Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been largely reported to contribute to the development and progression of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), a common vascular degenerative disease. The present study was set out with the aim to investigate the possible role of lncRNA Sox2ot in the development of AAA. In this study, we found that lncRNA Sox2ot and early growth response factor-1 (Egr1) were highly expressed, while microRNA (miR)-145 was poorly expressed in Ang II-induced AAA mice and oxidative stress-provoked vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) model. Egr1 was a potential target gene of miR-145, and lncRNA Sox2ot could competitively bind to miR-145 to upregulate Egr1 expression. Overexpression of miR-145-5p was found to attenuate oxidative stress and inflammation by inhibiting Egr1 both in vivo and in vitro , which was counteracted by lncRNA Sox2ot. Taken together, the present study provides evidence that downregulation of lncRNA Sox2ot suppressed the expression of Egr1 through regulating miR-145, thus inhibiting the development of AAA, highlighting a theoretical basis for AAA treatment.

Optical multicasting based inverse multiplexing (IM) is introduced in spectrum allocation of elastic optical network to resolve the spectrum fragmentation problem, where superchannels could be split and fit into several discrete spectrum blocks in the intermediate node. We experimentally demonstrate it with a 1-to-7 optical superchannel multicasting module and selecting/coupling components. Also, simulation results show that, comparing with several emerging spectrum defragmentation solutions (e.g., spectrum conversion, split spectrum), IM could reduce blocking performance significantly but without adding too much system complexity as split spectrum. On the other hand, service fairness for traffic with different granularity of these schemes is investigated for the first time and it shows that IM performs better than spectrum conversion and almost as well as split spectrum, especially for smaller size traffic under light traffic intensity.

Programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) and T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-containing protein-3 (Tim-3) play important roles in tumor immune evasion. PD-1 blockade could produce an effective antitumor effect in many solid tumors except prostate cancer (PCa) because of rare programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) expression on PCa cells. Streptavidin (SA)-GM-CSF surface-anchored tumor cell (Anchored GM-CSF) vaccines could increase the number of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and induce specific antitumor immune responses. The Anchored-GM-CSF vaccine and anti-PD-1 antibodies exerted synergistic effects in mouse models of PCa metastasis. However, the response rate was low due to the presence of other negative regulatory pathways. Tim-3 expression could be upregulated at resistance to combination therapy with anti-PD-1 antibodies and the Anchored GM-CSF vaccine. Sequential administration of anti-PD-1 and anti-Tim-3 antibodies could further improve the efficacy of the Anchored GM-CSF vaccine therapy, and tumor regression was noted in over 60% of animals. This triple therapy improved the specific cytotoxic activity, proliferation and secretion of CD8 + TILs and reduced the production of tumor-promoting cytokines. These findings indicated that this triple therapy could induce a robust antitumor immune response in mouse models of PCa.Key words: programmed death receptor-1, T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-containing protein-3, prostate cancer, vaccine, immunotherapy.

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