Metabolic reprogramming has been proposed to be a hallmark of cancer. Aside from glycolytic pathway, the metabolic changes of cancer cells primarily involve amino acid metabolism. However, the characteristic of amino acid metabolism-related gene set has not been systematically profiled in glioma. In this study, RNA sequencing expression data from 309 patients in the Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas database were included as training set, while another 550 patients with the Cancer Genome Atlas database were used to validate. Consensus clustering of the 309 samples yielded two robust groups. Compared with Cluster1, Cluster2 correlated with a better clinical outcome. Then, we developed an amino acid metabolism-related risk signature for glioma. Our results showed that patients in the high-risk group had dramatically shorter overall survival than low-risk counterparts in any subgroup, stratified by IDH and 1p/19q status based on the 2016 World Health Organization classification guidelines. The 30-gene signature showed the better prognostic value than the traditional factors "age" and "grade" by analyzing the receiving operator characteristic curve, with areas under curve of 0.966, 0.692, 0.898 and 0.975, 0.677, 0.885 for 3- and 5-year survival, respectively. Moreover, univariate and multivariable analysis shows that the 30-gene signature was an independent prognostic factor for glioma. Furthermore, Gene Ontology analysis and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis illustrated that the tumors with high risk score correlated with various aspects of the malignancy of glioma. In summary, we demonstrated a novel amino acid metabolism-related risk signature for predicting prognosis for glioma. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Flanged ventricular catheters are now used infrequently. Many patients with longstanding hydrocephalus still harbor these catheters, either as their current ventricular catheter, or as a retained catheter from a prior implant. The removal of flanged ventricular catheters is sometimes necessary, and may be challenging due to intraventricular adhesions. We describe the use of an endoscopic technique for the successful retrieval of flanged ventricular catheters in two patients. The technique described in this report may be helpful for patients that have flanged ventricular catheters that must be removed.

A transgenic fly line expressing wild type human Aβ42 were exposed to luteolin mixed in diet at final concentration of 5, 10, 15 and 20μM. The climbing assay, activity pattern, life span, aversive phototaxis suppression assay (APS) along with the estimation of protein carbonyl content (PCC), glutathione-S-transferase (GSTs) activity, glutathione (GSH) content, lipid peroxidation (LPO), acetylcholinesterase activity (AChE), superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, catalase (CAT) activity, caspase 3 and 9 activities in the brain of treated as well as untreated AD flies (Positive control) were studied. Histopathology of Drosophila brain sections was done by performing thioflavin-S, Bielschowsky's silver staining and toluidine blue staining. A dose-dependent increase in the life span, delay in the loss of climbing ability as well as activity was observed in AD flies exposed to luteolin compared to unexposed AD flies. A dose-dependent reduction in LPO, PCC, GST, AChE, SOD, CAT, caspase 9 and caspase 3 activity and an increase in the GSH content was also observed. Histopathological examination of fly brains using thioflavin-S and silver staining has revealed a significant dose-dependent reduction in the expression of Aβ42 peptides in AD fly groups exposed to 10, 15 and 20μM of luteolin. No gross morphological changes were observed in the brain sections of AD and control flies stained with toluidine blue. Molecular docking results have revealed that luteolin binds to AChE and Aβ42 at specific sites that might result in the inhibition of AChE and disaggregation/prevention of Aβ42 plaque formation.

We study hyper-Rayleigh scattering and computed molecular hyperpolarizability in a series of azobenzene chromophores in chloroform and dimethylformamide as solvents. The chromophores form halogen or hydrogen bonds of varying strength with dimethylformamide molecules, differently from what is expected for chloroform. We show that hyperpolarizability is unaffected or sligthly lower with the azobenzene forming the strongest halogen bond. Solid supramolecular polymers with the same chromophores have previously demonstrated clearly higher second-order nonlinear responses when a halogen-bond-accepting polymer is used, the larger increase being associated with the stronger halogen bond. The present study proves that the higher optical nonlinearity in polymers lies in the better ordering of the chromophores instead of changes in molecular hyperpolarizability, highlighting the unique properties of halogen bonding in supramolecular chemistry.