In cancer, T cells become dysfunctional owing to persistent antigen exposure. Dysfunctional T cells are characterized by reduced proliferative capacity, decreased effector function, and overexpression of multiple inhibitory receptors. Due to the presence of various inhibitory signals in the complex tumor microenvironment, tumor-specific T cells have distinct dysfunction states. Therapeutic reactivation of tumor-specific T cells has yielded good results in cancer patients. Here, we review the hallmarks of T cell dysfunction in cancer. Also, we discuss the relationship between T cell dysfunction and cancer immunotherapy.
26 May 2020 in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Objective: To assess whether vaginal secretions and breast milk of women with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) contain severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2).Design: Single centre cohort study.Setting: Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei province, China.Population: We studied 13 SARS‐CoV‐2‐infected pregnant women diagnosed between 31 January and 9 March 2020.Methods: We collected clinical data, vaginal secretions, stool specimens and breast milk from SARS‐CoV‐2‐infected women during different stages of pregnancy and collected neonatal throat and anal swabs.Main outcomes and measures: We assessed viral presence in different biosamples.Results: Of the 13 women with COVID‐19, five were in their first trimester, three in their second trimester and five in their third trimester. Of the five women in their third trimester who gave birth, all delivered live newborns. Among these five deliveries, the primary adverse perinatal outcomes included premature delivery (n = 2) and neonatal pneumonia (n = 2). One of nine stool samples was positive; all 13 vaginal secretion samples, and five throat swabs and four anal swabs collected from neonates, were negative for the novel coronavirus. However, one of three samples of breast milk was positive by viral nucleic acid testing.Conclusions: In this case series of 13 pregnant women with COVID‐19, we observed negative viral test results in vaginal secretion specimens, suggesting that a vaginal delivery may be a safe delivery option. However, additional research is urgently needed to examine breast milk and the potential risk for viral contamination.Tweetable New evidence for the safety of vaginal delivery and breastfeeding in pregnant women infected with SARS‐CoV‐2, positive viral result in a breast‐milk sample.
Rationale: Emerging evidence demonstrates that insufficient migration and invasion of trophoblasts play critical roles in the pathogenesis of recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA). Cell-to-cell communication at the maternal-fetal interface is essential to maintain the invasion and migration of trophoblasts. M1 macrophages, important immune cellular components at the maternal-fetal interface, have been reported to be elevated in decidua tissues from patients with RSA. Recent studies indicate that M1 macrophages modulate trophoblast biological behaviors; however, the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common reproductive endocrine disorder affecting women, which can lead to infertility. Infertility, obesity, hirsutism, acne, and irregular menstruation are just a few of the issues that PCOS can be linked to. PCOS has a complicated pathophysiology and a range of clinical symptoms. Chronic low-grade inflammation is one of the features of PCOS. The inflammatory environment involves immune and metabolic disturbances. Numerous organ systems across the body, in addition to the female reproductive system, have been affected by the pathogenic role of immunological dysregulation in PCOS in recent years. Insulin resistance and hyperandrogenism are associated with immune cell dysfunction and cytokine imbalance. More importantly, obesity is also involved in immune dysfunction in PCOS, leading to an inflammatory environment in women with PCOS. Hormone, obesity, and metabolic interactions contribute to the pathogenesis of PCOS. Hormone imbalance may also contribute to the development of autoimmune diseases. The aim of this review is to summarize the pathophysiological role of immune dysregulation in various organ systems of PCOS patients and provide new ideas for systemic treatment of PCOS in the future.
10 September 2019 in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters
Hyperspectral image (HSI) contains complex multiple structures. Therefore, the key problem analyzing the intrinsic properties of an HSI is how to represent the structure relationships of the HSI effectively. Hypergraph is very effective to describe the intrinsic relationships of the HSI. In general, Euclidean distance is adopted to construct the hypergraph. However, this method cannot effectively represent the structure properties of high-dimensional data. To address this problem, we propose a sparse-adaptive hypergraph discriminant analysis (SAHDA) method to obtain the embedding features of the HSI in this letter. SAHDA uses the sparse representation to reveal the structure relationships of the HSI adaptively. Then, an adaptive hypergraph is constructed by using the intraclass sparse coefficients. Finally, we develop an adaptive dimensionality reduction mode to calculate the weights of the hyperedges and the projection matrix. SAHDA can adaptively reveal the intrinsic properties of the HSI and enhance the performance of the embedding features. Some experiments on the Washington DC Mall hyperspectral data set demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed SAHDA method, and SAHDA achieves better classification accuracies than the traditional graph learning methods.
Vascular endothelial cells (ECs) senescence correlates with the increase of cardiovascular diseases in ageing population. Although ECs rely on glycolysis for energy production, little is known about the role of glycolysis in ECs senescence. Here, we report a critical role for glycolysis-derived serine biosynthesis in preventing ECs senescence. During senescence, the expression of serine biosynthetic enzyme PHGDH is significantly reduced due to decreased transcription of the activating transcription factor ATF4, which leads to reduction of intracellular serine. PHGDH prevents premature senescence primarily by enhancing the stability and activity of pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2). Mechanistically, PHGDH interacts with PKM2, which prevents PCAF-catalyzed PKM2 K305 acetylation and subsequent degradation by autophagy. In addition, PHGDH facilitates p300-catalyzed PKM2 K433 acetylation, which promotes PKM2 nuclear translocation and stimulates its activity to phosphorylate H3T11 and regulate the transcription of senescence-associated genes. Vascular endothelium-targeted expression of PHGDH and PKM2 ameliorates ageing in mice. Our findings reveal that enhancing serine biosynthesis could become a therapy to promote healthy ageing.