Alterations in the tumor microenvironment are closely associated with the metabolic phenotype of tumor cells. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) play a pivotal role in tumor growth and metastasis. Existing studies have suggested that lactate produced by tumor cells can activate CAFs, yet the precise underlying mechanisms remain largely unexplored. In this study, we initially identified that lactate derived from lung cancer cells can promote nuclear translocation of NUSAP1, subsequently leading to the recruitment of the transcriptional complex JUNB-FRA1-FRA2 near the DESMIN promoter and facilitating DESMIN transcriptional activation, thereby promoting CAFs' activation. Moreover, DESMIN-positive CAFs, in turn, secrete IL-8, which recruits TAMs or promotes M2 polarization of macrophages, further contributing to the alterations in the tumor microenvironment and facilitating lung cancer progression. Furthermore, we observed that the use of IL-8 receptor antagonists, SB225002, or Navarixin, significantly reduced TAM infiltration and enhanced the therapeutic efficacy of anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1 treatment. This finding indicates that inhibiting IL-8R activity can attenuate the impact of CAFs on the tumor microenvironment, thus restraining the progression of lung cancer.

OBJECTIVES Uniportal subxiphoid video-assisted thoracoscopic (SVATS) surgery for major lung resections is a new approach, but clinical evidence is lacking. The aim of this study was to examine our experience with the use of the uniportal subxiphoid approach in video-assisted thoracoscopic (VATS) major lung resections and lymph node dissections. METHODS From October 2014 to August 2015, 153 patients with early-stage non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) and benign disease underwent uniportal subxiphoid VATS major lung resections. Patients were placed in a lateral position with 60–70° inclination, and a 4- to 5-cm midline median or transverse incision was made below the sternocostal triangle. A 10-mm 30° video camera and VATS instruments were used through the same single incision. Perioperative variables and outcomes were collected prospectively and analysed retrospectively. RESULTS Of the 153 patients who underwent surgery with the uniportal subxiphoid VATS approach, 105 had lobectomies and 48 had segmental resections; 135 cases of lung cancer and 18 cases of benign pulmonary disease were noted. Right upper lobectomy was the most common procedure (51%), and left upper lobectomy was the most time-consuming procedure (190 ± 21 min). The mean operating time was 166.9 ± 12.6 min; the average volume of blood loss was 127.5 ± 27.6 ml. In patients with lung cancer, the mean total number of lymph node stations explored was 3.4 ± 0.8. The duration of chest drain use was 2.6 ± 0.2 days. The length of hospital stay was 4.3 ± 0.4 days. Perioperative arrhythmia was the most common complication (13% of cases). Prolonged air leak was the cause of prolonged hospital stay. Five cases were converted to conventional VATS due to technical difficulties, and eight cases were converted to thoracotomy due to major bleeding. Postoperative 30-day mortality was zero and there were no re-admissions. All cases had a R0 complete cancer resection on histology. CONCLUSIONS Uniportal subxiphoid VATS lobectomy/segmentectomy is a feasible and safe procedure for early-stage lung cancer and benign disease.

This paper proposes a novel three dimensional probabilistically shaped carrier-less amplitude phase (3D-PS-CAP) modulation based on constellation design using regular tetrahedron cells, which is capable of being applied in short reach communication. Geometric shaping based on regular tetrahedron cells for 3D constellation, combined with probabilistic shaping, can increase the constellation figure of merit (CFM) of the 3D constellation and improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of the 3D-PS-CAP modulation scheme. An experiment demonstrating 4 Gb/s 3D-PS-CAP-16 data transmission over 25 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) is successfully carried out. Results show that at the BER of ${1\times10^{-3}}$ , the proposed uniform 3D-CAP-16 outperforms the traditional counterparts by 1.1 dB receiver sensitivity gain. Moreover, in the entropy of 3.6 bits/symbol, the proposed 3D-PS-CAP-16 obtains 0.6 and 1.0 dB receiver sensitivity gains compared to the two traditional 3D-PS-CAP-16, respectively. The experimental results indicate the proposed scheme a bright prospect for future short reach communication.

Background: Recently, PANoptosis has aroused the interest of researchers for its role in cancers. However, the studies that investigated PANoptosis in lung cancer are still few.Methods: The public data were mainly collected from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus database. R software was utilized for the analysis of public data. Quantitative real-time (qRT) polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to measure the RNA level of FADD. The cell proliferation ability was evaluated using the CCK8, colony formation, and 5-ethynyl-2′-deoxyuridine (EdU) assays. Western blot was used to detect the protein level of specific molecules. Flow cytometry analysis and TUNEL staining were used to evaluate cell apoptosis.Results: In our study, we collected the PANoptosis-related genes from previous studies. Through series analysis, we identified the FADD, an adaptor of PANoptosis and apoptosis, for further analysis. Results showed that FADD is one of the prominent risk factors in lung cancer, mainly localized in nucleoplasm and cytosol. We next performed immune infiltration analysis and biological enrichment to illustrate the underlying cause of FADD in lung cancer. Subsequently, we discovered that the patients with a high level of FADD might respond worse to immunotherapy but better to AICAR, bortezomib, docetaxel, and gemcitabine. In vitro experiments indicated that inhibiting FADD could reduce significantly the ability of cancerous lung cells to proliferate. Meanwhile, we found that the knockdown of FADD promotes the apoptosis and pyroptosis. Ultimately, a prognosis signature was identified based on the FADD-regulated genes, which showed satisfactory prediction efficiency on patients with lung cancer.Conclusion: Our result can provide a novel direction for future studies focused on the role of PANoptosis in lung cancer.

OBJECTIVES This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of bronchial sleeve lobectomy with pulmonary arterioplasty by uniportal video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (UniVATS) in centrally located non-small-cell lung cancer. METHODS One hundred and two thoracotomy and 31 UniVATS cases were included in this retrospective, single-centre study. Baseline characteristics, perioperative performance and survival outcomes were compared between the 2 groups. RESULTS Compared with the thoracotomy group, the UniVATS group was associated with lower postoperative blood transfusion rate (P = 0.043), decreased postoperative hospital stays (P = 0.008), shorter drainage duration (P = 0.003) and less drainage volume during the first postoperative 24 h (P = 0.005). Besides, the 3-year overall survival and recurrence-free survival were comparable between the 2 groups (log-rank, P = 0.81 and P = 0.78, respectively). In addition, squamous cell carcinoma was proved to be the independent favourable predictor for overall survival [hazard ratio (HR) 0.44, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.24–0.80; P = 0.008], and advanced pathological stage was found to be independently associated with worse overall survival (IIIB stage: HR 3.21, 95% CI 1.13–9.12; P = 0.028) and recurrence-free survival (IIIB stage: HR 3.54, 95% CI 1.32–9.51; P = 0.012). CONCLUSIONS With appropriate patient selection, UniVATS sleeve lobectomy with pulmonary arterioplasty is feasible and safe for centrally located lung cancer in the hands of thoracic surgeons with extensive thoracoscopy experience.