University of Saskatchewan

About: University of Saskatchewan is a education organization based out in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 25021 authors who have published 52579 publications receiving 1483049 citations. The organization is also known as: USask.

Drug repositioning based on comprehensive similarity measures and Bi-Random walk algorithm

Abstract: Motivation: Drug repositioning, which aims to identify new indications for existing drugs, offers a promising alternative to reduce the total time and cost of traditional drug development. Many computational strategies for drug repositioning have been proposed, which are based on similarities among drugs and diseases. Current studies typically use either only drug-related properties (e.g. chemical structures) or only disease-related properties (e.g. phenotypes) to calculate drug or disease similarity, respectively, while not taking into account the influence of known drug–disease association information on the similarity measures. Results: In this article, based on the assumption that similar drugs are normally associated with similar diseases and vice versa, we propose a novel computational method named MBiRW, which utilizes some comprehensive similarity measures and Bi-Random walk (BiRW) algorithm to identify potential novel indications for a given drug. By integrating drug or disease features information with known drug–disease associations, the comprehensive similarity measures are firstly developed to calculate similarity for drugs and diseases. Then drug similarity network and disease similarity network are constructed, and they are incorporated into a heterogeneous network with known drug–disease interactions. Based on the drug–disease heterogeneous network, BiRW algorithm is adopted to predict novel potential drug–disease associations. Computational experiment results from various datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach has reliable prediction performance and outperforms several recent computational drug repositioning approaches. Moreover, case studies of five selected drugs further confirm the superior performance of our method to discover potential indications for drugs practically. Availability and Implementation: http://github.com//bioinfomaticsCSU/MBiRW . Contact: jxwang@mail.csu.edu.cn Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Multi-peakons and a theorem of Stieltjes

Abstract: A closed form of the multi-peakon solutions of the Camassa-Holm equation is found using a theorem of Stieltjes on continued fractions. An explicit formula is obtained for the scattering shifts.

Reduction of Serum Cholesterol and Hypercholesterolemic Atherosclerosis in Rabbits by Secoisolariciresinol Diglucoside Isolated From Flaxseed

Abstract: Background—Secoisolariciresinol diglucoside (SDG) is a plant lignan isolated from flaxseed. Lignans are platelet-activating factor–receptor antagonists that would inhibit the production of oxygen r...

Are sex differences in navigation caused by sexually dimorphic strategies or by differences in the ability to use the strategies

Abstract: When navigating, women typically focus on landmarks within the environment, whereas men tend to focus on the Euclidean properties of the environment. However, it is unclear whether these observed differences in navigational skill result from disparate strategies or disparate ability. To remove this confound, the present study required participants to follow either landmark- or Euclidean-based instructions during a navigation task (either in the real-world or on paper). Men performed best when using Euclidean information, whereas women performed best when using landmark information, suggesting a dimorphic capacity to use these 2 types of spatial information. Further, a significant correlation was observed between the mental rotation task and the ability to use Euclidean information, but not the ability to use landmark information.