No abstract

Chronic inflammation is one of the critical causes to promote the initiation and metastasis of solid malignancies including lung cancer (LC). Here, we aimed to investigate the prognostic roles of albumin (Alb)‐to‐fibrinogen (Fib) ratio (AFR), Fib and Alb in LC and to establish a novel effective nomogram combined with AFR. Four hundred twelve LC patients diagnosed between February 2005 and December 2014 were recruited in this prospective study. The prognostic roles of AFR, Fib, Alb, neutrophil‐to‐lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet‐to‐lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and monocyte‐to‐lymphocyte ratio (MLR) were identified by X‐tile software, Kaplan–Meier curve, Cox regression model, and time‐dependent ROC. Pretreatment high circulating Fib, low AFR, and Alb were significantly associated with increased risk of death for LC patients, especially for non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients in all stages. The area under curves (AUCs) of AFR, Fib, and NLR were higher than them within Alb and PLR for predicting the survival of NSCLC patients. Moreover, we found that clinical outcome of high AFR patient with chemo‐radiotherapy was superior to low AFR patient; overall survival rate of stage II‐III NSCLC patients undergoing chemo‐radiotherapy was significantly lower than the surgical patients with treatment of adjuvant chemo‐radiotherapy(P = 0.001) in low AFR subgroup. On the contrary, clinical outcome of the patients receiving chemo‐radiotherapy was the same to the patients undergoing surgery and adjuvant chemo‐radiotherapy (P = 0.405) in high AFR subgroup. In addition, c‐index of predicted nomogram including AFR (0.717) for NSCLC patients with treatment of chemo‐radiotherapy was higher than that without AFR (0.707). Our findings demonstrated that circulating pretreatment AFR might be a potential biomarker to predict clinical efficacy of surgical resection and adjuvant chemo‐radiotherapy and be a prognostic biomarker for NSCLC individuals.

No abstract

The inability of damaged load-bearing cartilage to regenerate and self-repair remains a long-standing challenge in clinical settings. In the past, the use of PVA hydrogels as cartilage replacements has been explored; however, both pristine and annealed PVA are not ideal for load-bearing cartilage applications, and new materials with improved properties are highly desirable. In this work, we developed a novel hybrid hydrogel system consisting of glycerolmodified PVA hydrogel reinforced by a 3D printed PCL-graphene composite scaffold. The composition of the hydrogel within the hybrid material was optimized to achieve high water retention and enhanced stiffness. The hybrid hydrogel formed by reinforcement with a 3D printed PCL-graphene scaffold with optimized architecture demonstrated desirable mechanical properties (stiffness, toughness, and tribological properties) matching those of natural loadbearing cartilage. Our novel hydrogel system has also been designed to provide drug release and on-demand photothermal conversion functions and at the same time offers excellent biocompatibility with low cell adhesion. These promising properties may allow our unique hybrid hydrogel system to be used for potential applications, such as load-bearing cartilage repair/replacement, as well as targeting certain challenging clinical conditions, such as the treatment of severe arthritis.

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