Iron Metabolism in the Tumor Microenvironment-Implications for Anti-Cancer Immune Response

New insights into the field of iron metabolism within the tumor microenvironment have been uncovered in recent years. Iron promotes the production of reactive oxygen species, which may either trigger ferroptosis cell death or contribute to malignant transformation. Once transformed, cancer cells divert tumor-infiltrating immune cells to satisfy their iron demand, thus affecting the tumor immunosurveillance. In this review, we highlight how the bioavailability of this metal shapes complex metabolic pathways within the tumor microenvironment and how this affects both tumor-associated macrophages and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes functions. Furthermore, we discuss the potentials as well as the current clinical controversies surrounding the use of iron metabolism as a target for new anticancer treatments in two opposed conditions: i) the "hot" tumors, which are usually enriched in immune cells infiltration and are extremely rich in iron availability within the microenvironment, and ii) the "cold" tumors, which are often very poor in immune cells, mainly due to immune exclusion

Bosonization and Duality in Arbitrary Dimensions: New Results

A generic massive Thirring Model in three space-time dimensions exhibits a correspondence with a topologically massive bosonized gauge action associated to a self-duality constraint, and we write down a general expression for this relationship. We also generalize this structure to $d$ dimensions, by adopting the so-called doublet approach, recently introduced. In particular, a non- conventional formulation of the bosonization technique in higher dimensions (in the spirit of $d=3$), is proposed and, as an application, we show how fermionic (Thirring-like) representations for bosonic topologically massive models in four dimensions may be built up.Comment: Revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Influence of body variables in the development of metabolic syndrome : A long term follow-up study

Objectives. The body variable associated with the diagnosis of Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) is an elevated waist circumference (WC), although a number of other variables have been suggested. Among these, an elevated waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), ie a value higher than 0.5, that may identify abnormality, independently from height. An elevated WHtR provided the best correlation with MetS in a prior study in a large Italian population. In order to assess the validity of this conclusion, a long-term follow-up study re-examined this population, also in order to detect possible associations with cardiovascular (CV) risk. Methods and Results. 1,071 subjects with a complete follow-up of over 6 years were evaluated with a comparative assessment of the three anthropometric variables, namely WHtR, WC and body mass index (BMI). WHtR 65 0.5 had the highest sensitivity for the identification of MetS, both in males and females (94.1% and 86.7% respectively). WHtR was of reduced specificity, occurring, yet less frequently (17.7% in males and 30% in females), in patients without MetS. By contrast, enlarged WC occurred with a lower frequency in male patients who developed MetS (30.2%) whereas in females, frequency was higher than in males (69.3%). Finally, a BMI 65 25 kg/m2 had intermediate sensitivity and specificity regardless of gender. WC showed the highest odds ratio (2.62, 95%CI: 1.18-5.78) for the prediction of CV occurrence. Conclusion. The present study confirms WHtR as an excellent screening tool in identifying MetS carriers, but, different from reports in other countries, it shows a lower specificity in our population

New data on OZI rule violation in bar{p}p annihilation at rest

The results of a measurement of the ratio R = Y(phi pi+ pi-) / Y(omega pi+ pi-) for antiproton annihilation at rest in a gaseous and in a liquid hydrogen target are presented. It was found that the value of this ratio increases with the decreasing of the dipion mass, which demonstrates the difference in the phi and omega production mechanisms. An indication on the momentum transfer dependence of the apparent OZI rule violation for phi production from the 3S1 initial state was found.Comment: 11 pages, 3 PostScript figures, submitted to Physics Letter

Centrality dependence of charged particle production at large transverse momentum in Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=2.76\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}} = 2.76 TeV

The inclusive transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) distributions of primary charged particles are measured in the pseudo-rapidity range $|\eta|<0.8$ as a function of event centrality in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}=2.76$ TeV with ALICE at the LHC. The data are presented in the $p_{\rm T}$ range $0.15<p_{\rm T}<50$ GeV/$c$ for nine centrality intervals from 70-80% to 0-5%. The Pb-Pb spectra are presented in terms of the nuclear modification factor $R_{\rm{AA}}$ using a pp reference spectrum measured at the same collision energy. We observe that the suppression of high-$p_{\rm T}$ particles strongly depends on event centrality. In central collisions (0-5%) the yield is most suppressed with $R_{\rm{AA}}\approx0.13$ at $p_{\rm T}=6$-7 GeV/$c$. Above $p_{\rm T}=7$ GeV/$c$, there is a significant rise in the nuclear modification factor, which reaches $R_{\rm{AA}} \approx0.4$ for $p_{\rm T}>30$ GeV/$c$. In peripheral collisions (70-80%), the suppression is weaker with $R_{\rm{AA}} \approx 0.7$ almost independently of $p_{\rm T}$. The measured nuclear modification factors are compared to other measurements and model calculations.Comment: 17 pages, 4 captioned figures, 2 tables, authors from page 12, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/284

Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe