BioBanking - The Holy Grail of novel drug and diagnostic developments?

The ever increasing social cost that society pays for illness and disease are currently steadily increasing in many countries in the world today. These changes in society becomes a major financial burden that activates politicians and health care organizations in order to find new solutions. Biobanks are becoming the new powerful modality within the field of modern Life Science, that is expected to be important in the proactive awareness of patient health status. Biobanks are also expected to promote the developments of targeted treatments with personalized indicator assays, for effective use of Personalized Medicine treatments in the near future

Moving towards high density clinical signature studies with a human proteome catalogue developing multiplexing mass spectrometry assay panels

A perspective overview is given describing the current development of multiplex mass spectrometry assay technology platforms utilized for high throughput clinical sample analysis. The development of targeted therapies with novel personalized medicine drugs will require new tools for monitoring efficacy and outcome that will rely on both the quantification of disease progression related biomarkers as well as the measurement of disease specific pathway/signaling proteins

2DDB – a bioinformatics solution for analysis of quantitative proteomics data

BACKGROUND: We present 2DDB, a bioinformatics solution for storage, integration and analysis of quantitative proteomics data. As the data complexity and the rate with which it is produced increases in the proteomics field, the need for flexible analysis software increases. RESULTS: 2DDB is based on a core data model describing fundamentals such as experiment description and identified proteins. The extended data models are built on top of the core data model to capture more specific aspects of the data. A number of public databases and bioinformatical tools have been integrated giving the user access to large amounts of relevant data. A statistical and graphical package, R, is used for statistical and graphical analysis. The current implementation handles quantitative data from 2D gel electrophoresis and multidimensional liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry experiments. CONCLUSION: The software has successfully been employed in a number of projects ranging from quantitative liquid-chromatography-mass spectrometry based analysis of transforming growth factor-beta stimulated fi-broblasts to 2D gel electrophoresis/mass spectrometry analysis of biopsies from human cervix. The software is available for download at SourceForge

Biobank resources for future patient care: developments, principles and concepts

The aim of the overview is to give a perspective of global biobank development is given in a view of positioning biobanking as a key resource for healthcare to identify new potential markers that can be used in patient diagnosis and complement the targeted personalized drug treatment. The fast progression of biobanks around the world is becoming an important resource for society where the patient benefit is in the focus, with a high degree of personal integrity and ethical standard. Biobanks are providing patient benefits by large scale screening studies, generating large database repositories. It is envisioned by all participating stakeholders that the biobank initiatives will become the future gateway to discover new frontiers within life science and patient care. There is a great importance of biobank establishment globally, as biobanks has been identified as a key area for development in order to speed up the discovery and development of new drugs and protein biomarker diagnostics. One of the major objectives in Europe is to establish concerted actions, where biobank networks are being developed in order to combine and have the opportunity to share and build new science and understanding from complex disease biology. These networks are currently building bridges to facilitate the establishments of best practice and standardizations

A melanoma és az agyi áttétképződés molekuláris háttere | Molecular background of the melanoma and the brain metastasis

Absztrakt: A melanoma malignum az egyik legagresszívebb daganat, amely gyakran képez áttétet távoli szervekbe. Az előrehaladott tumorok közel felében figyeltek meg agyi metasztázist. A korai diagnózis a betegség kimenetele szempontjából nagy jelentőségű. Az új, hatékony terápiák kialakításában fontos a bekövetkező genetikai és epigenetikai eltérések feltérképezése, ami ígéretes terápiás célpontokat jelölhet ki. Leggyakrabban a mitogénaktivált proteinkináz útvonal, a foszfatidil-inozitol-3-kináz jelátviteli útvonal és a sejtciklus-szabályozó molekulák génjeinek mutációi vezethetnek melanoma kialakulásához. A melanoma agyi áttétképzésének molekuláris folyamata nem teljesen feltárt. Közleményünkben összefoglaljuk a melanoma, illetve az agyi metasztázis kialakulásában szerepet játszó genetikai eltéréseket és molekuláris mechanizmusokat. Orv Hetil. 2017; 158(28): 1083–1091. | Abstract: Malignant melanoma is one of the most aggressive tumors which often gives metastasis to distant organs thereby limiting the chances of survival. Brain metastasis occurs in nearly half of the advanced tumors. In order to improve outcome early diagnosis is important. The discovery and better understanding of genetic and epigenetic changes is essential for developing new effective therapies, which can designate promising therapeutic targets. Melanoma most often is caused by gene mutations of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway, the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase signaling pathway, and the cell cycle regulatory molecules, respectively. The molecular process of brain metastasis has not been fully elucidated. In our review we summarize the genetic alterations and molecular mechanisms playing a role in the development of melanoma and its brain metastasis. Orv Hetil. 2017; 158(28): 1083–1091

A melanoma és az agyi áttétképződés molekuláris háttere | Molecular background of the melanoma and the brain metastasis

Absztrakt: A melanoma malignum az egyik legagresszívebb daganat, amely gyakran képez áttétet távoli szervekbe. Az előrehaladott tumorok közel felében figyeltek meg agyi metasztázist. A korai diagnózis a betegség kimenetele szempontjából nagy jelentőségű. Az új, hatékony terápiák kialakításában fontos a bekövetkező genetikai és epigenetikai eltérések feltérképezése, ami ígéretes terápiás célpontokat jelölhet ki. Leggyakrabban a mitogénaktivált proteinkináz útvonal, a foszfatidil-inozitol-3-kináz jelátviteli útvonal és a sejtciklus-szabályozó molekulák génjeinek mutációi vezethetnek melanoma kialakulásához. A melanoma agyi áttétképzésének molekuláris folyamata nem teljesen feltárt. Közleményünkben összefoglaljuk a melanoma, illetve az agyi metasztázis kialakulásában szerepet játszó genetikai eltéréseket és molekuláris mechanizmusokat. Orv Hetil. 2017; 158(28): 1083–1091. | Abstract: Malignant melanoma is one of the most aggressive tumors which often gives metastasis to distant organs thereby limiting the chances of survival. Brain metastasis occurs in nearly half of the advanced tumors. In order to improve outcome early diagnosis is important. The discovery and better understanding of genetic and epigenetic changes is essential for developing new effective therapies, which can designate promising therapeutic targets. Melanoma most often is caused by gene mutations of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway, the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase signaling pathway, and the cell cycle regulatory molecules, respectively. The molecular process of brain metastasis has not been fully elucidated. In our review we summarize the genetic alterations and molecular mechanisms playing a role in the development of melanoma and its brain metastasis. Orv Hetil. 2017; 158(28): 1083–1091

Localization of tamoxifen in human breast cancer tumors by MALDI mass spectrometry imaging

Background: Tamoxifen is used in endocrine treatment of breast cancer to inhibit estrogen signaling. A set of strati‐ ed ER‐positive and ER‐negative tumor sections was subjected to manual deposition of tamoxifen solution in order to investigate its spatial distribution upon exposure to interaction within thin tissue sections. Methods: The localization of tamoxifen in tumor sections was assessed by matrix assisted laser deposition/ioniza‐ tion mass spectrometry imaging. The images of extracted ion maps were analyzed for comparison of signal intensity distributions. Results: The precursor ion of tamoxifen (m/z 372.233) displayed heterogeneous signal intensity distributions in his‐ tological compartments of tumor tissue sections. The levels of tamoxifen in tumor cells compared with stroma were higher in ER‐positive tissues, whereas ER‐negative tissue sections showed lower signal intensities in tumor cells. Conclusions: The experimental model was successfully applied on frozen tumor samples allowing for di erentiation between ER groups based on distribution of tamoxifen