R14. Amikacin extended release nanoliposomes using the ethanol injection method: development and characterization

Corresponding author (Pharmaceutics and Drug delivery): Rama Kashikar, [email protected]://egrove.olemiss.edu/pharm_annual_posters/1013/thumbnail.jp

R16. Formulation and Evaluation of Doxorubicin HCl Nanoliposomes by Ethanol Injection Method

Corresponding author (Pharmaceutics and Drug delivery): Arun Kumar Kotha, [email protected]://egrove.olemiss.edu/pharm_annual_posters/1015/thumbnail.jp

RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY STUDY OF HEALTHYAND CANCEROUS HUMAN BREAST TISSUE FOR CANCER DETECTION

The present study focuses on identifying the features and parameters of Raman spectroscopy for the diagnosis of cancer in human breast surgical samples. Thirty-five clinically unprocessed, fresh human breast tissue specimens (20 cancerous and 15 normal tissues) were obtained under a bioethical protocol approved by the institution’s ethical committee. Confocal spontaneous Raman spectroscopy in reflection mode was performed using an incident excitation laser monochromatic beam of 532 nm. The differences observed among Raman profiles of cancerous tissues are more prominent compared with normal breast tissues. Notable spectral differences were present in both the absolute and relative intensities of the Raman peaks in the spectral profile. In the present study, three ratios of Raman intensities 1587 cm-1/ 1637 cm-1, 1587 cm-1/ 1000 cm-1 and 1587 cm-1/ 1375 cm-1 with statistically reliable differences are reported in the present study. It is found to be sensitive enough to differentiate between normal and cancerous breast tissues

Monitor Unit Verification for Radiotherapy Irregular Fields Based On the Clarkson Method Combined With In-House MLC Shaper Software

Introduction: In the present scenario, high precision-radiotherapy is delivered through Linear accelerators in which the dose delivery is achieved by delivering the proper monitor unit (MU). Treatment planning for the patients is carried out through treatment planning systems (TPS) in which the precise computation of MU is crucial. This TPS - calculated MU has to be verified using manual calculations for accurate dose delivery. In this study, we incorporated our in-house developed multi leaf collimator(MLC) shaper software and the well-known Clarkson method to compare the calculated MUs to the TPS-generated MUs.Material and Methods: Conformal treatment plans of various sites of 30 patients were randomly selected containing different MLC-shaped field sizes. All the fields were shaped using MLC (leaf width of 1cm, 40 pairs) in the TPS. MLC log files were exported and fed into the in-house shaper software to get crucial inputs for the Clarkson-based calculation. The Tissue Maximum Ratio(TMR) & Scatter Maximum ratio(SMR) were utilized in our investigation. The Clarkson MU calculation was compared with the TPS calculation method. Paired t-test was performed for the statistical significance.Results: The Clarkson method-based calculated had significant differences for all the esophageal cancers (p<0.05); however no significant difference was found in the other sites.Conclusion: The compared MUs were within the acceptable deviation with the TPS for Head & Neck, Prostrate and Cervical cancer. The estimated MUs had significant difference in non-homogenous medium. The shaper software can be further enhanced to receive MLC log files from the TPS

Consistency analysis for the performance of planar detector systems used in advanced radiotherapy

Purpose: To evaluate the performance linked to the consistency of a-Si EPID and ion-chamber array detectors for dose verification in advanced radiotherapy.Methods: Planar measurements were made for 250 patients using an array of ion chamber and a-Si EPID. For pre-treatment verification, the plans were generated on the phantom for re-calculation of doses. The γ-evaluation method with the criteria: dose-difference (DD) ≤ 3% and distance-to-agreement (DTA) ≤ 3 mm was used for the comparison of measurements. Also, the central axis (CAX) doses were measured using 0.125cc ion chamber and were compared with the central chamber of array and central pixel correlated dose value from EPID image. Two types of statistical approaches were applied for the analysis. Conventional statistics used analysis of variance (ANOVA) and unpaired t-test to evaluate the performance of the detectors. And statistical process control (SPC) was utilized to study the statistical variation for the measured data. Control charts (CC) based on an average , standard deviation ( ) and exponentially weighted moving averages (EWMA) were prepared. The capability index (Cpm) was determined as an indicator for the performance consistency of the two systems.Results: Array and EPID measurements had the average gamma pass rates as 99.9% ± 0.15% and 98.9% ± 1.06% respectively. For the point doses, the 0.125cc chamber results were within 2.1% ± 0.5% of the central chamber of the array. Similarly, CAX doses from EPID and chamber matched within 1.5% ± 0.3%. The control charts showed that both the detectors were performing optimally and all the data points were within ± 5%. EWMA charts revealed that both the detectors had a slow drift along the mean of the processes but was found well within ± 3%. Further, higher Cpm values for EPID demonstrate its higher efficiency for radiotherapy techniques.Conclusion: The performances of both the detectors were seen to be of high quality irrespective of the radiotherapy technique. Higher Cpm values for EPID indicate its higher efficiency than array

Validation of an integrated patient positioning system: Exactrac and iViewGT on Synergy Platform

Purpose: Evaluation of the newly integrated system for its validation and designing a quality assurance frame work to assess its geometrical, radiological and mechanical accuracy.Methods: Isocentric accuracy of two independent imaging modalities, kV based ExacTrac and MV based iViewGT was evaluated using Winston-Lutz test. A pelvic humanoid phantom was used for the radiological end-to-end test for its clinical utilization. Image quality for the systems was evaluated using Las Vegas Phantom and ETR-1 plate. The kV system was also assessed for kVp accuracy, kVp - dose linearity, mAs-dose linearity and timer linearity and its accuracy. The system was tested for total filtration and output consistency. Tests for uniformity and noise measurement of kVp accuracy and its reproducibility, linearity test between applied kVp and the x-ray dose, linearity Test between applied mAs and the x-ray dose were also done. Results: Winston-Lutz test gave the isocentric deviation of 0.058 ± 0.015 mm with the average lateral deviation as 0.028 ± 0.021 mm, average longitudinal deviation as 0.032 ± 0.015 mm and average vertical deviation as 0.030 ± 0.016 mm. With the phantom test, the minimum measured displacement of Exactrac positioning was 0.2 ± 0.3 mm, 0.0 ± 0.2 mm and 0.1 ± 0.3 mm in longitudinal, lateral and vertical directions respectively. In image quality test, visible smallest visible hole size seen by both Exactrac and EPID imaging system was 5 mm and can resolve 1.5 lp/mm or better. The image uniformity was found to be 132.9 ± 3.06 pixels for MV images and 139 ± 4.41 pixels for kV images with the associated noise of ≤1% both for 120 kV-20 mAs and 4 MV beam energy of ExacTrac and iViewGT respectively. The uniformity and noise test, measured pixel intensity values for various points on MV and kV images separately were found to agree within ± 1% with respect to the central axis pixel value. The kVp accuracy and its reproducibility were tested for kV imager only. The deviation of kVp was found to be than ± 1% and its precision was seen to be even lesser than ± 0.1%. Linearity test between applied kVp and the x-ray dose and applied mAs and x-ray dose were tested only for the ExacTrac. Both the coefficient of linearity for kVp as well as mAs was found to be &lt; 0.1. Conclusion: It is feasible to install ExacTrac imaging system with an Elekta linear accelerator. Both the imaging systems were found to be compatible in terms of image quality test and isocentric accuracy and can be used for the patient imaging in the same Linear accelerator.-----------------------------Cite this article as: Jassal K, Munshi A, Sarkar B, Paul S, Sharma A, Mohanti BK, Ganesh T, Chougule A, Sachdev K. Validation of an integrated patient positioning system: Exactrac and iViewGT on Synergy Platform. Int J Cancer Ther Oncol 2014; 2(2):020212. DOI: 10.14319/ijcto.0202.1

MaizeCODE reveals bi-directionally expressed enhancers that harbor molecular signatures of maize domestication

Modern maize was domesticated from Teosinte parviglumis, with subsequent introgressions from Teosinte mexicana, yielding increased kernel row number, loss of the hard fruit case and dissociation from the cob upon maturity, as well as fewer tillers. Molecular approaches have identified several transcription factors involved in the development of these traits, yet revealed that a complex regulatory network is at play. MaizeCODE deploys ENCODE strategies to catalog regulatory regions in the maize genome, generating histone modification and transcription factor ChIP-seq in parallel with transcriptomics datasets in 5 tissues of 3 inbred lines which span the phenotypic diversity of maize, as well as the teosinte inbred TIL11. Integrated analysis of these datasets resulted in the identification of a comprehensive set of regulatory regions in each inbred, and notably of distal enhancers which were differentiated from gene bodies by their lack of H3K4me1. Many of these distal enhancers expressed non- coding enhancer RNAs bi-directionally, reminiscent of “super enhancers” in animal genomes. We show that pollen grains are the most differentiated tissue at the transcriptomic level, and share features with endosperm that may be related to McClintock’s chromosome breakage- fusion-bridge cycle. Conversely, ears have the least conservation between maize and teosinte, both in gene expression and within regulatory regions, reflecting conspicuous morphological differences selected during domestication. The identification of molecular signatures of domestication in transcriptional regulatory regions provides a framework for directed breeding strategies in maize.This preprint is made available through bioRxiv at doi:https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.02.22.581585. Copyright 2024, The Authors. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license

Radiation dose to contra lateral breast during treatment of breast malignancy by radiotherapy

Aims: External beam radiotherapy is being used regularly to treat the breast malignancy postoperatively. The contribution of collimator leakage and scatter radiation dose to contralateral breast is of concern because of high radio sensitivity of breast tissue for carcinogenesis. This becomes more important when the treated cancer breast patient is younger than 45 years and therefore the contralateral breast must be treated as organ at risk. Quantification of contralateral dose during primary breast irradiation is helpful to estimate the risk of radiation induced secondary breast malignancy. Materials and Methods: In present study contralateral breast dose was measured in 30 cancer breast patients undergoing external beam therapy by Co-60 teletherapy machine. Postoperative radiotherapy was delivered by medial and lateral tangential fields on alternate days in addition to supraclavicle field daily with 200 cGy/F to a total dose of 5000 cGy in 25 fractions. CaSO4: Dy themoluminescence dosimeter discs were employed for these measurements. Three TLD discs were put on the surface of skin of contra lateral breast, one at the level of nipple and two at 3 cms away from nipple on both side along the midline for each field. At the end treatment of each filed, TLD discs were removed and measured for dose after 24h on Thelmador - 6000 TLD reader. Results: The dose at the contra lateral breast nipple was to be 152.5 to 254.75 cGy for total primary breast dose of 5000 cGy in 25 equal fractions which amounted to 3.05-6.05% of total dose to diseased breast. Further it was observed that the maximum contribution of contralateral breast dose was due to medical tangential half blocked field. Conclusion: CaSO4; Dy thermoluminescence dosimetry is quite easy, accurate and convenient method to measure the contra lateral breast dose

Serum Lactate Dehydrogenase Level in Patients with Head and Neck Malignancy Treated with Radiotherapy

Introduction: Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. Early detection followed by properly planned treatment usually increases the life expectancy of the patient but unfortunately most of the common available diagnostic tools detect tumor when it is more than 5mm in size and hence the prognosis is poor. If micro nuclear level alterations due to malignancy are detected with sufficient sensitivity and specificity, it might prove to be an effective tool in management of cancer. Few of the serum enzymes play a pivotal role in this regard and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) is an important biochemical tumor marker among them. The aim of the present study was to analyze the significance of LDH in head and neck malignancies treated with radiotherapy as a diagnostic and prognostic tool. Methodology: Serum LDH levels were analyzed before, midway and at completion of radiotherapy and monthly follow up for six months in 90 biopsy proven head and neck cancer cases treated with radiotherapy. Results: It was observed that in all the malignant cases the pretreatment enzyme level was much higher [293 .6±36.9IU/L] than that of control group [168.5±27.271U/L]. Further, it was observed that as the radiotherapy progresses, the serum LDH levels decreases and during follow-up in the patients with no apparent disease activity, the levels approached near to that of the control group. Serum LDH showed significant association with the disease activity. Conclusion: Findings of the study indicates that serum LDH may be a prognostic tool in head and neck malignancies and the treatment strategies can be optimized accordingly