Fatherhood and sperm DNA damage in testicular cancer patients

Testicular cancer (TC) is one of the most treatable of all malignancies and the management of the quality of life of these patients is increasingly important, especially with regard to their sexuality and fertility. Survivors must overcome anxiety and fears about reduced fertility and possible pregnancy-related risks as well as health effects in offspring. There is thus a growing awareness of the need for reproductive counseling of cancer survivors. Studies found a high level of sperm DNA damage in TC patients in comparison with healthy, fertile controls, but no significant difference between these patients and infertile patients. Sperm DNA alterations due to cancer treatment persist from 2 to 5 years after the end of the treatment and may be influenced by both the type of therapy and the stage of the disease. Population studies reported a slightly reduced overall fertility of TC survivors and a more frequent use of ART than the general population, with a success rate of around 50%. Paternity after a diagnosis of cancer is an important issue and reproductive potential is becoming a major quality of life factor. Sperm chromatin instability associated with genome instability is the most important reproductive side effect related to the malignancy or its treatment. Studies investigating the magnitude of this damage could have a considerable translational importance in the management of cancer patients, as they could identify the time needed for the germ cell line to repair nuclear damage and thus produce gametes with a reduced risk for the offspring

Chemotherapy-Response Monitoring of Breast Cancer Patients Using Quantitative Ultrasound-Based Intra-Tumour Heterogeneities

© 2017 The Author(s). Anti-cancer therapies including chemotherapy aim to induce tumour cell death. Cell death introduces alterations in cell morphology and tissue micro-structures that cause measurable changes in tissue echogenicity. This study investigated the effectiveness of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) parametric imaging to characterize intra-tumour heterogeneity and monitor the pathological response of breast cancer to chemotherapy in a large cohort of patients (n = 100). Results demonstrated that QUS imaging can non-invasively monitor pathological response and outcome of breast cancer patients to chemotherapy early following treatment initiation. Specifically, QUS biomarkers quantifying spatial heterogeneities in size, concentration and spacing of acoustic scatterers could predict treatment responses of patients with cross-validated accuracies of 82 ± 0.7%, 86 ± 0.7% and 85 ± 0.9% and areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.75 ± 0.1, 0.80 ± 0.1 and 0.89 ± 0.1 at 1, 4 and 8 weeks after the start of treatment, respectively. The patients classified as responders and non-responders using QUS biomarkers demonstrated significantly different survivals, in good agreement with clinical and pathological endpoints. The results form a basis for using early predictive information on survival-linked patient response to facilitate adapting standard anti-cancer treatments on an individual patient basis

The role of AIMP3, a putative tumour suppressor gene, as a predictive biomarker of response to chemo/radiotherapy in vitro and in patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

Bladder cancer is the second most common urological cancer after prostate cancer and is one of the leading causes of cancer mortality in most western countries. For organ-confined, muscle-invasive disease, the standard of care, in terms of definitive cure, remains radical surgery (cystectomy) with lymphadenectomy. However, survival rates remain poor following supposedly curative treatment. Radical radiotherapy and more recently, multimodality treatment incorporating chemo-radiotherapy, are alternatives which allow bladder preservation in those choosing not to undergo or are unsuitable for radical surgery. However, survival rates following radiotherapy are generally lower relative to radical cystectomy and multimodality treatments can only be offered to select cases in few institutions. Biomarkers which can accurately predict tumour response to radiotherapy or chemotherapy can aid the selection of patients who are likely to respond well to treatment options incorporating radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy, as alternatives to radical cystectomy, in the management of bladder cancer. Such a strategy would allow personalised cancer care with patients likely to benefit from treatments that they are likely to respond well to and concomitantly avoid complications arising from other treatments less likely to benefit them. This thesis investigated the novel tumour suppressor gene, AIMP3 which is involved in the DNA damage response (DDR) pathway following exposure to genotoxic insults such as irradiation and chemotherapy. The expression and cellular localisation of AIMP3 protein was characterised in a panel of bladder cancer cell lines. Expression of AIMP3 was altered by gene knockdown with siRNA transfection and survival outcomes assessed following irradiation and chemotherapy. The predictive value of AIMP3 expression in determining survival outcome of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer who had undergone radical radiotherapy, with or without carbogen supplementation, in the BCON trial, was assessed. Prognostic significance was evaluated by interrogating a control cohort of patients who had undergone radical cystectomy and had not had exposure to radiotherapy or either neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy. Reportedly important DDR proteins, including Mre11, p53 and ERCC1, were also interrogated in the BCON, Radical Cystectomy, Neodjuvant and LaMB trial TMA datasets. Clonogenic survival outcomes following AIMP3 knockdown were also investigated in cisplatin-sensitive (RT112) and cisplatin-resistant (RT112CP) cell lines following cisplatin exposure. Survival outcome, stratified for AIMP3 as well as ERCC1, Mre11 and p53 status, were interrogated in the Neoadjuvant set, which incorporated a cohort of patients who had undergone cisplatin-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy prior to radical treatment. This was validated in a second cohort of patients who had undergone cisplatin-based chemotherapy as part of the LaMB trial

Central Nervous System Tumors

Though the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) tumors has been challenging, new advances have helped us better understand the molecular and genetic makeup of many tumor types, and new chemotherapies and immunotherapies have extended survival in patients with aggressive primary CNS tumors. This book discusses pediatric and adult tumors of the CNS, the classification schemes used to categorize them, advances in surgical techniques, and several important genetic alterations found in these tumors. We hope this book contributes to the reader’s understanding of these tumors and provides the most up-to-date and cutting-edge discoveries in this exciting field

British Society of Gastroenterology guidelines for the diagnosis and management of cholangiocarcinoma

These guidelines for the diagnosis and management of cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) were commissioned by the British Society of Gastroenterology liver section. The guideline writing committee included a multidisciplinary team of experts from various specialties involved in the management of CCA, as well as patient/public representatives from AMMF (the Cholangiocarcinoma Charity) and PSC Support. Quality of evidence is presented using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE II) format. The recommendations arising are to be used as guidance rather than as a strict protocol-based reference, as the management of patients with CCA is often complex and always requires individual patient-centred considerations

Therapy sculpts the complex interplay between cancer and the immune system during tumour evolution

Cancer development is an evolutionary process. A key selection pressure is exerted by therapy, one of the few players in cancer evolution that can be controlled. As such, an understanding of how treatment acts to sculpt the tumour and its microenvironment and how this influences a tumour’s subsequent evolutionary trajectory is critical. In this review, we examine cancer evolution and intra-tumour heterogeneity in the context of therapy. We focus on how radiotherapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy shape both tumour development and the environment in which tumours evolve and how resistance can develop or be selected for during treatment

Thermal dosimetry for bladder hyperthermia treatment. An overview.

The urinary bladder is a fluid-filled organ. This makes, on the one hand, the internal surface of the bladder wall relatively easy to heat and ensures in most cases a relatively homogeneous temperature distribution; on the other hand the variable volume, organ motion, and moving fluid cause artefacts for most non-invasive thermometry methods, and require additional efforts in planning accurate thermal treatment of bladder cancer. We give an overview of the thermometry methods currently used and investigated for hyperthermia treatments of bladder cancer, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages within the context of the specific disease (muscle-invasive or non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer) and the heating technique used. The role of treatment simulation to determine the thermal dose delivered is also discussed. Generally speaking, invasive measurement methods are more accurate than non-invasive methods, but provide more limited spatial information; therefore, a combination of both is desirable, preferably supplemented by simulations. Current efforts at research and clinical centres continue to improve non-invasive thermometry methods and the reliability of treatment planning and control software. Due to the challenges in measuring temperature across the non-stationary bladder wall and surrounding tissues, more research is needed to increase our knowledge about the penetration depth and typical heating pattern of the various hyperthermia devices, in order to further improve treatments. The ability to better determine the delivered thermal dose will enable clinicians to investigate the optimal treatment parameters, and consequentially, to give better controlled, thus even more reliable and effective, thermal treatments