Purine metabolites regulate leukemic cell sensitivity toward cytarabine

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Flying to Quality: Cultural Influences on Online Reviews

Customers increasingly consult opinions expressed online before making their final decisions. However, inherent factors such as culture may moderate the criteria and the weights individuals use to form their expectations and evaluations. Therefore, not all opinions expressed online match customers’ personal preferences, neither can firms use this information to deduce general conclusions. Our study explores this issue in the context of airline services using Hofstede’s framework as a theoretical anchor. We gauge the effect of each dimension as well as that of cultural distance between the passenger and the airline on the overall satisfaction with the flight as well as specific service factors. Using topic modeling, we also capture the effect of culture on review text and identify factors that are not captured by conventional rating scales. Our results provide significant insights for airline managers about service factors that affect more passengers from specific cultures leading to higher satisfaction/dissatisfaction

Systematic Review of Smart Tourism Research

In recent decades, smart tourism has been attracting attention from practitioners and scholars. The current study used multiple analysis methods to conduct a systematic review of 124 related articles on smart tourism. Qualitative analysis was conducted to identify 10 categories of smart tourism articles. Results showed that the largest proportion focus on the influence of technology on tourists’ perceptions, behaviors, and experiences. Co-occurrence analysis was performed to investigate the development trend of keywords used by academics in the last five years, while co-authorship (country) analysis was conducted to examine the collaborative relationship between different countries. The research regions, industries, methods, and theories applied in these articles were also analyzed. Theoretical and practical/managerial implications, as well as future research directions, were provided

Systematic Review of Smart Tourism Research

In recent decades, smart tourism has been attracting attention from practitioners and scholars. The current study used multiple analysis methods to conduct a systematic review of 124 related articles on smart tourism. Qualitative analysis was conducted to identify 10 categories of smart tourism articles. Results showed that the largest proportion focus on the influence of technology on tourists’ perceptions, behaviors, and experiences. Co-occurrence analysis was performed to investigate the development trend of keywords used by academics in the last five years, while co-authorship (country) analysis was conducted to examine the collaborative relationship between different countries. The research regions, industries, methods, and theories applied in these articles were also analyzed. Theoretical and practical/managerial implications, as well as future research directions, were provided.</jats:p

Unique Physiological and Metabolic Properties of Blast Crisis Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Rochester. School of Medicine & Dentistry. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, 2015.Adipose tissue (AT) serves as a storage site of lipids as well as an endocrine organ. Furthermore, in the context of cancer, AT shows a facilitatory role in the progression of tumors. Interestingly, recent studies have shown that AT acts as an extra-medullary reservoir for hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), suggesting a HSC niche in AT. The fact that leukemia stem cells (LSCs) co-opt the HSC microenvironment and the supporting effect of AT on cancer cells lead us to hypothesize that AT functions as a sanctuary for LSCs. To explore the role of AT in leukemia, we utilized a murine model of blast crisis chronic myeloid leukemia (bcCML). We found primitive leukemia cells (PLCs) were enriched in the gonadal adipose tissue (GAT) relative to bone marrow (BM), spleen and peripheral blood. Compared to transcriptomes of PLCs in these tissues, PLCs in GAT showed a distinct gene expression pattern with the activation of genes encoding pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines, suggesting an inflamed microenvironment in the leukemic GAT. Inflammation leads to abnormalities of AT. Severe cancer cachexia associated atrophy of GAT was found in leukemic mice due to an pathologically increased rate of lipolysis, which was at least partially mediated by an increased expression of the adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL), a rate-limiting lipase involved in lipolysis, and a reduced expression of the cell death activator CIDE-A (Cidea), a lipid droplet associated protein that shields lipid droplets from lipases. Additionally, we showed that the pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines that were highly expressed by PLCs in GAT including IL-1β and CSF2 induced lipolysis in 3T3-L1 adipocytes and engendered a similar expression pattern of the lipolysis-related genes as the leukemic GAT. An elevated level of serum free fatty acid (FFA) was observed in leukemic mice, suggesting that leukemia cells have an increased requirement for fatty acid. This observation was in agreement with the result that leukemia cells had a higher rate of fatty acid oxidation (FAO) compared to non-leukemia cells. Furthermore, we found that PLCs had the highest FAO rate compared to differentiated leukemia cells (DLCs) and their non-leukemic counterparts. Analysis of the expression of FAO-related genes showed that a fatty acid transporter, CD36, was highly expressed by PLCs. In agreement with this finding, the CD36 inhibitor sulfo-N-succinimidyl oleate (SSO) selectively decreased the FAO rate in PLCs, suggesting a FAO-regulatory role of CD36 in PLCs. We isolated CD36+ and CD36- PLCs and found that both the two populations contain LSCs. Furthermore, CD36+ PLCs had a higher FAO rate and were more quiescent and drug resistant suggesting a metabolic and functional heterogeneity in PLCs. Interestingly, CD36+ PLCs were highly enriched in GAT, where leukemia cells had the most access to FFA. More importantly, GAT selectively protected CD36+ PLCs from chemotherapy. Finally, we found that in human primitive bcCML cells (CD34+ bcCML cells), CD36+ compartment also represented a drug resistant population with a high rate of FAO. Taken together, our results suggest that AT contributes to the establishment of the heterogeneity in leukemia cells by regulation of FAO in leukemia cells through providing fatty acid. More importantly, the fact that GAT protects CD36+ PLCs from chemotherapy suggests that GAT may play a role in the relapse of the disease