The highest experimental forming rate reached 66.56% with embossing temperature of 630 °C, embossing force of 0.335 N, and holding duration of 12 min.One of the limitations of cancer research has been the restricted focus on tumor cells and the omission of other non-malignant cells that are constitutive elements of this systemic disease. Current research is focused on the bidirectional communication between tumor cells and other components of the tumor microenvironment (TME), such as immune and endothelial cells, and nerves. A major success of this bidirectional approach has been the development of immunotherapy. Recently, a more complex landscape involving a multi-lateral communication between the non-malignant components of the TME started to emerge. A prime example is the interplay between immune and endothelial cells, which led to the approval of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor-therapy combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors and classical chemotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer. Hence, a paradigm shift approach is to characterize the crosstalk between different non-malignant components of the TME and understand their role in tumorigenesis. In this perspective, we discuss the interplay between nerves and immune cells within the TME. BMS-986020 molecular weight In particular, we focus on exosomes and microRNAs as a systemic, rapid and dynamic communication channel between tumor cells, nerves and immune cells contributing to cancer progression. Finally, we discuss how combinatorial therapies blocking this tumorigenic cross-talk could lead to improved outcomes for cancer patients.Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly therapy-resistant tumor entity of unmet needs. Over the last decades, radiotherapy has been considered as an additional treatment modality to surgery and chemotherapy. Owing to radiosensitive abdominal organs, high-precision proton beam radiotherapy has been regarded as superior to photon radiotherapy. To further elucidate the potential of combination therapies, we employed a more physiological 3D, matrix-based cell culture model to assess tumoroid formation capacity after photon and proton irradiation. Additionally, we investigated proton- and photon-irradiation-induced phosphoproteomic changes for identifying clinically exploitable targets. Here, we show that proton irradiation elicits a higher efficacy to reduce 3D PDAC tumoroid formation and a greater extent of phosphoproteome alterations compared with photon irradiation. The targeting of proteins identified in the phosphoproteome that were uniquely altered by protons or photons failed to cause radiation-type-specific radiosensitization. Targeting DNA repair proteins associated with non-homologous endjoining, however, revealed a strong radiosensitizing potential independent of the radiation type. In conclusion, our findings suggest proton irradiation to be potentially more effective in PDAC than photons without additional efficacy when combined with DNA repair inhibitors.Sarcopenia is common in patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis, which leads to poor outcomes. SARC-F (sluggishness, assistance in walking, rising from a chair, climb stairs, falls), a self-report questionnaire, is recommended as an easily applied tool for screening sarcopenia in older people. However, there are limited data regarding its use in patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the association between SARC-F and mortality in these patients. SARC-F questionnaire was applied in 271 hemodialysis patients (mean age 64.4 ± 14.3 years) at baseline. The association between SARC-F and mortality during a 24-month follow-up was analyzed. During this follow-up period, 40 patients (14.8%) died. The discriminative power of SARC-F score for predicting mortality was 0.716 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.659-0.769; p less then 0.001). The best cut-off was a score ≥ 1, which provided 85.0% sensitivity, 47.2% specificity, 21.8% positive predictive value, and 94.8% negative predictive value. Kaplan-Meier curves showed that patients with SARC-F ≥ 1 exhibited a higher risk of mortality than those with SARC-F less then 1 (p less then 0.001). Moreover, a stepwise decline in survival with higher SARC-F scores was also observed. After full adjustments, SARC-F ≥ 1 was independently associated with increased mortality (hazard ratio = 2.87, 95% CI = 1.11-7.38; p = 0.029). In conclusion, SARC-F applied for sarcopenia screening predicted mortality in patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis.The assembly and maintenance of electrified railway systems is of vital importance for its correct operation. Contact wires are critical elements since the correct collection of energy from trains through pantographs depends on them. Periodical inspection of the state of these installations is essential. This task traditionally implies a heavy manual workload subject to errors. A new system that allows one to check the state (height and stagger) of contact and messenger wires is presented on this article blueA new method based on seven steps for identifying the contact wires and measuring their height and stagger from point clouds recorded by means of a LiDAR system is presented. This system can be used both in assembly and maintenance phases, as well as afterwards, allowing the analysis of point clouds previously recorded. The new method was evaluated in both test bench and real environments against the commonly used measurement method. Results with the comparison between this new system and the commonly used measurement method in both test bench and real railway environments are presented. Results of this comparison show differences of less than a centimetre on average and the amount of time spent for the measuring phase is significantly decreased and not prone to human errors.In this work, the cytotoxic behavior of six ruthenium(II) complexes of stoichiometry [(η6-p-cymene)RuCl2L] (I-VI), L = 4-cyanopyridine (I), 2-aminophenol (II), 4-aminophenol (III), pyridazine (IV), and [(η6-p-cymene)RuClL2]PF6; L = cyanopyridine (V), L = 2-aminophenol(VI) towards three cell lines was studied. Two of them, HeLa and MCF-7, are human carcinogenic cells from cervical carcinoma and human breast cancer, respectively. A comparison with healthy cells was carried out with BGM cells which are monkey epithelial cells of renal origin. The behavior of complex II exhibits selectivity towards healthy cells, which is a promising feature for use in cancer treatment since it might reduce the side effects of most current therapies.