Breast Cancer Vaccine: Are We There Yet?

In lieu of an abstract, here is the article\u27s first paragraph: Breast cancer is the most fatal form of cancer for female population worldwide. National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates 226,870 females and 2,190 males to be diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States by the end of 2012. The estimated death toll for this year includes 39,510 females and 410 males, as reported by NCI. Statistics state that 1 in every 8 females will be diagnosed with breast cancer during her lifetime. These alarming numbers have provoked a large number of scientists to contribute towards the fight against breast cancer. Today there are various tools available for females to protect them from breast cancer. Mammography serves as an efficient tool in screening and catching such cases early enough for improved treatment, while surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy provide a strong line of treatment to breast cancer patients. Cancer patients are often subjected to a combination of such therapies, leading to cumulative adverse effects accompanied with the treatment. Addressing the growing number of breast cancer cases, the adverse effects associated with current therapies and the risk of having a relapse after undergoing extensive conventional therapy, researchers are now looking forward for a breast cancer vaccine [1-3]

Cancer Vaccines: A Ray of Hope

In lieu of an abstract, here are the article\u27s first two paragraphs: Recent cancer statistics review by Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program by National Cancer Institute (NCI) shows that cancer is the second most leading cause of death after heart diseases. Cancer incidence has grown from 19.2% to 23.3% from 1975 to 2010 (Figure 1)[1]. Lung cancer remains to be the most fatal form of cancer followed by colorectal, breast and prostate cancer in the country (Table 1)[1]. Regardless of several treatment options, cancer remains to be a unique challenge for both patients and the healthcare providers. Several treatment options are available to address this disease now. Chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy are still the mainline of treatment plan for cancer patients. Along with these therapies, immunotherapy is being explored as a combination therapy. Immunotherapy allows utilization of patient’s own immune system to combat the disease and⁄or assist in avoiding a relapse. Cancer research and clinical trials are one of the most challenging ones attributed to the nature of the disease state. This editorial is devoted to those, who have dedicated their careers to develop various immunotherapeutic approaches leading to the evolution of cancer vaccines, providing a ray of hope to cancer patients. These cancer vaccines are targeted to boost the immune response of the host further protecting them from the challenges posed by cancerous cells. Unlike vaccines for infectious diseases, a cancer vaccine is targeted against host’s own cells. Thus, identification and isolation of such cancer antigens is not only difficult but also unique for the patient at times

Pharmacovigilance of Biosimilars

In lieu of an abstract, here is the article\u27s first paragraph: Biotech industry forms the backbone of the current pharmaceutical products. Seven out of top ten anticipated drugs of the industry in 2014 will be biologics [1]. Considering the fast pace growth of the biotechnological products, there is a parallel demand of biosimilars. As defined by FDA, “A biosimilar is a biological product that is highly similar to a U.S.-licensed reference biological product notwithstanding minor differences in clinically inactive components, and for which there are no clinically meaningful differences between the biological product and the reference product in terms of the safety, purity, and potency of the product” [2]. Thus these biosimilar products become affordable alternatives to several biotechnological products, which are going off-patent. Along with the benefit of cost-effective therapy and scope of further research leading to the possibility of bio-superiors, biosimilars have led to formation of a whole new branch of biotech industry. However, there are various other concerns that require these biosimilars to be monitored closely

Rupture Test and Bioavailability of Oil-Soluble Vitamins

In lieu of an abstract, here is the article\u27s first paragraph: Bioavailability of multi-vitamins as dietary supplements has always been a concern. Dissolution studies have been successfully used to predict drug release of bioactive molecules, but with vitamins there are some exceptions. United State Pharmacopoeia (USP) defines the dissolution requirements of multi-vitamin supplements based on the composition and type of dosage form. As oil-soluble vitamins do not meet the criterion of “dissolution”, the performance of dosage forms containing such vitamins is evaluated by disintegration studies primarily. Dissolution studies are not applicable for such dosage forms [1]

Stability of extemporaneously prepared cinacalcet oral suspensions

Purpose The stability of extemporaneously prepared cinacalcet suspensions over 90 days was evaluated. Methods Cinacalcet 5-mg/mL suspension was prepared by triturating 30-mg cinacalcet tablets. Twelve 30-mL batches were prepared with a 1:1 mixture of Ora-Plus and either Ora-Sweet or Ora-Sweet SF (sugar free). Three suspensions of each kind were stored at both room temperature and refrigerated conditions. A 1-mL sample was taken from each bottle at 0, 7, 18, 32, 64, and 90 days. Each sample was assayed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). A new HPLC method for evaluating drug peaks of pure cinacalcet was developed. Stability was defined as retention of at least 90% of the initial drug concentration. Results The HPLC method established in this study serves as a novel assay for evaluating cinacalcet oral suspensions. For all suspensions tested at individual conditions, the concentration remained above 90% of the initial concentration for 90 days of storage with the exception of Ora-Plus and Ora-Sweet SF suspensions stored under refrigeration, which were stable for 64 days. Usual sedimentation of the suspensions occurred over time but resolved with agitation; there was no other change in visual appearance of the suspensions over the course of the 90-day study. The color and odor of the suspensions throughout the study remained unchanged with respect to the initial time point. Conclusion Extemporaneously compounded cinacalcet 5-mg/mL oral suspensions prepared with a 1:1 mixture of Ora-Plus and either Ora-Sweet or Ora-Sweet SF and stored in 2-oz amber polypropylene plastic bottles were stable for at least 64 days at room temperature and under refrigeration

An Investigation of the Relative Impacts of Hearing Aid Self-efficacy and Personality on aspects of Hearing Aid Success

It has been hypothesized that patient factors such as self-efficacy and personality impact aspects of hearing aid (HA) success. Thus, researchers have recommended that clinicians incorporate these factors while planning individualized audiologic rehabilitation. However, the different contributions of these factors have not been evaluated in tandem. Additionally, most of these factors are evaluated using generalized measures. It is unclear whether general measures reflect nuanced psychosocial impacts of listening in difficult environments. This dissertation evaluated the relative impacts of patient factors on aspects of HA success using a series of quantitative and qualitative studies.First, we evaluated the associations between hearing aid self-efficacy (HASE) and other measurable patient characteristics in nave and experienced HA users. Aspects of HASE were significantly associated with HA experience, with those having more experience also having higher confidence in handling HAs. Other measurable constructs, such as personality and cognition were distinct from HASE. In a follow-up qualitative study, we attempted to uncover the key ingredients of success in experienced HA users with high HASE. Our participants reported that self-reliance to make health care decisions, high intrapersonal motivation, openness and agreeableness towards accepting and using HAs, and a positive relationship with their audiologists were key to their success. Finally, we used mediation and moderation analyses to understand the interacting relationships between reported patient factors measured in general and in listening-specific situations in predicting readiness to pursue audiologic intervention. We found that participants reported having significantly different affective states in listening-specific situations compared to their affective states assessed in General. Individuals with greater perceived hearing handicap, high HASE, and high agreeableness showed increased readiness to pursue an intervention. However, HASE and agreeableness again were independent predictors and, along with affective states or mood, did not impact the relationship between perceived hearing handicap and readiness. Together, these results suggest that self-efficacy and personality impact aspects of HA success through mechanisms that are independent from each other; however, these specific mechanisms remain to be discovered. It is likely that patient factors impact success differently at different stages of an individuals hearing health journey. Future research should explore these relationships

Micro- and Nanoparticulate Cancer Vaccines: A Vision for the Future

In lieu of an abstract, here is the article\u27s first paragraph: Formulation scientists are constantly challenged with unique opportunities to deliver chemotherapeutic drug molecules to cancer patients. With the growing rate of cancer diagnoses, new therapies are being introduced to pave their way to the market. Along with drug delivery, these formulation approaches are being screened for formulation, design, and development of cancer vaccines. Can a vaccine be formulated to obtain a protective or therapeutic immune response against cancer

Multi-Document Summarization using Distributed Bag-of-Words Model

As the number of documents on the web is growing exponentially, multi-document summarization is becoming more and more important since it can provide the main ideas in a document set in short time. In this paper, we present an unsupervised centroid-based document-level reconstruction framework using distributed bag of words model. Specifically, our approach selects summary sentences in order to minimize the reconstruction error between the summary and the documents. We apply sentence selection and beam search, to further improve the performance of our model. Experimental results on two different datasets show significant performance gains compared with the state-of-the-art baselines

Climate change : impacts on the socio-economic conditions of fishing people in the coastal region of Bangladesh

Climate change has been one of the most critical concerns in recent decades globally. Climate change is predicted to have a range of direct and indirect impacts on marine and freshwater capture fisheries, with implications for fisheries-dependent economies and coastal fishing communities. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the world. Being a coastal country where most of its people’s living is heavily dependent on fishing, the socio-economic rights of the coastal fishing people are being conspicuously affected by climate change. The coastal environments particularly at risk include low-lying coastal plains, sandy beaches, coastal wetlands and coral reefs. Socio-economic conditions of fish farmers, especially in the coastal region in Bangladesh, have been severely affected because of climate change. The impacts of climate change are increasing, including natural disasters—such as rise in sea level—climate disasters and ecological imbalances that are the primary culprits in the demolition, deterioration or diminishment of the socio-economic rights of the coastal fishing people in Bangladesh. This research analyses the impacts of climate change on coastal fishing people as well as the significant human rights of coastal fishing people that are affected by climate change. The research examines the causes, impacts on, and the relation between climate change and the socio-economic and environmental rights of the coastal fishing people. This study investigates the existing international laws, declarations, conventions and agreements that are relevant for the mitigation of the impacts of climate change on coastal fishing people. In order to evaluate the current regime, the research also investigates the legal and institutional arrangements for the improvement of the socio-economic and environmental conditions of the coastal people of three other coastal states of the Bay of Bengal (BoB) including India, Sri Lanka and Maldives. This research critically analyses the existing legal frameworks in relation to climate change and climate-induced impacts on the coastal fishing people of Bangladesh. In light of this, this thesis identifies several social and legal drawbacks that are affecting socio-economic conditions of the coastal fishing communities in Bangladesh. Finally, this research proposes recommendations for improving the socio-economic conditions of the coastal fishing people of Bangladesh that could be helpful for policy makers to address the issue more effectively