical oncologists should perform R0 resection and avoid total gastrectomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel milk-clotting enzyme (MCE) produced by Bacillus amyloliquefaciens GSBa-1 was purified and identified to belong to the peptidase M4 family, and the mature peptide with milk-clotting activity (MCA) was a neutral metalloproteinase with molecular mass of about 38 kDa. The optimal pH and temperature were determined to be at 5.5 and 57 °C for MCA, and at 7.0 and 57 °C for the proteolytic activity, respectively. The MCE exhibited slight autolysis that could be inhibited by Ca2+ and Na+. Hydrolysis of caseins revealed that κ-casein exhibited higher sensitivity to the MCE action than α- and β-casein. By in-gel tryptic digestion and LC–MS/MS analysis of the major peptide (about 13 kDa) generated from hydrolysis of κ-casein by the MCE, the cleavage site was identified to be at Lys 111–Lys 112, which was different from those of other MCEs reported earlier. The MCE from B. amyloliquefaciens GSBa-1 could serve as a novel milk coagulant for potential application in making cheese with desired proteolysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, we deal with the monotonicity of the function $$x\mapsto x(c+be^{-ax^{p}}){/}\int _{0}^{x}e^{-t^{p}}dt$$ for $$a,b,c,p>0$$ on $$(0,\infty )$$ and prove that the double approximating inequality holds for all $$x>0$$ if and only if $$0

In the article, we present new bounds for the function $e^{t\cot(t)-1}$ on the interval $(0, \pi/2)$ and find sharp estimations for the Sine integral and the Catalan constant based on a new monotonicity criterion for the quotient of power series, which refine the Redheffer and Becker-Stark type inequalities for tangent function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]