Blood and alveolar lymphocyte subsets in pulmonary cytomegalovirus infection after lung transplantation

BACKGROUND: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) pneumonitis has been shown to be associated with lymphocytic alveolitis after lung transplantation. In the present study, we investigated a series of bronchoalveolar (BAL) and blood samples, collected in the absence of rejection or acute infectious episodes. in order -1: to evaluate intra-alveolar cell population changes concomitant with CMV replication and -2: to reappraise the value of cell population analysis in the management of patients after lung transplantation. METHODS: We used flow cytometry to investigate modifications of lymphocyte subpopulations related to pulmonary cytomegalovirus infections in blood and BAL samples from a series of 13 lung transplant recipients. After exclusion of samples obtained during pulmonary rejection, bronchiolitis obliterans or acute bacterial infection, 48 blood and BAL samples were retained for analysis: 17 were CMV positive by shell-vial assay and 31 were CMV negative in blood and BAL. RESULTS: Our results demonstrate that pulmonary CMV infection is associated with a significant increase in the total lymphocyte population in BAL samples, but with minor modifications of the various lymphocyte subpopulations and a significantly higher absolute number of B lymphocytes in blood samples. CONCLUSIONS: Cytomegalovirus pulmonary infection is accompanied by only minor changes in BAL lymphocyte subpopulations. The study of BAL lymphocyte subpopulations therefore appears to be of limited clinical value in the diagnosis of pulmonary CMV infection. However, increased blood B-lymphocytes seems to be a clinical feature associated with CMV infection

In vitro prediction of stop-codon suppression by intravenous gentamicin in patients with cystic fibrosis: a pilot study

BACKGROUND: Cystic fibrosis (CF) is caused by mutations in the gene encoding the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein, which acts as a chloride channel activated by cyclic AMP (cAMP). The most frequent mutation found in 70% of CF patients is F508del, while premature stop mutations are found in about 10% of patients. In vitro aminoglycoside antibiotics (e.g. gentamicin) suppress nonsense mutations located in CFTR permitting translation to continue to the natural termination codon. Pharmacologic suppression of stop mutations within the CFTR may be of benefit to a significant number of patients. Our pilot study was conducted to determine whether intravenous gentamicin suppresses stop codons in CF patients and whether it has clinical benefits. METHODS: A dual gene reporter system was used to determine the gentamicin-induced readthrough level of the most frequent stop mutations within the CFTR in the French population. We investigated readthrough efficiency in response to 10 mg/kg once-daily intravenous gentamicin perfusions in patients with and without stop mutations. Respiratory function, sweat chloride concentration, nasal potential difference (NPD) and CFTR expression in nasal epithelial cells were measured at baseline and after 15 days of treatment. RESULTS: After in vitro gentamicin incubation, the readthrough efficiency for the Y122X mutation was at least five times higher than that for G542X, R1162X, and W1282X. In six of the nine patients with the Y122X mutation, CFTR immunodetection showed protein at the membrane of the nasal epithelial cells and the CFTR-dependent Cl(- )secretion in NPD measurements increased significantly. Respiratory status also improved in these patients, irrespective of the gentamicin sensitivity of the bacteria present in the sputum. Mean sweat chloride concentration decreased significantly and normalised in two patients. Clinical status, NPD and sweat Cl(- )values did not change in the Y122X patients with no protein expression, in patients with the other stop mutations investigated in vitro and those without stop mutations. CONCLUSION: Suppression of stop mutations in the CFTR gene with parenteral gentamicin can be predicted in vitro and is associated with clinical benefit and significant modification of the CFTR-mediated Cl(- )transport in nasal and sweat gland epithelium

HER2 Status in Ovarian Carcinomas: A Multicenter GINECO Study of 320 Patients

BACKGROUND: Despite a typically good response to first-line combination chemotherapy, the prognosis for patients with advanced ovarian cancer remains poor because of acquired chemoresistance. The use of targeted therapies such as trastuzumab may potentially improve outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer. HER2 overexpression/amplification has been reported in ovarian cancer, but the exact percentage of HER2-positive tumors varies widely in the literature. In this study, HER2 gene status was evaluated in a large, multicentric series of 320 patients with advanced ovarian cancer, including 243 patients enrolled in a multicenter prospective clinical trial of paclitaxel/carboplatin-based chemotherapy. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The HER2 status of primary tumors and metastases was evaluated by both immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis of paraffin-embedded tissue on conventional slides. The prognostic impact of HER2 expression was analyzed. HER2 gene was overexpressed and amplified in 6.6% of analyzed tumors. Despite frequent intratumoral heterogeneity, no statistically significant difference was detected between primary tumors and corresponding metastases. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results show that the decision algorithm usually used in breast cancer (IHC as a screening test, with equivocal results confirmed by FISH) is appropriate in ovarian cancer. In contrast to previous series, HER2-positive status did not influence outcome in the present study, possibly due to the fact that patients in our study received paclitaxel/carboplatin-based chemotherapy. This raises the question of whether HER2 status and paclitaxel sensitively are linked

Increasing the bactofection capacity of a mammalian expression vector by removal of the f1 ori

Bacterial-mediated cancer therapy has shown great promise in in vivo tumour models with increased survival rates post-bacterial treatment. Improving efficiency of bacterial-mediated tumour regression has focused on controlling and exacerbating bacterial cytotoxicity towards tumours. One mechanism that has been used to carry this out is the process of bactofection where post-invasion, bacteria deliver plasmid-borne mammalian genes into target cells for expression. Here we utilised the cancer-targeting Salmonella Typhimurium strain, SL7207, to carry out bactofection into triple negative breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cells. However, we noted that post-transformation with the commonly used mammalian expression vector pEGFP, S. Typhimurium became filamentous, attenuated and unable to invade target cells efficiently. Filamentation did not occur in Escherichia coli-transformed with the same plasmid. Further investigation identified the region inducing S. Typhimurium filamentation as being the f1 origin of replication (f1 ori), an artefact of historic use of mammalian plasmids for single stranded DNA production. Other f1 ori-containing plasmids also induced the attenuated phenotype, while removal of the f1 ori from pEGFP restored S. Typhimurium virulence and increased the bactofection capacity. This work has implications for interpretation of prior bactofection studies employing f1 ori-containing plasmids in S. Typhimurium, while also indicating that future use of S. Typhimurium in targeting tumours should avoid the use of these plasmids

MDRView: a visualization of the polymorphisms of MDR1(ABCB1) GENE in breast cancer.

International audienceThis paper presents the Generalized CaseView method applied to the study of polymorphisms of MDR1 (Multi Drug Resistant), a gene coding for a trans-membrane transporting protein. The data base contains Single nucleotide polymorphisms, their positions in cDNA, and the Area Under the Curve of drugs concentrations. The generalized CaseView method permits a compact visualization of these data. The main result is that pharmacokinetics of some anticancer drugs depends on the genotype

A Severe COVID-19 Pneumonia Revealing a Lepidic Adenocarcinoma: A Diagnostic Challenge During the Pandemic Period

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Effect on perceived control and psychological distress of genetic knowledge in women with breast cancer receiving a BRCA1/2 test result

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Short-term psychological impact of the BRCA1/2 test result in women with breast cancer according to their perceived probability of genetic predisposition to cancer

International audienceThe effect of BRCA1/2 gene test result on anxiety, depression, cancer-related thought intrusion or avoidance and perceived control over cancer risk was assessed in breast cancer (BC) patients, according to their perceived probability of genetic predisposition to cancer.METHODS:Two hundred and forty-three (89% response rate) women with BC completed questionnaires after an initial genetic counselling visit (T1), of which 180 (66%) completed questionnaires again after receiving the BRCA1/2 results (T2). The discrepancy between women's perceived probability of cancer genetic predisposition at T1 and the geneticist's computed estimates was assessed.RESULTS:In all, 74% of women received a negative uninformative (NU), 11% a positive BRCA1/2 and 15% an unclassified variant (UV) result. On hierarchical regression analysis, in women with a positive BRCA1/2 result (vs NU or UV), a lower perceived probability of cancer genetic predisposition than objective estimates at T1 predicted lower levels of anxiety at T2 (β=-0.28; P<0.01), whereas in women receiving a UV result (vs NU or positive BRCA1/2), a lower perceived probability of cancer genetic predisposition than objective estimates at T1 predicted higher levels of anxiety (β=0.20; P<0.01), depression (β=0.19; P<0.05) and intrusion (β=0.18; P<0.05) at T2.CONCLUSION:The type of BRCA1/2 test result differently affects distress according to women's perceived probability of genetic predisposition before testing