Ovarian cancer is one of the three major malignant tumors common in the female reproductive system. One of the types, ovarian epithelial cancer, is the leading cause of gynecological cancer. Ovarian cancer is divided into four stages according to different stages of development. Because the early symptoms are not obvious, it is often difficult to find and treat. When the stage is advanced, the 5-year survival rate of patients will be greatly reduced. According to the official data of the American Cancer Society (ACS), if a timely diagnosis and treatment can be carried out in the first phase, the patient's 5-year survival rate can reach 92%!
To this end, researchers from MIT have developed a more sensitive detection method to detect early ovarian cancer, and their findings were published in the April 10 issue of Nature Biomedical Engineering. In current clinical examinations, whether imaging techniques such as MRI or detection of biomarkers in blood, only tumors with a diameter of 1 cm or more can be detected.
Pathological section staining of patients with ovarian cancer
However, the advancement of the new method has been confirmed in mice, it can detect tumors less than 2mm in diameter, and can be detected in the human body about 5 months earlier than the existing method! Moreover, the researchers said that in addition to ovarian cancer, their method is also applicable to other cancers.
The new method has two important components, one is synthetic biomarkers; the other is nanoprobes. The idea of ​​synthesizing biomarkers was proposed by the author of the study, Professor Sangeeta Bhatia. As early as 2012, she published a study in the journal Nature Biotechnology to find specific proteins secreted by tumors as biomarkers. This protein is a matrix metalloproteinase (MMP). MMP is secreted by tumors and can help new blood vessels and "extend" into surrounding tissues, allowing cancer cells to grow and spread.
Professor Sangeeta Bhatia
At the time, Professor Bhatia's team also designed a nanoparticle with a surface coated with a peptide that could be cut by members of the MMP family. The peptides are designed with fluorescent sequences that, when cut off, emit fluorescence. These "fluorescent peptides" are excreted in the urine, and researchers can diagnose cancer by analyzing the amount of fluorescence in the urine.
Vitamins are a kind of trace organic substances that humans and animals must obtain from food in order to maintain normal physiological functions. They play an important role in the growth, metabolism, and development of the human body. In the body, this kind of substance can neither be a raw material for body tissue nor a source of energy, but a kind of regulating substance, which plays an important role in material metabolism.
From the point of view of chemical structure, various vitamins are very different or even unrelated. Therefore, vitamins are usually classified according to their physical properties. They can be divided into fat-soluble vitamins (such as vitamin A, D, E, K, etc.) and water-soluble vitamins ( Such as vitamin C, vitamin B1, B2, B6, B12, pantothenic acid, PP, biotin, folic acid, choline, etc.). Water-soluble vitamins are easily soluble in water but not soluble in organic solvents. They are stored in the body after absorption. Excessive amounts are mostly eliminated in the urine; fat-soluble vitamins are easily soluble in organic solvents but not in water. They can be absorbed by the body with fat and stored in the body, and the excretion rate is not high.
From the perspective of obtaining methods, vitamins can be divided into natural products and chemical synthetic products. Because natural vitamins are limited by raw materials and extraction technology, their yields are low, and their prices are high. Therefore, chemical synthesis takes the lead, accounting for about 80% of the total vitamin output. Among the various segments of the vitamin industry, vitamin B, vitamin E, vitamin C and vitamin A have the largest market shares, 33%, 30%, 21% and 13% respectively. Other vitamins have a smaller market share, accounting for only 3%.
Vitamin C,vitamin b3,vitamin raw material
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