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ObjectiveTo investigate the impact of enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) expression on endometrial cancer cell line behavior.Materials and MethodsEnhancer of zeste homolog 2 expression levels were compared between the nonmalignant endometrial cell line T-HESC and 3 endometrial cancer cell lines, ECC-1, RL95-2, and HEC1-A. Stable EZH2 knockdown cell lines were created, and the impact on cellular proliferation, migration, and invasion were determined. Fluorescent activated cell sorting was used to examine effects of EZH2 silencing on cell cycle progression. Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 expression in endometrial cancer tissue specimens was examined using immunohistochemistry. Comparison of differences between control and short-hairpin EZH2 cell lines was performed using the Student t test and the Fischer exact test.ResultsEnhancer of zeste homolog 2 protein expression was increased in all 3 cancer cell lines and human endometrial cancer tissue specimens relative to control. RNA interference of EZH2 expression in ECC-1, RL95-2, and HEC1-A significantly decreased cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. Down-regulation of EZH2 expression resulted in a significant increase in the proportion of cells arrested in the G2/M phase. RNA interference of EZH2 expression was associated with an increase in the expression of Wnt pathway inhibitors sFRP1 and DKK3 and a concomitant decrease in β-catenin. Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 expression in human tissue samples was significantly associated with increased stage, grade, depth of invasion, and nodal metastasis.ConclusionsEnhancer of zeste homolog 2 expression is associated with tumor cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in 3 endometrial cancer cell lines as well as with increased stage, grade, depth of invasion, and nodal metastasis in human cancer tissue specimens. Further investigation into this potential therapeutic target is warranted.

The insect bacterium Wolbachia pipientis is being introgressed into Aedes aegypti populations as an intervention against the transmission of medically important arboviruses. Here we compare Ae. aegypti mosquitoes infected with wMelCS or wAlbB to the widely used wMel Wolbachia strain on an Australian nuclear genetic background for their susceptibility to infection by dengue virus (DENV) genotypes spanning all four serotypes. All Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes were more resistant to intrathoracic DENV challenge than their wildtype counterparts. Blocking of DENV replication was greatest by wMelCS. Conversely, wAlbB-infected mosquitoes were more susceptible to whole body infection than wMel and wMelCS. We extended these findings via mosquito oral feeding experiments, using viremic blood from 36 acute, hospitalised dengue cases in Vietnam, additionally including wMel and wildtype mosquitoes on a Vietnamese nuclear genetic background. As above, wAlbB was less effective at blocking DENV replication in the abdomen compared to wMel and wMelCS. The transmission potential of all Wolbachia-infected mosquito lines (measured by the presence/absence of infectious DENV in mosquito saliva) after 14 days, was significantly reduced compared to their wildtype counterparts, and lowest for wMelCS and wAlbB. These data support the use of wAlbB and wMelCS strains for introgression field trials and the biocontrol of DENV transmission. Furthermore, despite observing significant differences in transmission potential between wildtype mosquitoes from Australia and Vietnam, no difference was observed between wMel-infected mosquitoes from each background suggesting that Wolbachia may override any underlying variation in DENV transmission potential.

Nanostructured cathode materials based on Mn-doped olivine LiMn x Fe 1−x PO 4 ( x  = 0, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3) were successfully synthesized via a hydrothermal route. The field-emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analyzed results indicated that the synthesized LiMn x Fe 1−x PO 4 ( x  = 0, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3) samples possessed a sphere-like nanostructure and a relatively homogeneous size distribution in the range of 100–200 nm. Electrochemical experiments and analysis showed that the Mn doping increased the redox potential and boosted the capacity. While the undoped olivine (LiFePO 4 ) had a capacity of 169 mAh g −1 with a slight reduction (10%) in the initial capacity after 50 cycles (150 mAh g −1 ), the Mn-doped olivine samples (LiMn x Fe 1−x PO 4 ) demonstrated reliable cycling tests with negligible capacity loss, reaching 151, 147, and 157 mAh g −1 for x  = 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3, respectively. The results from electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) accompanied by the galvanostatic intermittent titration technique (GITT) have resulted that the Mn substitution for Fe promoted the charge transfer process and hence the rapid Li transport. These findings indicate that the LiMn x Fe 1−x PO 4 nanostructures are promising cathode materials for lithium ion battery applications.

Background Street food plays a valuable role in several Asian countries including Vietnam. Improving the safety of street food is an important responsibility for many local food authorities. This study aims to characterize the business profile of fixed and mobile street food vendors, and to compare their compliance with the food safety criteria. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted using a questionnaire and observational checklist to assess the ten Vietnamese food safety criteria prescribed under Decision No. 3199/2000/QD-BYT for street food vendors in Can Tho city. A total of 400 street food vendors, composed of fixed and mobile vendors, in urban areas of the city were randomly selected for the survey. Results The study showed significant differences between the two types of street food vendors in educational level ( p = 0.017); business profile, including types of foods vended, area in use, number of employees, training in food safety, and business registration paperwork; and the status of compliance with the ten-food hygiene and safety criteria ( p < 0.01). Poisson regression analysis found that education attainment (IRR = 1.228, p = 0.015), food safety training (IRR = 4.855, p < 0.01), total business capital (IRR = 1.004, p = 0.031) and total area in use (IRR = 1.007, p = 0.001) appeared to be significantly positively associated with food safety and hygiene compliance. In contrast, mobile vending type was negatively associated with the likelihood of adhering to the ten criteria (IRR = 0.547, p = 0.005). Conclusions These findings emphasize the need for training and education programs to improve food safety knowledge and practice among street food vendors. Basic infrastructure and services, especially clean water, proper sanitation, and waste disposal facilities, should be provided to help street food vendors better practice food safety and hygiene regulations.

The elucidation of gene regulatory networks is one of the major challenges of systems biology. Measurements about genes that are exploited by network inference methods are typically available either in the form of steady-state expression vectors or time series expression data. In our previous work, we proposed the GENIE3 method that exploits variable importance scores derived from Random forests to identify the regulators of each target gene. This method provided state-of-the-art performance on several benchmark datasets, but it could however not specifically be applied to time series expression data. We propose here an adaptation of the GENIE3 method, called dynamical GENIE3 (dynGENIE3), for handling both time series and steady-state expression data. The proposed method is evaluated extensively on the artificial DREAM4 benchmarks and on three real time series expression datasets. Although dynGENIE3 does not systematically yield the best performance on each and every network, it is competitive with diverse methods from the literature, while preserving the main advantages of GENIE3 in terms of scalability.

Operation of some quarries can release radioactive materials from the deep soil to other environments that potentially impact human health. The present study investigated concentrations of radon and other radionuclides in surface soil, air, and water around two quarries in the south of Vietnam. Indoor radon concentrations ranged between 6.19 Bq m -3 and 20.6 Bq m -3 . In surface soil, the average concentrations of 40 K, 226 Ra, and 232 Th were 387, 36.5, and 44.5 Bq kg − 1 , respectively. In surface soil, the average values of radioactivity found for 40 K, 226 Ra, 238 U, and 232 Th were 2.65, 1.23, 1.12, and 1.22 mBq l -1 , respectively. The results show that the radioactive levels in the quarry region are found higher than in the nearby area. However, these levels are not enough for a recommendation for public health.

Estrogen receptor-positive (ER +) breast cancer accounts for approximately 75% of all breast cancers. Endocrine therapies, including selective ER modulators (SERMs), aromatase inhibitors (AIs), and selective ER down-regulators (SERDs) provide substantial clinical benefit by reducing the risk of disease recurrence and mortality. However, resistance to endocrine therapies represents a major challenge, limiting the success of ER + breast cancer treatment. Mechanisms of endocrine resistance involve alterations in ER signaling via modulation of ER (e.g., ER downregulation, ESR1 mutations or fusions); alterations in ER coactivators/corepressors, transcription factors (TFs), nuclear receptors and epigenetic modulators; regulation of signaling pathways; modulation of cell cycle regulators; stress signaling; and alterations in tumor microenvironment, nutrient stress, and metabolic regulation. Current therapeutic strategies to improve outcome of endocrine-resistant patients in clinics include inhibitors against mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR), cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6, and the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) subunit, p110α. Preclinical studies reveal novel therapeutic targets, some of which are currently tested in clinical trials as single agents or in combination with endocrine therapies, such as ER partial agonists, ER proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs), next-generation SERDs, AKT inhibitors, epidermal growth factor receptor 1 and 2 (EGFR/HER2) dual inhibitors, HER2 targeting antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors. In this review, we summarize the established and emerging mechanisms of endocrine resistance, alterations during metastatic recurrence, and discuss the approved therapies and ongoing clinical trials testing the combination of novel targeted therapies with endocrine therapy in endocrine-resistant ER + breast cancer patients.

We examine whether climate change news risk is priced in corporate bonds. We estimate bond covariance with a climate change news index and find that bonds with a higher climate change news beta earn lower future returns, consistent with the asset pricing implications of demand for bonds with high potential to hedge against climate risk. Moreover, when investors are concerned about climate risk, they are willing to pay higher prices for bonds issued by firms with better environmental performance. Our findings suggest that corporate policies aimed at improving environmental performance pay off when the market is concerned about climate change risk.

This paper extends the existing literature by examining an important channel through which bank competition could drive the real economy by comprehensively influencing bank lending in three components–price, volume, and quality. For the measurement of bank competition, we build a series of different structural (concentration indicators) and non-structural (Lerner, Boone, and Panzar-Rose H-statistic indexes) measures, given that the reliance on solely one individual measure could lead to a misleading conclusion. Through a sample of commercial banks during 2007–2021 in a single Vietnamese banking market, we find a decline in bank loan growth and a rise in credit risk under the pressure of high competition. With respect to the association between bank competition and the price of credit, our empirical evidence is mixed based on different measures to analyze the banking market structure. Our findings support the view that greater competition results in a less proliferated banking sector with riskier assets. We also confirm that these findings are robust to additional tests, including employing alternative measures of bank lending dimensions and market structure, removing the periods of the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, and changing the empirical estimation technique. In addition, our deeper analysis reveals that the adverse impact of bank competition on lending, shown by reduced credit supply and increased credit risk, is less pronounced for banks with a higher degree of income diversification. This result suggests that bank diversification may protect the quantity and quality of bank lending from the detrimental competition effect.