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Metastasis is a hallmark of malignant neuroblastoma and is the main reason for therapeutic failure and recurrence of the tumor. The CXC chemokine receptor-4 (CXCR4), a Gi protein-coupled receptor for the ligand CXCL12/stromal cell-derived factor-1α (SDF-1α), is expressed in various types of tumor. This receptor mediates the homing of tumor cells to specific organs that express the ligand, CXCL12, for this receptor and plays an important role in tumor growth, invasion, metastasis and angiogenesis. In the present study, the inflammatory cytokine, tumor necrosis factor‑α (TNF‑α) upregulated CXCR4 expression in neuroblastoma cells and increased migration to the CXCR4 ligand SDF‑1α. In addition, this effect was dependent upon NF-κB transcriptional activity, as blocking the NF-κB pathway with pyrrolidinedithiocarbamic acid ammonium salt suppressed TNF-α‑induced upregulation of CXCR4 expression and reduced the migration towards the CXCR4 ligand, SDF-1α. Treating neuroblastoma cells with TNF-α resulted in the activation of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) and subsequently, the translocation of NF-κB from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. Using immunohistochemistry, NF‑κB and CXCR4 were significantly correlated with each other (P=0.0052, Fisher's exact test) in a cohort of neuroblastoma samples (n=80). The present study indicates that the inflammatory cytokine, TNF-α, partially functions through the NF‑κB signaling pathway to upregulate CXCR4 expression to foster neuroblastoma cell metastasis. These findings indicate that effective inhibition of neuroblastoma metastasis should be directed against the inflammatory cytokine-induced NF‑κB/CXCR4/SDF‑1α signaling pathway.

The goal of this work was to make particleboards for manufacturing pallets from wheat straw using low cost urea formaldehyde (UF) resin adhesive. The wheat straws were subject to steam explosion pretreatment to improve bondability with UF resin. Particleboards were obtained from the steam explosion pretreated wheat straws with UF resin. Particleboard manufacturing parameters, such as pressing time, temperature and board density, were optimized to achieve high performance panel board for pallets. The optimum parameters were found to be: hot press temperature 170 °C, hot press time 40 s/mm, resin application ratio 10%, and straw particle size 12 mm. Under the optimum conditions particleboards met the mechanical requirements for the industrial use particleboards based on the Chinese National Standard for Particleboard and were able to make pallets.

In the present study, we researched the influence of storage time on quality of soy protein-celery composite paper. During the storage time, the protein content in the paper does not change significantly; Aerobic plate counts were decreased along with the increase of the storage time; Composite paper and celery paper color index values indicated that their value was related to the color yellowish-green (-2 to +2), except for celery paper in the 0 months; papers DPPH• radical scavenging rate sharply decreased, and was not detected till the third months.

Bonding of agricultural lignocellulosic fibers can be improved by liquid hot water pretreatment. This work applied liquid hot water pretreatment to rice straw. The pretreated rice straw was used to make binderless particleboard. The effect of reaction temperature and residence time on the yield of cellulose pulps, chemical composition of rice straw, and modulus of rupture, internal bond and water absorption of the resulted binderless particleboard were investigated. The results indicated that the yield of cellulose pulps decreased with increasing reaction temperature and residence time, whereas the degradation of hemicellulose increased. The modulus of rupture and internal bond increased while water absorption of panels decreased as pretreatment severity increased. The optimum pretreatment condition, with 18.1 MPa of modulus of rupture, 0.240 MPa internal bond and 63.7% of water absorption of panels, occurred under 170°C temperature and 15 minute residence time.

To globally characterize the stroma expression profile of superficial bladder transitional cell carcinoma and to discuss the cancer biology as well as biomarker discovery from stromal cells. Laser capture microdissection was used to harvest purified bladder cancer stromal cells and normal stromal cells from 4 paired samples. Next, two-dimensional liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry was used to identify the proteome expression profile. The differential proteins were further analyzed using bioinformatics tools and compared with the published literature. A total of 606/601 proteins commonly appeared in 4 paired samples. Six hundred and thirty-seven proteins were differentially expressed between cancer and normal stroma. Among them, 321/316 proteins specific expressed in cancer/normal stromal cells. Differential proteins were compared with the entire list of the international protein index (IPI). 36/49 GO terms exhibited as enriched and 25/14 exhibited as depleted in biological process; 39/40 GO terms exhibited as enriched and 9/4 exhibited as depleted in cellular component, respectively. Significantly altered pathways between cancer/normal stroma mainly include focal adhesion, EHEC, oxidative phosphorylation, glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, TCA cycle. Finally, descriptive statistics show the data that PI ≤ 8 have normal distribution and the proteins with extremes of PI and MW have the same probability to be a biomarker. The present study identified the proteome expression profile of bladder cancer stromal cells and normal stromal cells. Furthermore, our results confirm proteins origin from stroma play important role in cancer biology and highlight a novel view of cancer and stress the importance of including factors related to the cancer stroma into biomarker discovery.

Wheat straw is one of the most abundant and cheap lignocellulosic waste materials in the world. Nowadays, field burning is the major practice for removing wheat straw due to lack of effective utilization, but it increases the air pollution and consequently affects public health. Wheat straw is an attractive lignocellulosic raw material for binderless particleboard production. In this study, steam explosion was adopted as pretreatment method for wheat straw. The pretreated wheat straw was used to produce binderless particleboard panels. The influence of both pretreatment temperature and residence time on chemical composition of wheat straw, and modulus of rupture, internal bond and water absorption of panel boards was investigated. The results showed that defiberation of wheat straw raw material occurred during steam explosion pretreatment. The modulus of rupture and internal bond increased while water absorption of panels decreased as pretreatment severity increased. The optimum pretreatment condition, with 19.8 MPa of modulus of rupture, 0.2572 MPa internal bond and 61.5% of water absorption of panels, occurred under 170°C temperature and 10 minute residence time.

Summary Neuroblastoma is the most common malignant tumour in infancy; the reversion-inducing cysteine-rich protein with Kazal motifs gene (RECK) is a tumour suppressor gene. Previous studies show that RECK inhibits tumour invasion and metastasis through negative regulation of the matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2, MMP-9 and MMP-14. Therefore, we wanted to detect the expression of RECK and MMP-14 in neuroblastomas to assess the correlation between the expression levels of these proteins, and to investigate the roles in the metastasis and development of the tumour. PV-6000 immunohistochemistry method was used to detect the expression levels of RECK and MMP-14 in 36 samples of neuroblastoma tissue. Samples from paraffin wax-embedded specimens and the complete clinicopathological data of 36 neuroblastoma and 10 ganglioneuroma patients were collected. The rate of expression of the RECK protein in the neuroblastoma was low (16.7%). Furthermore, it reduced with the increase in the invasive depth and distant metastasis (P = 0.015; P

In this work, several β-zeolite-incorporated polymer composite membranes were fabricated with the solution-casting method. The zeolite loadings were 10, 20, and 30 wt %, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy characterization showed that the zeolite particles could be uniformly distributed in the whole polymer matrix. Gas permeation results demonstrated that after the incorporation of the same β-zeolite, the polyimide exhibited a significant increase in gas permeability but a decrease in permselectivity, and both were quite pronounced at high zeolite loadings; this resulted from the loose structure that formed. The poly(ether sulfone) composite membranes showed obvious increases in both permeability and selectivity, and the permeability increase was considerably greater at higher zeolite loadings. The permselectivity increase could possibly be attributed to the pore sieving and preferential adsorption of β-zeolite entities for the test gases as the heat treatment may have resulted in the formation of a defect-free microstructure. However, breakthrough of the upper-bound line was not achieved for these composite membranes, as reflected by Robeson plots. Our results suggest that changes in membrane performance not only are attributable to the properties and content of β-zeolite particles but also depend on the heterogeneous microstructure created by zeolite entities. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009

To facilitate biomarker discovery and improve cancer biology research of superficial bladder transitional cell carcinoma (SBTCC).Laser capture microdissection and two-dimensional liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry was used to identified the proteome expression profile of purified normal urothelial cells (cancer cells)/normal stromal cells (cancer stromal cells). Based on the expression profile, biomarker discovery and the mechanisms of multi-step carcinogenesis were discussed.775/792 proteins commonly appeared in 4 paired cancer/normal tissue. 339 differential proteins located at the well-known biological KEGG pathways and defined as potential biomarkers. 53/31 proteins specific repeat expression in cancer tissue/normal tissue and thought to play important role in tumor--stroma interactions.Proteins origin from cancer or stromal cells have the same probability to be a biomarker. The significant altered pathways mainly include metabolic pathways, spliceosome, endocytosis, oxidative phosphorylation, etc. Most of the specific repeat expression proteins act important role in cancer biology.