Report from the OECI Oncology Days 2014

The 2014 OECI Oncology Days was held at the ‘Prof. Dr. Ion Chiricuta’ Oncology Institute in Cluj, Romania, from 12 to 13 June. The focus of this year’s gathering was on developments in personalised medicine and other treatment advances which have made the cost of cancer care too high for many regions throughout Europe

Hydrolytic and lysozymic degradability of chitosan systems with heparin-mimicking pendant groups

Chitosan (CT) is an antibacterial polysaccharide that has been investigated for drug carriers, haemostats and wound dressings. For these applications, customised CT devices can often be obtained with specific experimental conditions, which can irreversibly alter native biopolymer properties and functions and lead to unreliable material behaviour. In order to investigate the structure-function relationships in CT covalent networks, monosodium 5 sulfoisophthalate (PhS) was selected as heparin-mimicking, growth factor-binding crosslinking segment, whilst 1,4 phenylenediacetic acid (4Ph) and poly(ethylene glycol) bis(carboxymethyl) ether (PEG) were employed as sulfonic acid-free diacids of low and high crosslinker length respectively. Hydrogels based on short crosslinkers (PhS and 4Ph) displayed increased crosslink density, decreased swelling ratio as well as minimal hydrolytic and lysozymic degradation, whilst addition of lysozymes to PEG based networks resulted in 70 wt.-% mass loss. PhS-crosslinked CT hydrogels displayed the highest loss (40 ± 6 CFU%) of antibacterial activity upon incubation with Porphyromonas gingivalis, whilst respective extracts were tolerated by L929 mouse fibroblasts

Normalization of gene expression measurement of tissue samples obtained by transurethral resection of bladder tumors

Laura A Pop,1,* Valentina Pileczki,1,2,* Roxana M Cojocneanu-Petric,1 Bogdan Petrut,3,4 Cornelia Braicu,1 Ancuta M Jurj,1 Rares Buiga,5 Patriciu Achimas-Cadariu,6,7 Ioana Berindan-Neagoe1,8 1The Research Center for Functional Genomics, Biomedicine and Translational Medicine, Iuliu Haţieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania; 2Department of Analytical Chemistry, Iuliu Haţieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania; 3Department of Surgery II – Urology, The Oncology Institute “Prof Dr Ion Chiricuţă”, Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania; 4Department of Urology, Iuliu Haţieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania; 5Department of Pathology, The Oncology Institute “Prof. Dr Ion Chiricuţă”, Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania; 6Department of Surgery, The Oncology Institute “Prof Dr Ion Chiricuţă”, Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania; 7Department of Surgical Oncology and Gynecological Oncology, Iuliu Haţieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 8Department of Functional Genomics and Experimental Pathology, The Oncology Institute “Prof Dr Ion Chiricuţă”, Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: Sample processing is a crucial step for all types of genomic studies. A major challenge for researchers is to understand and predict how RNA quality affects the identification of transcriptional differences (by introducing either false-positive or false-negative errors). Nanotechnologies help improve the quality and quantity control for gene expression studies. Patients and methods: The study was performed on 14 tumor and matched normal pairs of tissue from patients with bladder urothelial carcinomas. We assessed the RNA quantity by using the NanoDrop spectrophotometer and the quality by nano-microfluidic capillary electrophoresis technology provided by Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer. We evaluated the amplification status of three housekeeping genes and one small nuclear RNA gene using the ViiA 7 platform, with specific primers. Results: Every step of the sample handling protocol, which begins with sample harvest and ends with the data analysis, is of utmost importance due to the fact that it is time consuming, labor intensive, and highly expensive. High temperature of the surgical procedure does not affect the small nucleic acid sequences in comparison with the mRNA. Conclusion: Gene expression is clearly affected by the RNA quality, but less affected in the case of small nuclear RNAs. We proved that the high-temperature, highly invasive transurethral resection of bladder tumor procedure damages the tissue and affects the integrity of the RNA from biological specimens. Keywords: bladder cancer, transurethral resection, RNA quality, real-time PC

Report from the OECI Oncology days 2014

The 2014 OECI Oncology Days was held at the 'Prof. Dr. Ion Chiricuta' Oncology Institute in Cluj, Romania, from 12 to 13 June. The focus of this year's gathering was on developments in personalised medicine and other treatment advances which have made the cost of cancer care too high for many regions throughout Europe.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Premalignant SOX2 overexpression in the fallopian tubes of ovarian cancer patients: Discovery and validation studies

Current screening methods for ovarian cancer can only detect advanced disease. Earlier detection has proved difficult because the molecular precursors involved in the natural history of the disease are unknown. To identify early driver mutations in ovarian cancer cells, we used dense whole genome sequencing of micrometastases and microscopic residual disease collected at three time points over three years from a single patient during treatment for high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC). The functional and clinical significance of the identified mutations was examined using a combination of population-based whole genome sequencing, targeted deep sequencing, multi-center analysis of protein expression, loss of function experiments in an in-vivo reporter assay and mammalian models, and gain of function experiments in primary cultured fallopian tube epithelial (FTE) cells. We identified frequent mutations involving a 40 kb distal repressor region for the key stem cell differentiation gene SOX2. In the apparently normal FTE, the region was also mutated. This was associated with a profound increase in SOX2 expression (p < 2−16), which was not found in patients without cancer (n = 108). Importantly, we show that SOX2 overexpression in FTE is nearly ubiquitous in patients with HGSOCs (n = 100), and common in BRCA1-BRCA2 mutation carriers (n = 71) who underwent prophylactic salpingo-oophorectomy. We propose that the finding of SOX2 overexpression in FTE could be exploited to develop biomarkers for detecting disease at a premalignant stage, which would reduce mortality from this devastating disease