Circulating tumor cells isolation: The “post-EpCAM era”

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) represent a submicroscopic fraction detached from a primary tumor and in transit to a secondary site. The prognostic significance of CTCs in metastatic cancer patients was demonstrated for the first time more than ten years ago. To date, it seems clear enough that CTCs are highly heterogeneous and dynamically change their shape. Thus, the inadequacy of epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) as universal marker for CTCs detection seems unquestionable and alternative methods able to recognize a broader spectrum of phenotypes are definitely needed. In this review the pleiotropic functions of EpCAM are discussed in detail and the role of the molecule in the biology of CTCs is critically dissected

I\u27m Man Enough; Are You? : The Queer (Im)possibilities of Walk A Mile In Her Shoes

Walk a Mile in Her Shoes is a national program that has become a staple program to engage college males in sexual violence prevention on many college campuses. In this manuscript, I use queer theory and crip theory—a conceptual framework that merges queer and critical disability theory—to explore both the positive outcomes and potential harm done in the production and implementation of this event. I conclude the manuscript with considerations for educators seeking to engage college students in critical praxis around ending sexual violence on campus. These possibilities are rooted in Cohen\u27s (1998) notion of reorienting future praxis around the very nonnormative and marginalized people whose lives are centered through queer and crip theory. Thus, I provide queered and cripped possibilities for how educators can reimagine Walk a Mile in Her Shoes as an sexual violence intervention

Vagrant Figures: Law, Labor, and Refusal in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

The archive of vagrancy is a counter-history of economic rationality. In seeking to catalogue and apprehend the non-laboring body, vagrancy law theorizes labor by tracking its refusal. While vagrancy laws had existed in England since the fourteenth century, vagrancy takes on new meaning in the eighteenth century, as labor becomes central to economic theories of value, emergent penitentiary institutions promote work as a mode of criminal rehabilitation, and transatlantic debates over slavery lend new urgency to the problem of defining free labor. When legal, economic, and literary texts invoke vagrancy, they therefore ask a crucial question for this period: what makes people work? Vagrancy law called on its enforcers to interpret and predict the actions of those who (in the words of many eighteenth-century statutes) could give no good account of themselves. Across a wide variety of genres, vagrancy appears not as an identity, but as a proliferation of figures, a picaresque parataxis that links characteristics and behaviors as signs of a common disposition yet refuses identitarian coherence. By figuring social threat as unpredictable mobility, ambiguity, and incoherence, the rhetoric of vagrancy justified an equally expansive mobility and flexibility for police power. By bringing together texts debating crime and poverty in England, the meaning of free labor in the context of slavery in the Caribbean, and the stakes of mobility in the United States, Vagrant Figures reveals how vagrancy linked police power to economic rationality across transnational circuits of commerce, legal thought, and colonial governance. As economic reasoning informed the management of colonies and the imaginative apprehension of the global, vagrancy came to signify threat to the global enterprises of capitalism and colonial expansion. At the same time, however, the power of vagrancy\u27s rhetoric became a resource for authors seeking to challenge or critique police power. Through readings of authors including Jane Barker, Henry Fielding, Charles Brockden Brown, Edward Long,William Earle, Karl Marx, and Adam Smith, this project traces the resolutely figurative workings of political economy and police power in the long eighteenth century, as both theorized human perception and interiority through registers of the imaginative and rhetorical

Preliminary design of a hybrid electric powertrain for a earthmoving machine

The goal of this work is to evaluate the benefit of the hybridization of a Compact Wheel Loader (CWL) and to put into evidence the effect of the component size on its performance. To do this, a mathematical model has been developed using a backward approach, i.e. starting from the power request on a typical duty cycle made available by an industrial partner. The goals for the choice of the hybridization architecture were: minimizing fuel consumption, ensuring the simplicity of driveline and power management and ensuring compatibility with the vehicle structure.. A reduction up to 14% of fuel consumption was estimated in this investigation by combining engine downsizing with the usage of a Continuous Variable Transmission together with an optimization of the battery capacity and voltage

It\u27s Kind of Apples and Oranges : Gay College Males\u27 Conceptions of Gender Transgression as Poverty

This paper explores the ways in which gay males in college make meaning of gender variance and transgressions from the gender binary as a form of poverty. Using epistemological bricolage, the researchers analyzed data from 17 self-identified gay cisgender males attending three colleges in Southern California. Participants represented an array of racial backgrounds and were between 20 and 23 years old. The researchers posit that three key elements influence these gay males’ meaning making: (1) gender coding and policing, (2) hyperawareness of gender transgressions, and (3) reifying hegemonic masculinity

Research in Brief - It\u27s Kind of Apples and Oranges : Gay College Males\u27 Conceptions of Gender Transgression as Poverty

This paper explores the ways in which gay males in college make meaning of gender variance and transgressions from the gender binary as a form of poverty. Using epistemological bricolage, the researchers analyzed data from 17 self-identified gay cisgender males attending three colleges in Southern California. Participants represented an array of racial backgrounds and were between 20 and 23 years old. The researchers posit that three key elements influence these gay males’ meaning making: (1) gender coding and policing, (2) hyperawareness of gender transgressions, and (3) reifying hegemonic masculinity

Black Lives Matter, But Not Here: A Case Study

Recently, the United States has experienced a wave of social movements that include protests and digital social justice movements through Facebook and Twitter. These movements have been sparked as a response to systematic racism within the university landscape and the police force. This case study looks into systematic racism at a large public university college campus. The setting is in a college town on a city street that connects the city jail to the campus. Readers will be introduced to several characters that are important to the story before reading an account of the tug of war treatment of Black students in this community. This work is important to shed light on the encounters of Black people within systems that perpetuate White privilege in order to prepare future practitioners to address these issues in real life scenarios. This case study relies on theories like critical race theory (CRT) and intersectionality to allow the reader to deconstruct the case study using some of the theories that are vital to becoming a change agent in higher education. After studying the story thoroughly, readers are tasked to use their critical thinking skills to plan a resolution for Normal Inequality College

Teaching the History of U.S. Higher Education: A Critical Duoethnography

In this duoethnography, we interrogate our roles as critical pedagogues in designing and teaching a graduate level course focused on the history of U.S. higher education. Throughout this dialogue, we surface tensions around what it means to enact critical pedagogy. Rather than just espousing a critical stance, we wrestle with how external pressures such as limited time, the need and desire to convey certain information to students, and neoliberalism influence the doing of critical pedagogy. We also discuss how our social identities, as well as those of the students alongside whom we teach and learn, affect the learning process. We conclude our paper by drawing upon our experiences and dialogue to consider what it means to do—rather than just espouse—a critical pedagogical style in the study of higher education

Improving the Nuclear-Localized Androgen Receptor Splice Variant 7 Test

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Razionale per la biopsia liquida nel carcinoma del colon-retto: focus sulle cellule tumorali circolanti

L’isolamento di cellule tumorali circolanti (CTC) e di DNA tumorale circolante (ctDNA), prende il nome di “biopsia liquida”. Rispetto alla convenzionale biopsia del tessuto, che rappresenta un’immagine istantanea e statica di un tumore, la biopsia liquida presenta il grande vantaggio di fornire informazioni in “tempo reale” sulla malattia, mettendo in luce l'evoluzione del tumore e la sua eterogeneità, in particolare, le variazioni di popolazioni di cellule tumorali durante la progressione della malattia e in risposta alle terapie. Infatti, anche se è ampiamente accettato che l’eterogeneità intratumorale possa influenzare l'efficacia della terapia a bersaglio molecolare, lo studio della farmacoresistenza è ostacolato dal fatto che la biopsia di tessuto tumorale è una procedura invasiva e non sempre ripetibile. La complessa eterogeneità tumorale si traduce in una notevole instabilità del genoma, consentendo alle cellule tumorali di adattarsi a qualsiasi ambiente ostile, comprese le terapie mirate e di guidare l'evoluzione di cloni resistenti. Si rende pertanto necessario un adeguamento delle terapie a bersaglio molecolare che rifletta le continue alterazioni che si accumulano nel genoma delle cellule tumorali. Con l’obiettivo di avvicinarsi ad una medicina di precisione e di personalizzare le terapie, ogni strumento che consenta la stratificazione dei pazienti e l’ottimizzazione delle terapie appare di fondamentale importanza nell’era dell’oncologia molecolare. Tra le malattie in cui le terapie biologiche hanno determinato un significativo miglioramento della sopravvivenza, il carcinoma metastatico del colon-retto occupa un posto di assoluto rilievo. Nonostante tali approcci abbiano di fatto modificato la storia clinica di questa neoplasia, resta ancora molto da indagare sull’identificazione e sulla validazione di biomarcatori affidabili, con significato predittivo di risposta alla terapia. La biopsia liquida potrebbe rispondere a tale esigenza. Rispetto ad altri tumori, le CTC isolate da pazienti con tumore del colon-retto sono assenti o quasi sempre al di sotto del valore soglia, pertanto non sempre correlabili con l’andamento clinico della malattia, con meccanismi non pienamente compresi. Tale discrasia tra assenza di CTC e progressione clinica di malattia nei pazienti è particolarmente evidente nei pazienti candidati a terapia con farmaci inibitori dell’angiogenesi. Sulla base dei suddetti presupposti teorici, il presente lavoro di tesi ha avuto come scopo quello di ottimizzare la biopsia liquida in pazienti affetti da carcinoma del colon-retto con i seguenti obiettivi: - analizzare sensibilità e specificità di metodiche standard di isolamento delle CTC basate su arricchimento immunomagnetico (CellSeach® ,AdnaTest) e di metodiche di filtrazione che separano le cellule tumorali circolanti dalle altre cellule ematiche in base alle dimensioni. -analizzare i meccanismi attraverso i quali i farmaci inibitori dell’angiogenesi possono impedire un efficiente isolamento delle CTC - caratterizzare il profilo molecolare delle CTC isolate con particolare riferimento a marcatori di transizione epitelio mesenchima, marcatori di staminalità e marcatori predittivi di risposta ai farmaci a bersaglio molecolare. -costruire filtri ad hoc per l’isolamento di CTC clusterizzat