Clinical significance of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in laryngeal carcinoma: Its role in the different subsites

Background: During epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, cancer cells lose adhesion capacity gaining migratory properties. The role of the process on prognosis has been evaluated in 50 cases of laryngeal carcinoma. Methods: E-cadherin, N-cadherin, β-catenin, α-catenin, γ-catenin, caveolin-1, and vimentin immunohistochemical expression were evaluated using a double score based on staining intensity and cellular localization. Results: Cytoplasmic E-cadherin and α/γ catenin staining were associated with a decrease in survival, cytoplasmic β-catenin was associated with advanced stage, and N-cadherin and vimentin expression were associated with poor differentiation and tumor relapse. On the basis of cancer cells, epithelial or mesenchymal morphological and immunophenotypic similarity we identified 4 main subgroups correlated with a transition to a more undifferentiated phenotype, which have a different pattern of relapse and survival. Conclusion: The negative prognostic role of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition has been confirmed and a predictive role in glottic tumors has been suggested, leading us to propose epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition as an additional adverse feature in laryngeal carcinoma

Detecting time-fragmented cache attacks against AES using Performance Monitoring Counters

Cache timing attacks use shared caches in multi-core processors as side channels to extract information from victim processes. These attacks are particularly dangerous in cloud infrastructures, in which the deployed countermeasures cause collateral effects in terms of performance loss and increase in energy consumption. We propose to monitor the victim process using an independent monitoring (detector) process, that continuously measures selected Performance Monitoring Counters (PMC) to detect the presence of an attack. Ad-hoc countermeasures can be applied only when such a risky situation arises. In our case, the victim process is the AES encryption algorithm and the attack is performed by means of random encryption requests. We demonstrate that PMCs are a feasible tool to detect the attack and that sampling PMCs at high frequencies is worse than sampling at lower frequencies in terms of detection capabilities, particularly when the attack is fragmented in time to try to be hidden from detection

A rapid and selective mass spectrometric method for the identification of nitrated proteins.

The nitration of protein tyrosine residues represents an important posttranslational modification during development, oxidative stress, and biological aging. The major challenge in the proteomic analysis of nitroproteins is the need to discriminate modified proteins, usually occurring at substoichiometric levels, from the large amount of nonmodified proteins. Moreover, precise localization of the nitration site is often required to fully describe the biological process. Identification of the specific targets of protein oxidation was previously accomplished using immunoprecipitation techniques followed by immunochemical detection. Here, we report a totally new approach involving dansyl chloride labeling of the nitration sites which relies on the enormous potential of MSn analysis. The tryptic digest from the entire protein mixture is directly analyzed by MS on a linear ion trap mass spectrometer. Discrimination between nitro- and unmodified peptide is based on two selectivity criteria obtained by combining a precursor ion scan and a MS3 analysis. The novel labeling procedure was successfully applied to the identification of 3-nitrotyrosine residues in complex protein mixture

Z' Physics

The limits on extra neutral gauge bosons, which could be reached at LEP2, are reviewed. Exclusion and discovery limits are discussed for f\bar f and WW production.Comment: 20 pages Latex, 7 figures included by epsfig, Contribution to the Proceedings the workshop "Physics at LEP2", Geneva, 199

JET ANALYSIS BY NEURAL NETWORKS IN HIGH ENERGY HADRON-HADRON COLLISIONS

We study the possibility to employ neural networks to simulate jet clustering procedures in high energy hadron-hadron collisions. We concentrate our analysis on the Fermilab Tevatron energy and on the $k_\bot$ algorithm. We consider both supervised multilayer feed-forward network trained by the backpropagation algorithm and unsupervised learning, where the neural network autonomously organizes the events in clusters.Comment: 9 pages, latex, 2 figures not included

Redox proteome analysis of auranofin exposed ovarian cancer cells (A2780)

The effects of Auranofin (AF) on protein expression and protein oxidation in A2780 cancer cells were investigated through a strategy based on simultaneous expression proteomics and redox proteomics determinations. Bioinformatics analysis of the proteomics data supports the view that the most critical cellular changes elicited by AF treatment consist of thioredoxin reductase inhibition, alteration of the cell redox state, impairment of the mitochondrial functions, metabolic changes associated with conversion to a glycolytic phenotype, induction of ER stress. The occurrence of the above cellular changes was extensively validated by performing direct biochemical assays. Our data are consistent with the concept that AF produces its effects through a multitarget mechanism that mainly affects the redox metabolism and the mitochondrial functions and results into severe ER stress. Results are discussed in the context of the current mechanistic knowledge existing on AF

Cross section of isolated prompt photons in hadron-hadron collisions

We consider the production of isolated prompt photons in hadronic collisions. We present a general discussion in QCD perturbation theory of the isolation criterion used by hadron collider experiments. The isolation criterion is implemented in a computer programme of the Monte Carlo type, which evaluates the production cross section at next-to-leading order accuracy in perturbative QCD. The calculation includes both the direct and the fragmentation components of the cross section, without any approximation of the dependence on the radius R of the isolation cone. We examine the scale dependence of the isolated cross section, the sensitivity of the cross section to the values of the isolation parameters, and we provide a quantitative comparison between the full R dependence and its small-R approximation.Comment: 29 pages, 1 figure, few comments slightly expanded, results unchanged, misprints correcte

Hadronic Total Cross-sections Through Soft Gluon Summation in Impact Parameter Space

The Bloch-Nordsieck model for the parton distribution of hadrons in impact parameter space, constructed using soft gluon summation, is investigated in detail. Its dependence upon the infrared structure of the strong coupling constant $\alpha_s$ is discussed, both for finite as well as singular, but integrable, $\alpha_s$. The formalism is applied to the prediction of total proton-proton and proton-antiproton cross-sections, where screening, due to soft gluon emission from the initial valence quarks, becomes evident.Comment: 20 pages, Latex2e, input FEYNMAN,12 postscipt figures. Submitted to PR

Anterior gradient protein 2 promotes survival, migration and invasion of papillary thyroid carcinoma cells

Through a transcriptome microarray analysis, we have isolated Anterior gradient protein 2 (AGR2) as a gene up-regulated in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). AGR2 is a disulfide isomerase over-expressed in several human carcinomas and recently linked to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Here, we analyzed the expression of AGR2 in PTC and its functional role