Cetuximab plus platinum-based chemotherapy in head and neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma: a retrospective study in a single Comprehensive European Cancer Institution

Background: The use of cetuximab in combination with platinum (P) plus 5-fluorouracil (F) has previously been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of metastatic squamous cell cancer of head and neck (SCCHN). We investigated the efficacy and outcome of this protocol as a first-line treatment for patients with recurrent or metastatic disease. We evaluated overall-survival (OS), progression-free-survival (PFS), overall response rate (ORR) and the treatment toxicity profile in a retrospective cohort. Patients and Methods: This study enrolled 121 patients with untreated recurrent or metastatic SCCHN. The patients received PF+ cetuximab every 3 weeks for a maximum of 6 cycles. Patients with stable disease who received PF+ cetuximab continued to receive cetuximab until disease progressed or unacceptable toxic effects were experienced, whichever occurred first. Results: The median patient age was 53 (37-78) years. The patient cohort was 86.8% male. The addition of cetuximab to PF in the recurrent or metastatic setting provided an OS of 11 months (Confidential Interval, CI, 95%, 8.684-13.316) and PFS of 8 months (CI 95%, 6.051-9.949). The disease control rate was 48.9%, and the ORR was 23.91%. The most common grade 3 or 4 adverse events in the PF+ cetuximab regimen were febrile neutropenia (5.7%), skin rash (3.8%) and mucosistis (3.8%). Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that cetuximab plus platinum-fluorouracil chemotherapy is a good option for systemic treatment in advanced SSCHN patients. This regimen has a well-tolerated toxicity profile.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

O direito fundamental à educação em face das ações afirmativas

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo analisar a adoção das ações afirmativas no sistema de ensino brasileiro como mecanismo de concretização do direito fundamental social à educação. Aborda o desenvolvimento da educação como direito humano, tanto em âmbito nacional quanto internacional, e a consequente positivação deste direito no cenário nacional, conferindo caráter fundamental ao direito à educação. Para tanto, ao elencar o direito à educação como direito fundamental, exige-se do legislador infraconstitucional e do administrador pátrio a adoção de políticas públicas claramente delineadas e eficazes, para a presente consubstanciação. Palavras-chave: Direito fundamental social à educação. Ações afirmativas

Identification of plasma lipid biomarkers for prostate cancer by lipidomics and bioinformatics

Background: Lipids have critical functions in cellular energy storage, structure and signaling. Many individual lipid molecules have been associated with the evolution of prostate cancer; however, none of them has been approved to be used as a biomarker. The aim of this study is to identify lipid molecules from hundreds plasma apparent lipid species as biomarkers for diagnosis of prostate cancer. Methodology/Principal Findings: Using lipidomics, lipid profiling of 390 individual apparent lipid species was performed on 141 plasma samples from 105 patients with prostate cancer and 36 male controls. High throughput data generated from lipidomics were analyzed using bioinformatic and statistical methods. From 390 apparent lipid species, 35 species were demonstrated to have potential in differentiation of prostate cancer. Within the 35 species, 12 were identified as individual plasma lipid biomarkers for diagnosis of prostate cancer with a sensitivity above 80%, specificity above 50% and accuracy above 80%. Using top 15 of 35 potential biomarkers together increased predictive power dramatically in diagnosis of prostate cancer with a sensitivity of 93.6%, specificity of 90.1% and accuracy of 97.3%. Principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) demonstrated that patient and control populations were visually separated by identified lipid biomarkers. RandomForest and 10-fold cross validation analyses demonstrated that the identified lipid biomarkers were able to predict unknown populations accurately, and this was not influenced by patient's age and race. Three out of 13 lipid classes, phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), ether-linked phosphatidylethanolamine (ePE) and ether-linked phosphatidylcholine (ePC) could be considered as biomarkers in diagnosis of prostate cancer. Conclusions/Significance: Using lipidomics and bioinformatic and statistical methods, we have identified a few out of hundreds plasma apparent lipid molecular species as biomarkers for diagnosis of prostate cancer with a high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy

Accurate masses and radii of normal stars: modern results and applications

This paper presents and discusses a critical compilation of accurate, fundamental determinations of stellar masses and radii. We have identified 95 detached binary systems containing 190 stars (94 eclipsing systems, and alpha Centauri) that satisfy our criterion that the mass and radius of both stars be known to 3% or better. To these we add interstellar reddening, effective temperature, metal abundance, rotational velocity and apsidal motion determinations when available, and we compute a number of other physical parameters, notably luminosity and distance. We discuss the use of this information for testing models of stellar evolution. The amount and quality of the data also allow us to analyse the tidal evolution of the systems in considerable depth, testing prescriptions of rotational synchronisation and orbital circularisation in greater detail than possible before. The new data also enable us to derive empirical calibrations of M and R for single (post-) main-sequence stars above 0.6 M(Sun). Simple, polynomial functions of T(eff), log g and [Fe/H] yield M and R with errors of 6% and 3%, respectively. Excellent agreement is found with independent determinations for host stars of transiting extrasolar planets, and good agreement with determinations of M and R from stellar models as constrained by trigonometric parallaxes and spectroscopic values of T(eff) and [Fe/H]. Finally, we list a set of 23 interferometric binaries with masses known to better than 3%, but without fundamental radius determinations (except alpha Aur). We discuss the prospects for improving these and other stellar parameters in the near future.Comment: 56 pages including figures and tables. To appear in The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review. Ascii versions of the tables will appear in the online version of the articl

Innovation, technology and user experience in museums: insights from scientific literature

Museums play an important role in preserving the heritage and cultural legacy of humanity, however, one of their main weaknesses in regards the user is their static nature. At present, and in the face of the development of diverse technologies and the ease of access to information, museums have upgraded their implementation of technologies aimed at improving the user experience, trying more and more to access younger audiences with a sensitivity and natural capacity for the management of new technologies. This work identifies trends in the use of technological tools by museums worldwide and the effect of these on the user or visitor experience through a review of scientific literature. To complete the work, we performed a search of the publications in the Scopus® referencing database, and downloaded, processed, and visualized the data using the VOSviewer® tool. The main trends identified in this context of analysis are related to the role of museums with the development and improvement of the user experience; orientation to young audiences and innovation driven by the user through Interactive Systems, digital games, QR Codes, apps, augmented reality, virtual reality and gamification, among others. The objective of the implementation of new technologies in the context of museums is to satisfy the needs of contemporary communication, for all types of content and aimed at an increasingly digital audience, in order to ensure positive interaction and feedback from ideas with social and cultural changes