Small-Animal Molecular Imaging for Preclinical Cancer Research: µPET and µSPECT

Due to different sizes of humans and rodents, the performance of clinical imaging devices is not enough for a scientifically reliable evaluation in mice and rats; therefore dedicated small-animal systems with a much higher sensitivity and spatial resolution, compared to the ones used in humans, are required. Small-animal imaging represents a cutting-edge research method able to approach an enormous variety of pathologies in which animal models of disease may be used to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the human condition and/or to allow a translational pharmacological (or other)evaluation of therapeutic tools. Molecular imaging, avoiding animal sacrifice, permits repetitive (i.e. longitudinal) studies on the same animal which becomes its own control .In this way also the over time evaluation of disease progression or of the treatment response is enabled. Many different rodent models have been applied to study almost all kind of human pathologiesor to experiment a wide series of drugs and/or other therapeutic instruments. In particular, relevant information has been achieved in oncologyby in vivoneoplastic phenotypes, obtained through procedures such as sub-cutaneous tumor grafts, surgical transplantation of solid tumor,orthotopic injection of tumor cells into specific organs/sites of interest, genetic modification of animals to promote tumor-genesis; in this way traditional or innovative treatments, also including gene therapy, of animals with a cancer induced by a known carcinogen may be experimented. Each model has its own disadvantage but, comparing different studies, itis possible to achieve a panoramic and therefore substantially reliable view on the specific subject. Small-animal molecular imaging has become an invaluable component of modern biomedical research that will gain probably an increasingly important role in the next few years

Biochemical and Pathophysiological Premises to Positron Emission Tomography With Choline Radiotracers.

Choline is a quaternary ammonium base that represents an essential component of phospholipids and cell membranes. Malignant transformation is associated with an abnormal choline metabolism at a higher levels with respect to those exclusively due to cell multiplication. The use of Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography (PET/CT) with radiocholine (RCH), labeled with 11 C or 18 F, is widely diffuse in oncology, with main reference to restaging of patients with prostate cancer. In this paper we have analyzed the most important issues related to the possible utilization of RCH in diagnostic imaging of human cancer

Biochemical and Pathophysiological Premises to Positron Emission Tomography With Choline Radiotracers

Choline is a quaternary ammonium base that represents an essential component of phospholipids and cell membranes. Malignant transformation is associated with an abnormal choline metabolism at a higher levels with respect to those exclusively due to cell multiplication. The use of Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography (PET/CT) with radiocholine (RCH), labeled with 11 C or 18 F, is widely diffuse in oncology, with main reference to restaging of patients with prostate cancer. In this paper we have analyzed the most important issues related to the possible utilization of RCH in diagnostic imaging of human cancer

Algal and aquatic plant carbon concentrating mechanisms in relation to environmental change

Carbon dioxide concentrating mechanisms (also known as inorganic carbon concentrating mechanisms; both abbreviated as CCMs) presumably evolved under conditions of low CO2 availability. However, the timing of their origin is unclear since there are no sound estimates from molecular clocks, and even if there were, there are no proxies for the functioning of CCMs. Accordingly, we cannot use previous episodes of high CO2 (e.g. the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) to indicate how organisms with CCMs responded. Present and predicted environmental change in terms of increased CO2 and temperature are leading to increased CO2 and HCO3- and decreased CO32- and pH in surface seawater, as well as decreasing the depth of the upper mixed layer and increasing the degree of isolation of this layer with respect to nutrient flux from deeper waters. The outcome of these forcing factors is to increase the availability of inorganic carbon, photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) and ultraviolet B radiation (UVB) to aquatic photolithotrophs and to decrease the supply of the nutrients (combined) nitrogen and phosphorus and of any non-aeolian iron. The influence of these variations on CCM expression has been examined to varying degrees as acclimation by extant organisms. Increased PAR increases CCM expression in terms of CO2 affinity, while increased UVB has a range of effects in the organisms examined; little relevant information is available on increased temperature. Decreased combined nitrogen supply generally increases CO2 affinity, decreased iron availability increases CO2 affinity, and decreased phosphorus supply has varying effects on the organisms examined. There are few data sets showing interactions among the observed changes, and even less information on genetic (adaptation) changes in response to the forcing factors. In freshwaters, changes in phytoplankton species composition may alter with environmental change with consequences for frequency of species with or without CCMs. The information available permits less predictive power as to the effect of the forcing factors on CCM expression than for their overall effects on growth. CCMs are currently not part of models as to how global environmental change has altered, and is likely to further alter, algal and aquatic plant primary productivity

Teaching research in nursing and midwifery curricula

We discuss a new entangled state that has been observed in the conduction across a quantum dot. At Coulomb blockade, electrons from the contacts correlate strongly to those localized in the dot, due to cotunneling processes. Because of the strong Coulomb repulsion on the dot, its electron number is unchanged w.r.to the dot in isolation, but the total spin is fully or partly compensated. In a dot with N=even at the singlet-triplet crossing, which occurs in large magnetic field, Kondo correlations lead to a total spin S=1/2.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure