Discriminating hepatocellular carcinoma in rats using a high-Tc SQUID detected nuclear resonance spectrometer in a magnetic shielding box

Applications of Immunomagnetic Reduction Technology as a Biosensor in Therapeutic Evaluation of Chinese Herbal Medicine in Tauopathy Alleviation of an AD Drosophila Model

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. The most convincing biomarkers in the blood for AD are currently β-amyloid (Aβ) and Tau protein because amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are pathological hallmarks in the brains of patients with AD. The development of assay technologies in diagnosing early-stage AD is very important. The study of human AD subjects is hindered by ethical and technical limitations. Thus, many studies have therefore turned to AD animal models, such as Drosophila melanogaster, to explore AD pathology. However, AD biomarkers such as Aβ and p-Tau protein in Drosophilamelanogaster occur at extremely low levels and are difficult to detect precisely. In this study, we applied the immunomagnetic reduction (IMR) technology of nanoparticles for the detection of p-Tau expressions in hTauR406W flies, an AD Drosophila model. Furthermore, we used IMR technology as a biosensor in the therapeutic evaluation of Chinese herbal medicines in hTauR406W flies with Tau-induced toxicity. To uncover the pathogenic pathway and identify therapeutic interventions of Chinese herbal medicines in Tau-induced toxicity, we modeled tauopathy in the notum of hTauR406W flies. Our IMR data showed that the selected Chinese herbal medicines can significantly reduce p-Tau expressions in hTauR406W flies. Using evidence of notal bristle quantification and Western blotting analysis, we confirmed the validity of the IMR data. Thus, we suggest that IMR can serve as a new tool for measuring tauopathy and therapeutic evaluation of Chinese herbal medicine in an AD Drosophila model.

T 1 relaxation measurement of ex-vivo breast cancer tissues at ultralow magnetic fields

We investigated T 1 relaxations of ex-vivo cancer tissues at low magnetic fields in order to check the possibility of achieving a T 1 contrast higher than those obtained at high fields. The T 1 relaxations of fifteen pairs (normal and cancerous) of breast tissue samples were measured at three magnetic fields, 37, 62, and 122 μT, using our superconducting quantum interference device-based ultralow field nuclear magnetic resonance setup, optimally developed for ex-vivo tissue studies. A signal reconstruction based on Bayesian statistics for noise reduction was exploited to overcome the low signal-to-noise ratio. The ductal and lobular-type tissues did not exhibit meaningful T 1 contrast values between normal and cancerous tissues at the three different fields. On the other hand, an enhanced T 1 contrast was obtained for the mucinous cancer tissue.

Optimization of the detection coil of high-Tc superconducting quantum interference device-based nuclear magnetic resonance for discriminating a minimum amount of liver tumor of rats in microtesla fields

This study presents an optimization of the detection coil of high-Tc superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID)-based nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in microtesla fields for discriminating a minimum amount of liver tumor in rats by characterizing the longitudinal relaxation rate, T1−1, of tested samples. The detection coil, which was coupled to the SQUID through a flux transformer, was optimized by varying the copper wires’ winding turns and diameters. When comparing the measured NMR signals, we found that the simulated NMR signal agrees with simulated signals. When discriminating liver tumors in rats, the averaged longitudinal relaxation rate was observed to be T1−1 = 3.3 s−1 for cancerous liver tissue and T1−1 = 6.6 s−1 for normal liver tissue. The results suggest that it can be used to successfully discriminate cancerous liver tissue from normal liver tissues in rats. The minimum amount of samples that can be detected is 0.2 g for liver tumor and 0.4 g for normal liver tissue in 100 μT fields. The specimen was not damaged; it can be used for other pathological analyses. The proposed method provides more possibilities for examining undersized specimens.