Evans blue (EB) dye has owned a long history as a biological dye and diagnostic agent since its first staining application by Herbert McLean Evans in 1914. Due to its high water solubility and slow excretion, as well as its tight binding to serum albumin, EB has been widely used in biomedicine, including its use in estimating blood volume and vascular permeability, detecting lymph nodes, and localizing the tumor lesions. Recently, a series of EB derivatives have been labeled with PET isotopes and can be used as theranostics with a broad potential due to their improved half-life in the blood and reduced release. Some of EB derivatives have even been used in translational applications in clinics. In addition, a novel necrosis-avid feature of EB has recently been reported in some preclinical animal studies. Given all these interesting and important advances in EB study, a comprehensive revisiting of EB has been made in its biomedical applications in the review.

Background: Accurate and reproducible behavioral tests in animal models are of major importance in the development and evaluation of new therapies for central nervous system disease. In this study we investigated for the first time gait parameters of rat models for Parkinson's disease (PD), Huntington's disease (HD) and stroke using the Catwalk method, a novel automated gait analysis test. Static and dynamic gait parameters were measured in all animal models, and these data were compared to readouts of established behavioral tests, such as the cylinder test in the PD and stroke rats and the rotarod tests for the HD group. Results: Hemiparkinsonian rats were generated by unilateral injection of the neurotoxin 6-hydroxydopamine in the striatum or in the medial forebrain bundle. For Huntington's disease, a transgenic rat model expressing a truncated huntingtin fragment with multiple CAG repeats was used. Thirdly, a stroke model was generated by a photothrombotic induced infarct in the right sensorimotor cortex. We found that multiple gait parameters were significantly altered in all three disease models compared to their respective controls. Behavioural deficits could be efficiently measured using the cylinder test in the PD and stroke animals, and in the case of the PD model, the deficits in gait essentially confirmed results obtained by the cylinder test. However, in the HD model and the stroke model the Catwalk analysis proved more sensitive than the rotarod test and also added new and more detailed information on specific gait parameters. Conclusion: The automated quantitative gait analysis test may be a useful tool to study both motor impairment and recovery associated with various neurological motor disorders.

Cancer remains a major cause of death globally. Given its relapsing and fatal features, curing cancer seems to be something hardly possible for the majority of patients. In view of the development in cancer therapies, this article summarizes currently available cancer therapeutics and cure potential by cancer type and stage at diagnosis, based on literature and database reviews. Currently common cancer therapeutics include surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy. However, treatment with curative intent by these methods are mainly eligible for patients with localized disease or treatment-sensitive cancers and therefore their contributions to cancer curability are relatively limited. The prognosis for cancer patients varies among different cancer types with a five-year relative survival rate (RSR) of more than 80% in thyroid cancer, melanoma, breast cancer, and Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The most dismal prognosis is observed in patients with small-cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, oesophagal cancer, acute myeloid leukemia, non-small cell lung cancer, and gastric cancer with a five-year RSR ranging between 7% and 28%. The current review is intended to provide a general view about how much we have achieved in curing cancer as regards to different therapies and cancer types. Finally, we propose a small molecule dual-targeting broad-spectrum anticancer strategy called OncoCiDia, in combination with emerging highly sensitive liquid biopsy, with theoretical curative potential for the management of solid malignancies, especially at the micro-cancer stage.

The fertilised chick egg and particularly its chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) have drawn continuing interest in biomedicine and bioengineering fields, especially for research on vascular study, cancer, drug screening and development, cell factors, stem cells, etc. This literature review systemically introduces the CAM’s structural evolution, functions, vascular features and the circulation system, and cell regulatory factors. It also presents the major and updated applications of the CAM in assays for pharmacokinetics and biodistribution, drug efficacy and toxicology testing/screening in preclinical pharmacological research. The time course of CAM applications for different assays and their advantages and limitations are summarised. Among these applications, two aspects are emphasised: (1) potential utility of the CAM for preclinical studies on vascular-disrupting agents (VDAs), promising for anti-cancer vascular-targeted therapy, and (2) modern imaging technologies, including modalities and their applications for real-time visualisation, monitoring and evaluation of the changes in CAM vasculature as well as the interactions occurring after introducing the tested medical, pharmaceutical and biological agents into the system. The aim of this article is to help those working in the biomedical field to familiarise themselves with the chick embryo CAM as an alternative platform and to utilise it to design and optimise experimental settings for their specific research topics.

This dual-targeting approach appears to be a more natural, versatile, and relatively simple anticancer strategy that allows higher targeted radiation delivery and greater probability of complete tumor response. PurposeTo test the hypothesis that targeting the microenvironment (soil) may effectively kill cancer cells (seeds) through a small–molecular weight sequential dual-targeting theragnostic strategy, or dual-targeting approach.Materials and MethodsWith approval from the institutional animal care and use committee, 24 rats were implanted with 48 liver rhabdomyosarcomas (R1). First, the vascular-disrupting agent combretastatin A4 phosphate (CA4P) was injected at a dose of 10 mg/kg to cause tumor necrosis, which became a secondary target. Then, the necrosis-avid agent hypericin was radiolabeled with iodine 131 to form 131I-hypericin, which was injected at 300 MBq/kg 24 hours after injection of CA4P. Both molecules have small molecular weight, are naturally or synthetically derivable, are intravenously injectable, and are of unique targetablities. The tumor response in the dual-targeting group was compared with that in vehicle-control and single-targeting (CA4P or 131I-hypericin) groups with in vivo magnetic res...