Cancer

Immune escape is a fundamental trait of cancer in which the Th1-type cytokine interferon-γ (IFN-γ) seems to play a key role. Among other tumoricidal biochemical pathways, IFN-γ induces the tryptophan-degrading enzyme indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) in a variety of cells including macrophages, dendritic cells (DCs) and tumor cells. IDO activity has...

Among women, the most prevalent type of cancer is breast cancer, affecting 1 out of every 8 women in the United States; in Puerto Rico, 70 out of every 100,000 will develop some type of breast cancer. Therefore, a better understand of the potential risk factors for breast cancer...

The trifunctional, bispecific antibody catumaxomab (anti-EpCAM x anti-CD3) is a new therapeutic strategy for epithelial cancer patients with symptomatic malignant ascites. The trifunctionality has the advantage of binding tumor cells and simultaneously two different immune effector cells (e.g. macrophages and T-lymphocytes). The unique binding specifities of catumaxomab induce an effective...

The risk for many complex diseases is believed to be a result of the interactive effects of genetic and environmental factors. Developing efficient techniques to identify gene-environment interactions (GxE) is important for unraveling the etiologic basis of many modern day diseases including cancer. The problem of false positives and false...

Background: There is discordance among studies assessing the impact of race on outcome of patients with Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC). We assessed survival outcomes for African American (AA) versus Caucasian (CA) women with TNBC treated at an urban cancer center in Memphis, TN with a predominant AA patient...

There have been relatively few publications using linear regression models to predict a continuous response based on microarray expression profiles. Standard linear regression methods are problematic when the number of predictor variables exceeds the number of cases. We have evaluated three linear regression algorithms that can be used for the...

A mixture normal model has been developed to partition genotypes in predicting quantitative phenotypes. Its estimation and inference are performed through an EM algorithm. This approach can conduct simultaneous genotype clustering and hypothesis testing. It is a valuable method for predicting the distribution of quantitative phenotypes among multi-locus genotypes across...

Background: Genetic and epigenetic alterations in colorectal cancer are numerous. However, it is difficult to judge whether such changes are primary or secondary to the appearance and progression of tumors. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to identify altered DNA regions with significant covariation to transcription alterations...

Breakthrough pain (BTP), defined as “transitory episodes of sudden severe pain that occur on a background of otherwise controlled pain” is common and disturbing for cancer patients. Optimal management of sudden, severe, and transitory episodes of BTP requires analgesics with rapid onset and short duration of effect, ideally in convenient...

An efficient computing procedure for estimating the age-specific hazard functions by the log-linear age-period-cohort (LLAPC) model is proposed. This procedure accounts for the influence of time period and birth cohort effects on the distribution of age-specific cancer incidence rates and estimates the hazard function for populations with different exposures to...

Objective: The early detection of NSCLC is of importance because it provides chances for better outcomes. The aim of the study was to explore the clinical utility of EGFR and hTERT mRNA expression as markers for diagnosis of NSCLC. Methods: EGFR and hTERT mRNA were quantified by quantative reverse transcription...

Lipases are enzymes that catalyze the hydrolysis of lipids. Based on protein structures and sequences, lipases can be classified into different protein families. The majority of conventional mammalian lipases are members of the protein super-families of serine esterases and alpha-beta hydrolases. Differential expression of lipases and related alpha-beta hydrolases in...

Background: In neutropenic patients with acute leukemia, acute abdomen which is usually attributed to typhlitis may be encountered. However, the diagnosis of acute appendicitis is rarely described or confirmed. Methods and Materials: A retrospective study of acute appendicitis in adult patients with acute leukemia was conducted at the Riyadh Armed...

Apoptosis is an active process of programmed cell death. Fas is a cell-surface protein which is expressed on activated lymphocytes and known as CD95, TNFRSF6 or APO-1. Fas-L is ligand of Fas and known as CD95 LG or TNFSF6. Apoptosis or cell death is a result of binding of Fas-L...

Perturbations of gene regulatory networks are essentially responsible for oncogenesis. Therefore, inferring the gene regulatory networks is a key step to overcoming cancer. In this work, we propose a method for inferring directed gene regulatory networks based on soft computing rules, which can identify important cause-effect regulatory relations of gene...

Despite the cytoreductive efforts, and the high responsiveness to standard carboplatin/pacllitaxel front-line treatment, ovarian cancer (OvCa) remains the most lethal gynaecological malignancy with a 5-yr overall survival of only 25%–30% in advanced stage disease. Among the pharmaceutical options available for treatment of OvCa, much attention has been dedicated to pegylated...

Biologic agents designed as targeted therapy are at the forefront of research in the field of colorectal cancer. Monoclonal antibodies targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) represent one such form of treatment, and the novel agent panitumumab is the first fully-human monoclonal antibody developed in this class. This drug...

Cancer is a disease associated with the deregulation of multiple gene networks. Microarray data has permitted researchers to identify gene panel markers for diagnosis or prognosis of cancer but these are not sufficient to make specific mechanistic assertions about phenotype switches. We propose a strategy to identify putative mechanisms of...

The ubiquitin-proteasome-degradation system plays a key role in multiple cellular functions. Its deregulation is associated with the initiation and progression of human diseases including not only solid and hematologic malignancies but also neurologic and autoimmune disorders. This article discusses several novel mechanistic aspects of the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Moreover, it focuses...

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most deadly cancer in the world. Vinorelbine is an active vinca-alkaloid with a broad spectrum of anti-tumour activity. In particular, it has high activity in NSCLC, where a synergy with cisplatin has been demonstrated. Recently, oral vinorelbine has shown a similar activity and...

Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility of transrectal computed ultrasound tomography (TRCUT) in localization and targeted biopsy for men who have been shown to be negative in the first biopsy guided by two-dimensional transrectal ultrasound (2D TRUS) but continue to have figures suggestive of prostate cancer, so as to minimize with...

When confronted with a small sample, feature-selection algorithms often fail to find good feature sets, a problem exacerbated for high-dimensional data and large feature sets. The problem is compounded by the fact that, if one obtains a feature set with a low error estimate, the estimate is unreliable because training-data-based...

When confronted with a small sample, feature-selection algorithms often fail to find good feature sets, a problem exacerbated for high-dimensional data and large feature sets. The problem is compounded by the fact that, if one obtains a feature set with a low error estimate, the estimate is unreliable because training-data-based...

Around 80% of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients achieve a complete remission, however many will relapse and ultimately die of their disease. The association between karyotype and prognosis has been studied extensively and identified patient cohorts as having favourable [e.g. t(8; 21), inv (16)/t(16; 16), t(15; 17)], intermediate [e.g. cytogenetically...

Multi-class cancer classification based on microarray data is described. A generalized output-coding scheme based on One Versus One (OVO) combined with Latent Variable Model (LVM) is used. Results from the proposed One Versus One (OVO) output- coding strategy is compared with the results obtained from the generalized One Versus All...

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is associated with advanced presentation and poor survival. Currently approved therapies have minimal effect on patient survival. Pancreatic adenocarcinomas have a high incidence of activated K-RAS, which may confer resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors. Mixed lineage kinase-3 (MLK3) is a MAP3K that activates multiple MAPK...