Situation Awareness Information Requirements For Commercial Airline Pilots

Situation awareness is presented as a fundamental requirement for good airmanship, forming the basis for pilot decision making and performance. To develop a better understanding of the role of situation awareness in flying, an analysis was performed to determine the specific situation awareness information requirements for commercial aircraft pilots. This was conducted as a goal-directed task analysis in which pilots' major goals, subgoals, decisions and associated situation awareness information requirements were delineated based on elicitation from experienced commercial airline pilots. A determination of the major situation awareness information requirements for visual and instrument flight was developed from this analysis, providing a foundation for future system development which seeks to enhance pilot situation awareness and provide a basis for the development of situation awareness measures for commercial flight

Rational Manual and Automated Scoring Thresholds for the Immunohistochemical Detection of TP53 Missense Mutations in Human Breast Carcinomas

Missense mutations in TP53 are common in human breast cancer, have been associated with worse prognosis, and may predict therapy effect. TP53 missense mutations are associated with aberrant accumulation of p53 protein in tumor cell nuclei. Previous studies have used relatively arbitrary cutoffs to characterize breast tumors as positive for p53 staining by immunohistochemical assays. This study aimed to objectively determine optimal thresholds for p53 positivity by manual and automated scoring methods utilizing whole tissue sections from the Carolina Breast Cancer Study. P53 immunostained slides were available for 564 breast tumors previously assayed for TP53 mutations. Average nuclear p53 staining intensity was manually scored as negative, borderline, weak, moderate, or strong and percentage of positive tumor cells was estimated. Automated p53 signal intensity was measured using the Aperio nuclear v9 algorithm combined with the Genie® histology pattern recognition tool and tuned to achieve optimal nuclear segmentation. ROC curve analysis was performed to determine optimal cutoffs for average staining intensity and percent cells positive to distinguish between tumors with and without a missense mutation. ROC curve analysis demonstrated a threshold of moderate average nuclear staining intensity as a good surrogate for TP53 missense mutations in both manual (AUC=0.87) and automated (AUC=0.84) scoring systems. Both manual and automated immunohistochemical scoring methods predicted missense mutations in breast carcinomas with high accuracy. Validation of the automated intensity scoring threshold suggests a role for such algorithms in detecting TP53 missense mutations in high throughput studies

Treg depletion potentiates checkpoint inhibition in claudin-low breast cancer

Claudin-low breast cancer is an aggressive subtype that confers poor prognosis and is found largely within the clinical triple-negative group of breast cancer patients. Here, we have shown that intrinsic and immune cell gene signatures distinguish the claudin-low subtype clinically as well as in mouse models of other breast cancer subtypes. Despite adaptive immune cell infiltration in claudin-low tumors, treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitory antibodies against cytotoxic T lymphocyte–associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1) were ineffective in controlling tumor growth. CD4+FoxP3+ Tregs represented a large proportion of the tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in claudin-low tumors, and Tregs isolated from tumor-bearing mice were able to suppress effector T cell responses. Tregs in the tumor microenvironment highly expressed PD-1 and were recruited partly through tumor generation of the chemokine CXCL12. Antitumor efficacy required stringent Treg depletion combined with checkpoint inhibition; delays in tumor growth were not observed using therapies that modestly diminished the number of Tregs in the tumor microenvironment. This study provides evidence that the recruitment of Tregs to the tumor microenvironment inhibits an effective antitumor immune response and highlights early Treg recruitment as a possible mechanism for the lack of response to immune checkpoint blockade antibodies in specific subtypes of cancer that are heavily infiltrated with adaptive immune cells

Effects of Tumor Microenvironment Heterogeneity on Nanoparticle Disposition and Efficacy in Breast Cancer Tumor Models

Tumor cells are surrounded by a complex microenvironment. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the role of heterogeneity of the tumor microenvironment in the variability of nanoparticle (NP) delivery and efficacy

MERTK receptor tyrosine kinase is a therapeutic target in melanoma

Metastatic melanoma is one of the most aggressive forms of cutaneous cancers. Although recent therapeutic advances have prolonged patient survival, the prognosis remains dismal. C-MER proto-oncogene tyrosine kinase (MERTK) is a receptor tyrosine kinase with oncogenic properties that is often overexpressed or activated in various malignancies. Using both protein immunohistochemistry and microarray analyses, we demonstrate that MERTK expression correlates with disease progression. MERTK expression was highest in metastatic melanomas, followed by primary melanomas, while the lowest expression was observed in nevi. Additionally, over half of melanoma cell lines overexpressed MERTK compared with normal human melanocytes; however, overexpression did not correlate with mutations in BRAF or RAS. Stimulation of melanoma cells with the MERTK ligand GAS6 resulted in the activation of several downstream signaling pathways including MAPK/ERK, PI3K/AKT, and JAK/STAT. MERTK inhibition via shRNA reduced MERTK-mediated downstream signaling, reduced colony formation by up to 59%, and diminished tumor volume by 60% in a human melanoma murine xenograft model. Treatment of melanoma cells with UNC1062, a novel MERTK-selective small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor, reduced activation of MERTK-mediated downstream signaling, induced apoptosis in culture, reduced colony formation in soft agar, and inhibited invasion of melanoma cells. This work establishes MERTK as a therapeutic target in melanoma and provides a rationale for the continued development of MERTK-targeted therapies

Behavioral genetics and taste

This review focuses on behavioral genetic studies of sweet, umami, bitter and salt taste responses in mammals. Studies involving mouse inbred strain comparisons and genetic analyses, and their impact on elucidation of taste receptors and transduction mechanisms are discussed. Finally, the effect of genetic variation in taste responsiveness on complex traits such as drug intake is considered. Recent advances in development of genomic resources make behavioral genetics a powerful approach for understanding mechanisms of taste