This study aims to assess the association of the preoperative neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) with tumor stage in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. A retrospective study was performed in 336 CRC patients. Preoperative whole blood counts, serum levels of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), and clinicopathologic data were collected. The correlations between laboratory parameters and the tumor, node, and metastasis (TNM) stages were analyzed. The clinicopathologic TNM stages among CRC patients were 12.8 % at stage I, 32.4 % at stage II, 44.6 % at stage III, and 10.1 % at stage IV. NLR, PLR, and CEA levels were higher in CRC patients compared to healthy controls (all P < 0.0001). Both NLR and PLR showed an early elevation as compared to CEA, with a higher area under curve (AUC) value (0.71 vs. 0.62) in predicting the presence of the tumor with stage I/II. Accordingly, significant elevations of NLR (P = 0.0018) and PLR (P < 0.0001) were firstly detected in stage I and stage II, respectively. In addition, NLR exhibited a second phase elevation in stage IV, with a significant higher level in M1 subgroup compared to M0 subgroup (P = 0.022). While PLR showed a T stage-dependent increase (P = 0.0003) and was identified as an independent factor for the T grade development (P < 0.0001). Our data indicated that both neutrophil- and platelet-mediated inflammatory reactions are predominantly involved in the different stages of CRC development. Determination of pretreatment levels of NLR and PLR might provide useful information for the early diagnosis or the therapeutic choices in CRC patients.

We concluded that the concentration of TK1 in serum correlates to clinical stages and clinical reactions and monitors the effect of tumor therapies, not only in controlled clinical trials, but also in routine clinical settings.

Heat-stable antifungal factor (HSAF), which was first isolated from Lysobacter enzymogenes, exhibits inhibitory activities against a wide range of pathogens; however, a low level of HSAF was obtained from L. enzymogenes cultured in 0.1 × tryptic soy broth (TSB), an amount that does not satisfy HSAF application in disease control. In this study, the optimization of media components and environmental conditions were examined for improving the production of HSAF from L. enzymogenes OH11. The one factor at a time method was used to screen optimal nitrogen and carbon sources and inorganic salt. Then the orthogonal matrix method was used to determine the optimal concentration of the media components and environmental factors. The results showed that the maximum level of HSAF (23361 mAU·s) was achieved when OH11 cultured in the media of 0.7% (w/v) soybean powder, 0.5% (w/v) glucose and 0.08% CaCl2 at 200 rpm at 30°C for 60 h, which is much higher than that cultured in 0.1 × TSB. This opens up the possibility of HSAF or L. enzymogenes utilization for biological control of plant disease.

No abstract