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Several members of the transmembrane protein family are associated with the biological processes of human malignancies; however, the expression pattern and biological function of one family member, TMEM184B, in hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HPSCC) are not fully understood. The expression between HPSCC tumours and adjacent normal tissues was determined by the Immunohistochemistry (IHC). A bioinformatics analysis was performed to verify the expression pattern of TMEM184B in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases. Furthermore, in vitro assays on cell proliferation, invasion, migration and in vivo experiments on tumour growth and apoptosis of TMEM184B in HPSCC were performed. We found that the HPSCC tissues had a significantly higher expression of TMEM184B than the adjacent normal tissues. Bioinformatics analysis confirmed the different expression of TMEM184B expression in HPSCC. Furthermore, in vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrated that TMEM184B promotes HPSCC cell growth, cell invasion and migration in FaDu cells, whereas flow cytometry assay showed that TMEM184B inhibited cell apoptosis. Our study revealed for the first time that TMEM184B might serve an oncogenic function in HPSCC and could be a potential diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target for HPSCC.

Background G protein‐coupled receptor 12 (GPR12) is an orphan receptor with no confirmed endogenous ligands. It plays important roles in both physiological and pathological conditions such as neurogenesis and neural inflammation. However, it remains unclear whether GPR12 regulates carcinogenesis and progression in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), such as esophageal cancer (EC) and hypopharyngeal cancer (HC). Methods The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database was applied to explore the expression of GPR12. Quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction (qRT‐PCR) was used to detect the expression of GPR12 in cancer tissues. Wound healing and transwell assays were carried out to verify the effect of GPR12 on cell migration. Flow cytometric analysis and caspase‐Glo 3/7 assay were carried out to verify the influence of GPR12 on cell apoptosis. Western blotting was used to measure the expression of proteins related to migration and apoptosis. Result The qRT‐PCR analyses showed that the expression of GPR12 decreased in EC and HC than that in their paired adjacent normal tissues. Wound healing assay and transwell assay demonstrated that GPR12 inhibited tumor cell migration. Flow cytometry analysis and Caspase‐Glo 3/7 Assay suggested that GPR12 promoted apoptosis. The mechanism of GPR12 may function via modulating caspase‐7, E‐cadherin, and α‐catenin in EC and HC cells. Conclusion In conclusion, GPR12 induced apoptosis by activating caspase‐7 and inhibited migration through epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) in EC and HC. Our findings demonstrated that GPR12 as a potential tumor suppressor mediated cell migration and apoptosis in EC and HC., GPR12 induced apoptosis by activating caspase‐7 and inhibited migration through epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) in EC and HC. Our findings demonstrated that GPR12 as a potential tumor suppressor mediated cell migration and apoptosis in EC and HC

The classification of remote sensing images with high spatial resolution requires considerable training samples, but the process of sample making is slow and laborious. How to guarantee the accuracy of supervised classification under the condition of limited samples is an urgent problem to be solved in the field of supervised classification. For addressing this problem, we propose an improved conditional generative adversarial network with edge feature (ECGAN) to augment limited training data for the classification of remote sensing images with high spatial resolution in this article. On the basis of conditional generative adversarial network, feature factors of interclass boundaries and intraclass edges are added to networks, and an objective function with multiscale and multilevel features is constructed. The ISPRS potsdam and Vaihingen remote sensing datasets are regarded as examples. Results indicate that the high-resolution remote sensing images generated by using the network proposed in this article have abundant texture, accurate edges, and are highly similar to real images. The generated images are used to augment training samples, and an experiment for classifying high-resolution remote sensing images is conducted. The classification results of the proposed augmentation method perform better than that of the traditional sample augmentation method. We prove that ECGAN as a means of sample augmentation can effectively solves the problem that the classification effect is unideal when the supervised classification sample is insufficient.

Increasing number of circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been reported to play important role in gene regulation, carcinogenesis and pathogenesis in various cancers. However, the biological functions and underlying molecular mechanisms of circRNAs in hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) remain elusive. Thus, secondary circRNA‐seq profiling was performed to identify the differentially expressed circRNAs between HSCC tissues and adjacent normal tissues, and the expression level of circMATR3 (derived from human gene matrin3 (MATR3), has_circRNA_0008922) was confirmed by qRT‐PCR. Proliferation of HSCC cells was detected by cell counting kit‐8 (CCK8) assay, apoptosis and the cell cycle were analysed by flow cytometry, and the migration and invasion of HSCC cells was determined by transwell assay. Bioinformatics analysis was conducted to predict possible pathways and potential miRNA targets of circMATR3. We found that circMATR3 was up‐regulated in HSCC tissues, and abundant circMATR3 expression was markedly correlated with late T classification, advanced clinical stage, greater lymph node metastasis, and poor prognosis. Furthermore, knock‐down of circMATR3 significantly inhibited proliferation, migration and invasion of HSCC cells, whereas silencing of circMATR3 induced cell apoptosis. Our analysis predicted that circMATR3 may participate in cancer‐related pathways by serving as miRNA sponges. In conclusion, our findings first identified the oncogenic roles of circMATR3 in promoting the progression of HSCC and demonstrated that circMATR3 may be a novel prognostic marker and therapeutic target for HSCC.

Background: Hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) is a common malignant cancer characterized by high metastasis and infiltration. The development of new approaches for the early diagnosis and identification of new therapeutic targets is essential. TIPE2 is well known as a tumor suppressor and related to a favorable prognosis of HSCC. However, its underlying mechanism remains unclear. Methods and Materials: TIPE2 expression was determined by immunohistochemistry and RT-qPCR. A TIPE2 overexpression stable cell line was generated by lentivirus infection. TIPE2 and other related protein levels were detected by western blotting. The cell cycle and apoptosis were performed by flow cytometric analysis. Cell proliferation was measured with a Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, and the activity of caspase-3 and caspase-7 was assessed by Caspase-Glo® 3/7 Assay. All data were analyzed with SPSS 25 and GraphPad Prism 8.0. Results: TIPE2 expression was significantly down-regulated in HSCC. Low TIPE2 expression may be associated with poor prognosis in HSCC. TIPE2 overexpression markedly inhibited tumor cell migration. Moreover, TIPE2 decreased cell proliferation but promoted apoptosis. TIPE2 suppressed tumor growth by activating Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) and the extrinsic apoptosis pathway. Conclusion: TIPE2 inhibited tumor progression by suppressing cell migration but promoting apoptosis. TIPE2 can be a new therapeutic target in HSCC.

Hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) accounts 95% of hypopharyngeal cancer, which is characterized by high early metastasis rate and poor prognosis. It is reported that circular RNA is involved in the occurrence and development of cancer; however, the role of circRNA in hypopharyngeal cancer has little been investigated. We performed hypopharyngeal carcinoma circRNA microarray and qRT-PCR verification. The results showed circ_0058106 expression level was significantly upregulated in tumor tissues than in corresponding normal tissues. We found that circ_0058106 upregulation promoted proliferation, migration and invasion of HSCC cells, while knockdown of circ_0058106 inhibited proliferation, migration and invasion of HSCC cells both in vitro and in vivo. Bioinformatics predicted circ_0058106 may interact with miR-185-3p. We verified circ_0058106 directly bound miR-185-3p and downregulated miR-185-3p expression by using dual-luciferase reporter assay and qRT-PCR. Moreover, we proved circ_0058106 promoted HSCC cells tumorigenesis and EMT process by regulating Wnt2b/β-catenin/c-Myc pathway via miR-185-3p. In conclusion, our findings firstly confirmed the carcinogenic effect of circ_0058106 in promoting HSCC cells tumorigenesis, metastasis, invasion and EMT process by regulating Wnt2b/β-catenin/c-Myc pathway through sponging miR-185-3p, indicating that circ_0058106 may be a new therapeutic target and prognostic marker for HSCC.

Since the prognosis of hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) remains poor, identification of miRNA as a potential prognostic biomarker for HSCC may help improve personalized therapy. In the 2 cohorts with a total of 511 patients with HSCC (discovery: N = 372 and validation: N = 139) after post‐operative radiotherapy, we used miRNA microarray and qRT‐PCR to screen out the significant miRNAs which might predict survival. Associations of miRNAs and the signature score of these miRNAs with survival were performed by Kaplan‐Meier survival analysis and multivariate Cox hazard model. Among 9 candidate, miRNAs, miR‐200a‐3p, miR‐30b‐5p, miR‐3161, miR‐3605‐5p, miR‐378b and miR‐4451 were up‐regulated, while miR‐200c‐3p, miR‐429 and miR‐4701 were down‐regulated after validation. Moreover, the patients with high expression of miR‐200a‐3p, miR‐30b‐5p and miR‐4451 had significantly worse overall survival (OS) and disease‐specific survival (DSS) than did those with low expression (log‐rank P

The authors aimed to clarify the optimal treatment strategy and the indication of different treatments in managing advanced laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC). A total of 9700 patients with advanced (T3-4aN0-3M0) LSCC who treated with (1) surgery alone, (2) surgery plus adjuvant radiation with or without chemotherapy (aCRT/RT), or (3) definitive CRT/RT was retrieved from the SEER database. The propensity score matching (PSM) was applied to balance confounding factors. Kaplan–Meier method and Cox proportional hazards regression were used to comparing the overall survival (OS) of patients. After optimal matching, 907 patients were screened from each treatment cohort. Kaplan–Meier and multivariate analyses presented that patients treated with surgery plus aCRT/CT had significantly longer OS than those treated with either surgery alone or CRT/RT, even after PSM. However, significant interactions were tested in treatment effects in stratified analyses of the primary subsite, T stage, N stage, and insurance status (PInteraction 0.05 for all). Besides, supraglottic tumors presented a poorer prognosis than glottic subsite. Current study suggests that surgery with aCRT/RT is the preferred initial therapy for patients with T4a tumors, whereas patients with T3 tumors could be treated with either surgery (followed by aCRT/RT if it presents N +) or definitive CRT/RT for achieving laryngeal preservation. More-intense treatment should be emphasized for advanced supraglottic cancer.

Additional file 1: Table S1. The impact of clinical characteristics on 5-year DFS.

Ning Wang,1,2,* Lei Wang,2,* Xinliang Pan1– 3 1Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Qilu Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Otolaryngology, Qilu Hospital (Qingdao), Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Qingdao, Shandong 266035, People’s Republic of China; 3NHC Key Laboratory of Otorhinolaryngology (Shandong University), Jinan, Shandong 250012, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Xinliang Pan Department of OtorhinolaryngologyQilu Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail panxinliangpxl2001@163.comBackground: Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) is a common type of malignant tumors of larynx, and in this study, we aimed to evaluate the functional role of long non-coding RNA TRPM2-AS in LSCC.Methods: The expression levels of TRPM2-AS in LSCC tissues and cell lines were detected by RT-qPCR analysis. In vitro functional assays, including MTT assay and transwell assay, were performed to explore the biological effects of TRPM2-AS on LSCC cells. The expression levels of EMT-relevant proteins were detected by Western blot analysis. The interaction between TRPM2-AS and miR-138 in LSCC, predicted by bioinformatic method, was verified by dual-luciferase reporter assay.Results: We observed that TRPM2-AS was highly expressed in human LSCC tissues and cell lines. LSCC patients with advanced clinical stage exhibited higher intratumoral TRPM2-AS expression. The results of functional assays demonstrated that TRPM2-AS knockdown remarkably inhibited the proliferation, migration and invasion of LSCC cells, whereas TRPM2-AS overexpression showed opposite effects. In mechanism, we further observed that TRPM2-AS directly bound to miR-138 and served as competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA), thereby increasing SOX4 expression and promoting EMT in LSCC. The oncogenic effects of TRPM2-AS in LSCC cells were partly diminished by miR-138 restoration.Conclusion: In short, our findings provided first evidence that TRPM2-AS is highly expressed and exerts its oncogenic role in LSCC partly by miR-138/SOX4 axis.Keywords: laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma, long non-coding RNA TRPM2-AS, miR-138, SOX4, EMT

Monitoring of offshore aquaculture zones is important to marine ecological environment protection and maritime safety and security. Remote sensing technology has the advantages of large-area simultaneous observation and strong timeliness, which provide normalized monitoring of marine aquaculture zones. Aiming at the problems of weak generalization ability and low recognition rate in weak signal environments of traditional target recognition algorithm, this paper proposes a method for automatic extraction of offshore fish cage and floating raft aquaculture zones based on semantic segmentation. This method uses Generative Adversarial Networks to expand the data to compensate for the lack of training samples, and uses ratio of green band to red band (G/R) instead of red band to enhance the characteristics of aquaculture spectral information, combined with atrous convolution and atrous space pyramid pooling to enhance the context semantic information, to extract and identify two types of offshore fish cage zones and floating raft aquaculture zones. The experiment is carried out in the eastern coastal waters of Shandong Province, China, and the overall identification accuracy of the two types of aquaculture zones can reach 94.8%. The results show that the method proposed in this paper can realize high-precision extraction both of offshore fish cage and floating raft aquaculture zones.

Hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) remains one of the most lethal malignancies in the head and neck. Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) HOXA11-AS is proven to function as an oncogene and a therapeutic target in various tumors. Our previous study and others have demonstrated that HOXA11-AS is one of the most upregulated lncRNAs in HSCC. However, the role of HOXA11-AS in HSCC has not yet been identified. The current study demonstrated that the expression of HOXA11-AS was significantly upregulated in HSCC tumors and was positively associated with lymph node metastasis. Moreover, functional experiments revealed that HOXA11-AS knockdown suppressed the proliferation and migration potential in FaDu cells. Furthermore, luciferase reporter gene assay combined with cellular functional experiments demonstrated that HOXA11-AS functioned as a molecular sponge for miR-155, and inhibition of miR-155 attenuated the suppressive effect of HOXA11-AS knockdown on the aggressive phenotype in HSCC. This study identifies a tumor-promoting role of HOXA11-AS in HSCC and suggests HOXA11-AS might be a potential diagnostic and therapeutic target for HSCC.

Sweroside, as one of the main components of Swertia L. in Gentianaceae, has the effect of clearing heat and detoxifying. In previous studies, sweroside has been reported to have anti-inflammatory effect on LPS-induced inflammation by alleviating NF-κB signaling pathway. In this paper, we investigate the anti-inflammatory effects of sweroside by establishing LPS-induced acute lung injury (ALI) model in mice. Experimental results showed that sweroside could reduce the wet-to-dry ratio of the lung and inhibit MPO activity. In addition, it turned out that sweroside reduced pathological changes in lung tissue and the numbers of inflammatory cells. Moreover, sweroside significantly reduced the levels of inflammatory cytokines and down-regulated the NF-κB signaling pathway. And the results demonstrated that sweroside could increase the expression of SIRT1, and the protective effects of sweroside on LPS-induced ALI were reversed by SIRT1 inhibitor EX-527. In conclusion, sweroside can protect LPS-induced ALI mice through inhibiting inflammation.

Hypopharyngeal cancer (HC) is the most common subset of head and neck cancers. These tumors often have an aggressive clinical outcome characterized by local invasion and regional nodal metastasis. Upregulated miRNAs might be useful as biomarkers for prognosis and molecular targets for these tumors. We determined tumor expression of candidate miRNAs using microarray in 8 HC patients and validated in 372 HC patients. We also used paired tumorous and mucosal tissue to verify the miRNA expression. Log-rank test and Cox model were used to evaluate the survival; and Harrell's C-index was used to compare concordance of Cox models. Our results indicated 7 miRNAs aberrantly expressed in HC. Three of these candidate miRNAs (miRNA-4415, miRNA-200a, and miRNA-30b) were selected for further qRT-PCR validation and all of them were frequently found upregulated in HC tumors; with miR-4451 being the most differentially expressed. Moreover, high expression of miR-4451 was positively correlated with advanced tumor stage and increased mortality risk (HR: 1.6, 95% CI: 1.2-2.3; adjusted HR: 1.5, adjusted 95% CI: 1.1-2.1). Finally, significantly higher expression of miR-4451 in tumors compared to in fresh adjacent normal tissues indicates an oncogenic role of miR-4451 in this tumor. Upregulated miR-4451 in HC samples were frequently found and is significantly associated with advanced stage and poor survival of HC, which may indicate an association of this miRNA with the carcinogenesis process in this tumor site; and they could serve as a prognostic biomarker as well as help develop potential new targets for therapy.

To evaluate clinical features, diagnosis, surgical management, and treatment of parapharyngeal space tumors in a single-center setting due to limited knowledge of diagnosis and treatment of parapharyngeal space.Clinical records of 103 patients were included for the analysis of such clinical characteristics.A total of 29 different types of tumors were diagnosed after operation: 20 benign and 9 malignant. With a follow-up of 31-84 months for 90 benign cases, 84 cases had no recurrence and 6 cases were lost to follow-up. In contrast, with an 8- to 51-month follow-up for 13 malignant cases, 11 patients died and 2 were lost to follow-up. Furthermore, for postoperative complications, 3 cases had Horner syndrome, 2 had hoarseness, 2 had facial nerve dysfunction, and each for other types.Surgery remains the first choice for the treatment of parapharyngeal space tumors, with the transcervical approach used for most tumors. Moreover, CT or MRI may assist in making decisions about operation schemes.

// Jieyu Zhou 1, 2, * , Shengda Cao 1, * , Wenming Li 1 , Dongmin Wei 1 , Zhentao Wang 2 , Guojun Li 3, 4 , Xinliang Pan 1 and Dapeng Lei 1 1 Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Key Laboratory of Otolaryngology, NHFPC - Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, 250012, P.R. China 2 Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200011, P.R. China 3 Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, 77030, USA 4 Department of Epidemiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, 77030, USA * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Xinliang Pan, email: panxinl915@126.com Dapeng Lei, email: leidapeng@sdu.edu.cn Keywords: hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma, radioresistance, lncRNA, mRNA, microarray Received: December 05, 2016 Accepted: April 10, 2017 Published: April 21, 2017 ABSTRACT Radioresistance remains a major problem in the treatment of patients with hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC). Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have important roles in the development, invasion, and metastasis of various tumors, including HSCC, but little is known about the role of lncRNAs in cancer radioresistance. The aim of this study was to identify radioresistance-related lncRNAs and mRNAs in radioresistant (RS) hypopharyngeal cancer subclone RS-FaDu cells. In this study, we performed microarray analysis to find the differences in time-course lncRNA and mRNA expression profiles between RS-FaDu and parent FaDu cells after 4 Gy radiation therapy, whose reliability was confirmed by validation experiment. Among these consistently dysregulated lncRNAs, we found that some lncRNAs (e.g., TCONS_00018436) might control resistance of HSCC cells to radiation. Furthermore, our bioinformatics analyses from mRNA/lncRNA microarray data showed that certain lncRNAs or mRNAs potentially are involved in radioresistance of HSCC. Our results from this study laid the foundation for further investigating the roles of these lncRNAs and mRNAs as promising candidates in the occurrence and development of HSCC radioresistance.

Jianing Xu,1,2 Yuanwei Zang,3 Shengda Cao,1,2 Dapeng Lei,1,2 Xinliang Pan1,2 1Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, People’s Republic of China; 2NHC Key Laboratory of Otorhinolaryngology, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Urology, Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, China Background: Hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) is among the most lethal tumors encountered in the head and neck, and currently lacks satisfactory therapeutic targets. Platelet activating factor acetylhydrolase 1B3 (PAFAH1B3), a cancer-relevant metabolic driver, is reported to play a critical role in controlling tumorigenesis and aggressiveness in several types of cancers. However, the role of PAFAH1B3 in HSCC progression has not yet been identified. Methods: The expression pattern of PAFAH1B3 was examined using immunohistochemistry in 83 HSCC tumor tissues and 44 paired adjacent non-tumor samples. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to explore its association with prognosis of HSCC. In vitro loss-of-function assays were performed to explore the impact of PAFAH1B3 knockdown on the biological phenotype of the human HSCC cell line, ie, FaDu cells. Results: PAFAH1B3 was overly expressed in the HSCC tumor tissues compared with the adjacent non-tumor samples. Moreover, high expression of PAFAH1B3 was positively correlated with cervical lymph node metastasis. PAFAH1B3 overexpression was associated with poor outcome in HSCC, but it was not an independent prognostic indicator. Furthermore, in vitro loss-of function experiments demonstrated that PAFAH1B3 knockdown suppressed cell proliferation by inducing apoptosis and disrupting cell cycle process, and the migratory and invasive capacities were also attenuated in the absence of PAFAH1B3. Conclusion: This study for the first time demonstrated the clinical value and the role of PAFAH1B3 in the biological function of HSCC. This work suggested that PAFAH1B3 might serve as a potential therapeutic target for HSCC patients. Keywords: hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma, platelet activating factor acetylhydrolase 1B3, prognosis, cell proliferation, migration, invasion

Tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) are the key components in the tumour microenvironment. TAMs have two major subtypes, M1 and M2. M1 macrophages are tumour inhibitory, while M2 macrophages are tumour promotive. Repolarising TAMs from M2 to M1 is a promising strategy in cancer treatment. M1 and M2 macrophages were generated from murine bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs). We found that chloroquine (CQ), an autophagy inhibitor, was able to repolarise M2 macrophages to the anti-tumour M1 phenotype. The repolarised macrophages demonstrated higher phagocytotic activity towards Hep-2 laryngeal tumour cells and re-sensitised Hep-2 cells to cisplatin (CDDP) treatment in vitro. While CQ did not demonstrate cytotoxicity to Hep-2 cells in vitro, CQ treatment reduced Hep-2 laryngeal tumour growth in vivo and improved CDDP treatment outcomes. It seems that CQ-induced M2-to-M1 macrophage repolarisation played an important role in tumour growth inhibition, and the CQ/CDDP combined therapy might have clinical potential in laryngeal cancer treatment.

Hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) is among the most lethal tumors encountered in the head and neck and frequently involves regional metastasis. However, the mechanism underlying the aggressiveness of HSCC remains elusive. S100A4 is a well-established metastasis-promoting regulator in a variety of malignancies, but its role in HSCC has not yet been identified. Our objectives were to explore the expression levels of S100A4 in HSCC tumors and its association with clinicopathological parameters and the clinical prognosis of HSCC and to confirm its role in the metastatic process of the HSCC FaDu cell line in vitro. We assessed the expression levels of S100A4 with immunohistochemistry (IHC) in HSCC tumors (n = 71) and adjacent normal tissues (n = 44). In vitro experiments were performed to explore the impact of S100A4 knockdown on biological phenotypes of human HSCC FaDu cell line, including migration, invasion, proliferation, apoptosis, and cell cycle. The expression of S100A4 was elevated in HSCC tumors compared with adjacent normal tissues and positively correlated with cervical lymph node metastasis in this HSCC patient cohort. In vitro experiments showed that S100A4 knockdown significantly impaired migration and invasion and increased the proportion of cells in G0/G1 phase with no change in proliferation or apoptosis in FaDu cells. Additionally, nuclear S100A4 expression proved to be an independent prognostic indicator in patients with HSCC. This study demonstrated for the first time that S100A4 expression is upregulated in HSCC tumors and that this upregulation is positively correlated with cervical lymph node metastasis of this malignancy. The metastasis-promoting role of S100A4 was further validated in the HSCC FaDu cell line, indicating that S100A4 is a potential therapeutic target for HSCC. Furthermore, this study suggests that nuclear S100A4 expression could be considered a prognostic biomarker for HSCC.

Objectives. We sought to identify the expression of CD68-tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and CD34-microvascular density (MVD) in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), to study the relationship with clinical pathological parameters and to determine whether their expression is predictive of disease. Methods. Pathologically confirmed 45 LSCC tissue and 20 peritumoral non-tumor tissue were examined. Immunohistochemical studies were used to detect the expression of CD68-TAMs and CD34-MVD. Results. The positive expression rate of CD68 in LSCC tissue was 82% (37/45), which was higher than the 10% (2/20) expression rate of the peritumoral tissue (P

Objective To investigate the effect and mechanism of action of metformin on proliferation of a human hypopharyngeal carcinoma cell line (FaDu). Methods FaDu cells were treated with metformin (25–125 mmol/l). Cell proliferation was evaluated via CCK-8 assay. Real-time quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction was used to evaluate microRNA (miR)-21-5p and PDCD4 (programmed cell death 4) expression. PDCD4 protein was quantified by Western blot. Results Metformin significantly inhibited FaDu cell proliferation in a dose- (25–100 mmol/l) and time-dependent manner (12 h–36 h), significantly downregulated miR-21-5p, and upregulated PDCD4 mRNA and protein expression. Conclusions Metformin significantly inhibited FaDu cell proliferation , possibly via downregulation of miR-21-5p and upregulation of PDCD4.

The present study aimed to identify the role of caveolin-1 (CAV1) in hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) and identify its possible correlation with tumor clinical parameters. Expression of CAV1 was measured using immunohistochemical staining of 66 HSCC samples and 44 samples from morphologically normal tissues adjacent to the carcinomas. Expression of CAV1 in HSCC and paracancerous tissues were 71.2 and 9.5% respectively. Levels of CAV1 expression were significantly associated with tumor differentiation, tumor-node-metastasis stage and lymph nodes metastasis (P

Laryngeal cancer is an uncommon form of cancer. The tumor suppressor P16, known to be mutated or deleted in various types of human tumor, including laryngeal carcinoma, is involved in the formation and development of laryngeal carcinoma. It has been previously reported that the inactivation or loss of P16 is associated with the acquisition of malignant characteristics. The current study hypothesized that restoring wild‑type P16 activity into P16‑null malignant Hep2 cells may exert an antitumor effect. A recombinant adenovirus carrying the P16 gene (Ad‑P16) was used to infect and express high levels of P16 protein in P16‑null Hep2 cells. Cell proliferation and invasion assays and polymerase chain reaction were performed to evaluate the effects of the P16 gene on cell proliferation and the antitumor effect on Hep2 cells. The results demonstrated that the Hep2 cells infected with Ad‑P16 exhibited significantly reduced cell proliferation, invasion and tumor volume compared with untreated or control adenovirus cells. Furthermore, the expression of laryngeal carcinoma‑associated genes, EGFR, survivin and cyclin D1, were measured in Ad‑P16‑infected cells and were significantly reduced compared with control groups. The results of the current study demonstrate that restoring wild‑type P16 activity into P16-null Hep2 cells exerts an antitumor effect.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are associated with the development, progression, and prognosis of human cancers. However, the clinical significance and biological function of lncRNAs in hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) remain largely unknown. We characterized the novel lncRNA AB209630 in vivo and in vitro. First, using qRT-PCR, we evaluated whether AB209630 levels differ between HSCC tissues/cell lines and adjacent normal tissues/cell lines. We then assessed whether AB209630 expression levels stimulate or inhibit proliferation, invasion, apoptosis, and metastasis in vitro. Finally, we investigated whether AB209630 levels in tumor tissues were associated with survival outcomes. Our results demonstrated that AB209630 levels were markedly lower in HSCC tissues and cells than in normal tissues and cells, and increased expression of AB209630 level significantly inhibited growth, metastasis, and invasion and stimulated apoptosis in vitro. In addition, patients with decreased expression of AB209630 had a significantly poorer prognosis than those with high AB209630 expression. These data suggest that increased expression of AB209630 might either stimulate or inhibit biological activities involved in HSCC development, indicating a potential application of AB209630 in future treatment for this disease. This study suggest that AB209630 functions as a tumor suppressor in HSCC, and its decreased expression may help predict a poor prognostic outcome of HSCC. Our future work will focus on the mechanisms of whether and how AB209630 as a tumor suppressor gene is involved in HSCC development.

The sea surface temperature (SST) is an important parameter of the energy balance on the Earth&rsquo, s surface. SST prediction is crucial to marine production, marine protection, and climate prediction. However, the current SST prediction model still has low precision and poor stability. In this study, a medium and long-term SST prediction model is designed on the basis of the gated recurrent unit (GRU) neural network algorithm. This model captures the SST time regularity by using the GRU layer and outputs the predicted results through the fully connected layer. The Bohai Sea, which is characterized by a large annual temperature difference, is selected as the study area, and the SSTs on different time scales (monthly and quarterly) are used to verify the practicability and stability of the model. The results show that the designed SST prediction model can efficiently fit the results of the real sea surface temperature, and the correlation coefficient is above 0.98. Regardless of whether monthly or quarterly data are used, the proposed network model performs better than long short-term memory in terms of stability and accuracy when the length of the prediction increases. The root mean square error and mean absolute error of the predicted SST are mostly within 0&ndash, 2.5 &deg, C.

Mariculture is crucial in environmental monitoring and safety assurance of marine environments. Certain mariculture areas are often partially or completely submerged in water, which causes the target signal to be extremely weak and difficult to detect. A method of target recognition and classification based on the convolutional neural network called semantic segmentation can fully consider the space spectrum and context semantic information. Therefore, this study proposes a target extraction method on the basis of multisource feature fusion, such as nNDWI and G/R ratio. In this work, the proposed recognition algorithm is verified under the conditions of uniform distribution of strong, weak, and extremely weak signals. Results show that the G/R feature is superior under the condition of uniform distribution of strong and weak signals. Its mean pixels accuracy is 2.32% higher than RGB (combination of red band, green band, and blue band), and its overall classification accuracy is 98.84%. Under the condition of extremely weak signal, the MPA of the multisource feature method based on the combination of G/R and nNDWI is 10.76% higher than RGB, and the overall classification accuracy is 82.02%. Under this condition, the G/R features highlight the target, and nNDWI suppresses noise. The proposed method can effectively extract the information of weak signal in the marine culture area and provide technical support for marine environmental monitoring and marine safety assurance.

Large intraclass variance and low interclass variance are among the most challenging problems in very high-resolution (VHR) image classification. Semantic segmentation constructed in a deep convolution neural network is used as a classification algorithm conducted via end-to-end training, which combines spectral–spatial features and context information. However, large-scale remote sensing images cannot be directly processed because they are limited by GPU memory and segmentation algorithm. At the same time, classification using single band combinations is also unsatisfactory due to the extraordinary complex features of VHR images. Therefore, a method is proposed based on multiple band combinations and patchwise scene analysis. A complex remote sensing image can be considered as into a combination of simple scenes from multiple patchwise images. And optimal band combinations of each patchwise image are selected according to their scene. The segmentation results of each patchwise image are merged to get the desired results according to geographical coordinates. Our method is validated on the ISPRS 2-D Semantic Labeling dataset of Potsdam, on which results competitive with the state-of-the-art are obtained. The proposed scheme has strong universality and can be used for large-scale high-resolution remote sensing image classification.

BACKGROUND The ability to precisely predict which intubations will be difficult during administration of anesthesia is an important part of preoperative preparation. This study's goal is to accurately identify patients who will be difficult to intubate using the number of tracheal rings observed preoperatively by fiberoptic laryngoscopy. METHODS We enrolled 994 adult patients in our study who required general anesthesia and orotracheal intubation for their elective surgeries. All patients received a Mallampati Test, a Wilson Risk-Sum Score, and fiberoptic laryngoscopy before operation. Each patient's age, Body Mass Index (BMI), and neck circumference was recorded preoperatively. Logistic regression analysis was applied to evaluate the association between the recorded risk factors and a potentially difficult intubation. The three preoperative assessments were compared using three parameters: positive predictive value, sensitivity, and specificity. RESULTS The risk factors which were determined to be predictive for difficult intubation were: BMI, neck circumference, Mallampati Test, Wilson Risk-Sum Score, and fiberoptic laryngoscopy (P

Background/Aims: Researchers have shown that long noncoding RNAs are closely associated with the pathogenesis of laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC). However, the role of the long noncoding RNA taurine-upregulated gene 1 (TUG1) in the pathogenesis of LSCC remains unclear, although it is recognized as an oncogenic regulator for several types of squamous cell carcinoma. Methods: qRT-PCR was performed to measure the expression of TUG1 in LSCC tissues and cell lines. 3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2-H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) was used to measure the effect of TUG1 on cell proliferation. Transwell assay and flow cytometry were employed to determine the effect of TUG1 on cell migration and invasion. Western-blot were performed to explore the relation of TUG1 and p53 mRNA. Results: Higher TUG1 expression in LSCC than in paired normal tumor-adjacent tissue specimens ( N = 64) was observed using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Also, high TUG1 expression was positively associated with advanced T category, worse lymph node metastasis and late clinical stage. Furthermore, in vitro experiments demonstrated that silencing of TUG1 markedly inhibited proliferation, cell-cycle progression, migration, and invasion of LSCC cells, whereas depletion of TUG1 led to increased apoptosis. Conclusion: These findings demonstrated that upregulated TUG1 expression exerted oncogenic effects by promoting proliferation, migration, and invasion, and inhibiting apoptosis in LSCC cells.

The aims of the present study were to review the experience of different surgical reconstruction methods for hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC) and compared the survival of patients with and without laryngeal function (LF) preservation. The clinical characteristics of 580 patients were retrospectively obtained and analyzed. Survival curves were analyzed using the Kaplan‑Meier method for survival and Cox models for hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). LF was preserved in 403 cases and not preserved in 177 cases. The 3‑ and 5‑year survival rates were 70.9 and 52.7%, respectively, in the LF preservation group and 48.4 and 30.5%, respectively, in the no LF preservation group. Compared with the patients without LF preservation, patients with LF preservation had a significantly reduced risk of overall death (HR=0.63, 95% CI: 0.50-0.80). LF preservation positively affects the prognosis of patients with HSCC.

The E26 transformation-specific (ETS) family is one of the largest families of transcription factors. Upon activation by MAPK pathway, ETS participates in cell proliferation, differentiation, migration, apoptosis, and metastasis. However, the mechanism by which ETS is deregulated in cancer is unclear. In this study, the authors investigated the role of ETS factor, ETS2, in hypopharyngeal cancer pathogenesis in hypopharyngeal cancer tissues (N = 20) and corresponding non-neoplastic tissues (N = 20). The results showed that expression of ETS2 was increased in cancer tissues as compared with the expression in corresponding non-neoplastic tissues. Analysis of clinicopathological characteristics showed that increased level of ETS2 is associated with III-IV tumor node metastasis stage and lymph node metastasis. In addition, knockdown of ETS2 by siRNA in pharyngeal cancer cell line, FaDu, significantly decreased cell's vitality and colony-forming ability by inducing caspase-3-dependent apoptosis and cell cycle arrest. Furthermore, inhibition of ETS2 could abrogate the migration, invasion, and transforming growth factor-β-induced epithelial mesenchymal transition through the upregulation of E-cadherin, zona occludens protein-1, together with downregulation of vimentin and α-sooth muscle actin. These functions of ETS2 could be associated with the activation of MAPK/p38/ERK/JNK signals. Taken together, the authors opined that ETS2 functions as an oncogene and plays a key role in the progression of hypopharyngeal cancer.

Vertebrobasilar insufficiency (VBI) presents complex varied clinical symptoms, including vertigo and hearing loss. Little is known, however, about how Ca(2+)-activated K(+) channel attributes to the medial vestibular nucleus (MVN) neural activity in VBI. To address this issue, we performed whole-cell patch clamp and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to examine the effects of hypoxia on neural activity and the changes of the large conductance Ca(2+) activated K(+) channels (BKCa channels) in the MVN neurons in brain slices of male C57BL/6 mice. Brief hypoxic stimuli of the brain slices containing MVN were administrated by switching the normoxic artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) equilibrated with 21% O2/5% CO2 to hypoxic ACSF equilibrated with 5% O2/5% CO2 (balance N2). 3-min hypoxia caused a depolarization in the resting membrane potential (RM) in 8/11 non-spontaneous firing MVN neurons. 60/72 spontaneous firing MVN neurons showed a dramatic increase in firing frequency and a depolarization in the RM following brief hypoxia. The amplitude of the afterhyperpolarization (AHPA) was significantly decreased in both type A and type B spontaneous firing MVN neurons. Hypoxia-induced firing response was alleviated by pretreatment with NS1619, a selective BKCa activator. Furthermore, brief hypoxia caused a decrease in the amplitude of iberiotoxin-sensitive outward currents and mRNA level of BKCa in MVN neurons. These results suggest that BKCa channels protect against abnormal MVN neuronal activity induced by hypoxia, and might be a key target for treatment of vertigo and hearing loss in VBI.