Search

Keloid disease is a benign skin disease that does not have an effective therapy. More and more research shows that epidermal abnormalities are involved in keloid pathogenesis. Little is known about the relationship between the abnormal epidermal immunophenotype and clinical outcome. Nine-color flow cytometry with computational analysis was performed to detect the altered cellular subpopulation distribution in keloid lesions. Receiver operating characteristic curves were drawn to compare predictive ability between the alteration of cell subgroup frequency and the Vancouver Scar Scale. The frequency of CD49f hi /CD29 + /TLR7 + cellular subsets increased in the keloid epidermis compared with that in the healthy control. CD49f mid-hi /CD29 + /TLR7 + /CD24 + cellular subpopulation level was increased significantly in keloids, whereas CD49f lo-mid /CD29 ‒ /TLR7 ‒ /CD24 ‒ cellular subpopulation frequency was decreased. The CD49f lo /CD29 ‒ /TLR7 ‒ /CD24 + /CD117 + cellular subpopulation showed an increased frequency during recurrence with a sensitivity of 66.7% and specificity of 91.7%. The area under the curve was 0.806 for cellular subpopulation analysis, which was higher than the area under the curve for the Vancouver Scar Scale (0.583). The alteration of keloid epidermal subpopulation frequency is related to recurrence, which will provide an optional predictive marker for keloid recurrence and a potential target subset for investigating the generation of keloid., (Copyright © 2021 West China Hospital of Sichuan University, China. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: The detection and dissection of epidermal subgroups could lead to an improved understanding of skin homeostasis and wound healing. Flow cytometric analysis provides an effective method to detect the surface markers of epidermal cells while producing high-dimensional data files., Methods: A 9-color flow cytometric panel was optimized to reveal the heterogeneous subgroups in the epidermis of human skin. The subsets of epidermal cells were characterized using automated methods based on dimensional reduction approaches (viSNE) and clustering with Spanning-tree Progression Analysis of Density-normalized Events (SPADE)., Results: The manual analysis revealed differences in epidermal distribution between body sites based on a series biaxial gating starting with the expression of CD49f and CD29. The computational analysis divided the whole epidermal cell population into 25 clusters according to the surface marker phenotype with SPADE. This automatic analysis delineated the differences between body sites. The consistency of the results was confirmed with PhenoGraph., Conclusion: A multicolor flow cytometry panel with a streamlined computational analysis pipeline is a feasible approach to delineate the heterogeneity of the epidermis in human skin.

In the previous study, we had showed the expression of CD133+ CD54+ CD44+ cellular subpopulation of circulating tumor cells ( CTCs) was significantly associated with liver metastasis of colorectal cancer ( CRC). This study aimed to explore whether this subpopulation of CTCs have a prognostic value in CRC patients. Flow cytometry was used to detect the expression of cellular subpopulations of CTCs with CD133, CD54, and CD44 in 152 CRC patients, between December 2013 and October 2014. The impact of clinicopathological factors and the expression of cellular subpopulations of CTCs on overall survival were then analyzed. CRC patients with liver metastases who underwent resection of the primary tumor accompanied by surgical treatment for metastasis had a better survival than other patients ( P < 0.001). The liver metastatic CRC patients with high expression of CD133+ CD54+ ( P < 0.001), CD133− CD54+ ( P = 0.004), and CD133+ CD44+ CD54+ ( P = 0.003) cellular subpopulations of CTCs had a worse survival than those patients with low expression. Multivariable survival analyses identified carcinoembryonic antigen levels (hazard ratio [ HR] = 3.056; 95% confidence interval [ CI] = 1.354-6.897; P = 0.007), treatment strategy ( HR = 0.212; 95% CI = 0.056-0.808; P = 0.023), and CD133+ CD44+ CD54+ cellular subpopulation of CTCs ( HR = 6.459; 95% CI = 1.461-28.558; P = 0.014) as independent prognostic factors for CRC patients with liver metastasis. CD133+ CD44+ CD54+ cellular subpopulation of CTCs has a prognostic value in CRC patients with liver metastasis, especially in the survival of CRC patients with liver metastasis who did not undergo surgical treatment for metastasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]