Update on Poly-ADP-ribose polymerase inhibition for ovarian cancer treatment

Background: Despite standard treatment for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), that involves cytoreductive surgery followed by platinum-based chemotherapy, and initial high response rates to these, up to 80 % of patients experience relapses with a median progression-free survival of 12–18 months. There remains an urgent need for novel targeted therapies to improve clinical outcomes in ovarian cancer. Of the many targeted therapies currently under evaluation, the most promising strategies developed thus far are antiangiogenic agents and Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors. Particularly, PARP inhibitors are active in cells that have impaired repair of DNA by the homologous recombination (HR) pathway. Cells with mutated breast related cancer antigens (BRCA) function have HR deficiency, which is also present in a significant proportion of non-BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer (“BRCAness” ovarian cancer). The prevalence of germline BRCA mutations in EOC has historically been estimated to be around 10–15 %. However, recent reports suggest that this may be a gross underestimate, especially in women with high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC). Main body of the abstract: The emergence of the DNA repair pathway as a rational target in various cancers led to the development of the PARP inhibitors. The concept of tumor-selective synthetic lethality heralded the beginning of an eventful decade, culminating in the approval by regulatory authorities both in Europe as a maintenance therapy and in the United States treatment for advanced recurrent disease of the first oral PARP inhibitor, olaparib, for the treatment of BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer patients. Other PARP inhibitors are clearly effective in this disease and, within the next years, the results of ongoing randomized trials will clarify their respective roles. Conclusion: This review will discuss the different PARP inhibitors in development and the potential use of this class of agents in the future. Moreover, combination strategies involving PARP inhibitors are likely to receive increasing attention. The utility of PARP inhibitors combined with cytotoxic chemotherapy is of doubtful value, because of enhanced toxicity of this combination; while, more promising strategies include the combination with antiangiogenic agents, or with inhibitors of the P13K/AKT pathway and new generation of immunotherapy

3d modelling of archaeological small finds by a low-cost range camera. Methodology and first results

The production of reliable documentation of small finds is a crucial process during archaeological excavations. Range cameras can be a valid alternative to traditional illustration methods: they are veritable 3D scanners able to easily collect the 3D geometry (shape and dimensions in metric units) of an object/scene practically in real-time. This work investigates precisely the potentialities of a promising low-cost range camera, the Structure SensorTM by Occipital, for rapid modelling archaeological objects. The accuracy assessment was thus performed by comparing the 3D model of a Cipriot-Phoenician globular jug captured by this device with the 3D model of the same object obtained through photogrammetry. In general, the performed analysis shows that Structure Sensor is capable to acquire the 3D geometry of a small object with an accuracy comparable at millimeter level to that obtainable with the photogrammetric method, even though the finer details are not always correctly modelled. The texture reconstruction is instead less accurate. In the end, it can be concluded that the range camera used for this work, due to its low-cost and flexibility, is a suitable tool for the rapid documentation of archaeological small finds, especially when not expert users are involved

Experimental characterization of SLM and EBM cubic lattice structures for lightweight applications

This study carries out an experimental characterization of lattice structures that are based on cubic cells fabricated through selective laser melting (SLM) and electron beam melting (EBM). The lattice failure under compressive load is studied as a function of the process typology, material properties, and dimensional parameters of the unit cell. The bulk material is first characterized to evaluate the process stability. Three main failure modes of the lattice are identified, depending on the response of ductile/brittle material and the direction of crack propagation. The relationship between lattice geometrical parameters and mechanical strength is observed. The results of the modeling and experiments are suitable to validate the design of lightweight components built with AM processes. The structural performances related to geometrical features, material properties and technological constraints are well explained for further applications in structural design. The equivalent Young’s module of lattice samples with different cell size has been measured and compared with numerical simulations based on the homogenization method

Chapter Scenari di reverse processing nel rilievo architettonico da nuvola di punti

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences

Ontologies for Quantified Self: a Semantic Approach

The spreading of devices and applications that allow people to collect personal information opens new opportunities for user modeling (UM). In this new scenario UM together with personal informatics (PI) can offer a new way for self-monitoring that can provide the users with a sophisticated mirror of their behavior, attitudes and habits and their consequences on their life, on the environment and on contexts in which they live in. These new forms of self-reflection and self-knowledge can trigger and motivate the behavior change. In this paper we describe the first step in this direction, focusing on opportunities offered by semantic web ontologies for data integration and reasoning over data for recommendation purposes