Nipah virus causes a severe, rapidly progressive encephalitis with a high mortality rate and features that suggest involvement of the brain stem. The infection is associated with recent contact with pigs.

Recent studies suggest that the main driving force behind the therapeutic activity observed in mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are the paracrine factors secreted by these cells. These biomolecules also trigger antiapoptotic events to prevent further degeneration of the diseased organ through paracrine signalling mechanisms. In comparison with the normal physiological conditions, an increased paracrine gradient is observed within the peripheral system of diseased organs that enhances the migration of tissue-specific MSCs towards the site of infection or injury to promote healing.Thus, upon administration of conditioned media derived from mesenchymal stem cell cultures (MSC-CM) could contribute in maintaining the increased paracrine factor gradient between the diseased organ and the stem cell niche in order to speed up the process of recovery. Based on the principle of the paracrine signalling mechanism, MSC-CM, also referred as the secretome of the MSCs, is a rich source of the paracrine factors and are being studied extensively for a wide range of regenerative therapies such as myocardial infarction, stroke, bone regeneration, hair growth, and wound healing. This article highlights the current technological applications and advances of MSC-CM with the aim to appraise its future potential as a regenerative therapeutic agent.

Purpose: Lyso-thermosensitive liposomal doxorubicin (LTLD) consists of doxorubicin contained within a heat-sensitive liposome. When heated to !40 C, LTLD locally releases a high concentration of doxorubicin. We aimed to determine whether adding LTLD improves the efficacy of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) lesions with a maximum diameter (d max ) of 3 to 7 cm.Experimental Design: The HEAT Study was a randomized, double-blind, dummy-controlled trial of RFA AE LTLD. The 701 enrolled patients had to have 4 unresectable HCC lesions, at least one of which had a d max of 3 to 7 cm. The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS) and a key secondary endpoint was overall survival (OS). Post hoc subset analyses investigated whether RFA duration was associated with efficacy.Results: The primary endpoint was not met; in intention-totreat analysis, the PFS HR of RFA þ LTLD versus RFA alone was 0.96 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.79-1.18; P ¼ 0.71], and the OS HR ratio was 0.95 (95% CI, 0.76-1.20; P ¼ 0.67). Among 285 patients with a solitary HCC lesion who received !45 minutes RFA dwell time, the OS HR was 0.63 (95% CI, 0.41-0.96; P < 0.05) in favor of combination therapy. RFA þ LTLD had reversible myelosuppression similar to free doxorubicin.Conclusions: Adding LTLD to RFA was safe but did not increase PFS or OS in the overall study population. However, consistent with LTLD's heat-based mechanism of action, subgroup analysis suggested that RFA þ LTLD efficacy is improved when RFA dwell time for a solitary lesion !45 minutes. Clin Cancer Res; 24(1); 73-83.Ó2017 AACR.

Tissue-mimicking phantoms that are currently available for routine biomedical applications may not be suitable for high-temperature experiments or calibration of thermal modalities. Therefore, design and fabrication of customized thermal phantoms with tailored properties are necessary for thermal therapy studies. A multitude of thermal phantoms have been developed in liquid, solid, and gel forms to simulate biological tissues in thermal therapy experiments. This article is an attempt to outline the various materials and techniques used to prepare thermal phantoms in the gel state. The relevant thermal, electrical, acoustic, and optical properties of these phantoms are presented in detail and the benefits and shortcomings of each type are discussed. This review could assist the researchers in the selection of appropriate phantom recipes for their in vitro study of thermal modalities and highlight the limitations of current phantom recipes that remain to be addressed in further studies.

Age-associated changes in natural killer (NK) cell population, phenotype, and functions are directly attributed to the risk of several diseases and infections. It is predicted to be the major cause of the increase in mortality. Based on the surface density of CD56, NK cells are subdivided into two types, such as CD56bright and CD56dim cells, which represent cytokine production and cytotoxicity. In our study, we have examined the age-associated changes in the NK cell population and their subsets at different age groups of males and females (at a range from 41 to 80 years). We found that the total lymphocyte count significantly dropped upon aging in both genders. Although, the level of total immune cells also dropped on aging, and surprisingly the total NK cell population was remarkably increased with the majority of NK cells being CD56dim. Subsequently, we evaluated the proliferation potential of NK cells and our results showed that the NK cell proliferation ability declines with age. Overall, our findings prove that there is an increase in the circulating NK cell population upon aging. However, the proliferation rate upon aging declines when compared to the young age group (<41 yrs).