Expression of DNA damage response proteins and complete remission after radiotherapy of stage IB–IIA of cervical cancer

The primary aim of this study was to investigate if the expression of the DNA damage identifying protein DNA-PKcs known to be involved in DNA repair after treatment with ionising radiation can be used as a predictive marker for radiotherapy (RT) response in cervical cancer. Formalin-fixed primary tumour biopsies from 109 patients with cervical cancer, FIGO-stage IB–IIA, treated with preoperative brachytherapy followed by radical surgery were analysed by immunohistochemistry. In addition, correlation studies between early pathological tumour response to radiation and expression of Ku86, Ku70, Mdm-2, p53 and p21 in primary tumours were also performed. We found that tumour-transformed tissue shows positive immunostaining of DNA-PKcs, Ku86 and Ku70, while non-neoplastic squamous epithelium and tumour-free cervix glands show negative immunoreactivity. Expression of DNA-PKcs positively correlated with both Ku86 and Ku70, and a statistically significant correlation between the Ku subunits was also found. After RT, 85 patients demonstrated pathologic complete remission (pCR), whereas 24 patients had residual tumour in the surgical specimen (non-pCR). The main finding of our study is that there was no correlation between the outcome of RT and the expression of DNA-PK subunits. Positive p53 tumours were significantly more common among non-pCR cases than in patients with pCR (P=0.031). Expression of p21 and Mdm-2 did not correlate with the outcome of RT

Open Access: A Remedy to the Crisis in Scientific Inquiry?

This chapter examines the framing of the science system as in a series of crises and argues that the source of most, if not all, of them are governed by what can be described as the normativity crisis. This crisis is characterized by the researcher’s quest for high-ranking journals, a quest that shifts the goalposts from solid and rigour science to mere publishing in the right journals. This development is due to both formal and informal research evaluation, which is the basis for tenure, promotion and grants. It is further argued that the remedy in the form of Open Science and Open Access in particular, comes with limitations: even if all academic outlets flipped to Open Access, the current use of journals as a proxy for quality would still skew science. In addition, the current scheme of evaluation is blocking the transition to Open Access. For Open Access to become the norm in academic publishing and in alignment with the Mertonian norms, the evaluation scheme must change and incentivize Open Science