Momma's gotta' let go: A character-driven analysis of the mother archetype in musical theatre

A focus on character-specific research in musical theatre has often formed a peripheral focus of many scholars. Within this thesis, I aim to explore how a specific character archetype can be explored through its relationship to pertinent social and psychological discourse. For the purpose of this thesis, Rose from Gypsy will form a core example upon which discussions of behaviour, identity, dependence and gender will be discussed. I aim to build upon this by cross-examining the behavioural patterns presented by Effie in Dreamgirls and explore how identity and the relationship with pregnancy influence her dramatic actions. Social issues surrounding race and gender will be discussed with regards to the two previous examples as well as the cultural implications and impacts of war in the narratives of South Pacific and Miss Saigon. A broader discussion of the theatrical and performative conventions relating to motherhood will inform a consideration of how social and psychological patterns impact the dramatic developments of mothers in musical theatre

Transcriptomic landscape of breast cancers through mRNA sequencing

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease with a poorly defined genetic landscape, which poses a major challenge in diagnosis and treatment. By massively parallel mRNA sequencing, we obtained 1.2 billion reads from 17 individual human tissues belonging to TNBC, Non-TNBC, and HER2-positive breast cancers and defined their comprehensive digital transcriptome for the first time. Surprisingly, we identified a high number of novel and unannotated transcripts, revealing the global breast cancer transcriptomic adaptations. Comparative transcriptomic analyses elucidated differentially expressed transcripts between the three breast cancer groups, identifying several new modulators of breast cancer. Our study also identified common transcriptional regulatory elements, such as highly abundant primary transcripts, including osteonectin, RACK1, calnexin, calreticulin, FTL, and B2M, and “genomic hotspots” enriched in primary transcripts between the three groups. Thus, our study opens previously unexplored niches that could enable a better understanding of the disease and the development of potential intervention strategies

Overall survival benefit for sequential doxorubicin-docetaxel compared with concurrent doxorubicin and docetaxel in node-positive breast cancer-8-year results of the breast international group 02-98 phase III trial

Background: In women with node-positive breast cancer, the Breast International Group (BIG) 02-98 tested the incorporation of docetaxel (Taxotere) into doxorubicin (Adriamycin)-based chemotherapy, and compared sequential and concurrent docetaxel. At 5 years, there was a trend for improved disease-free survival (DFS) with docetaxel. We present results at 8-year median follow-up and exploratory analyses within biologically defined subtypes. Methods: Patients were randomly assigned to one of four treatments: (i) sequential control: doxorubicin (A) (75 mg/m. 2) × 4 → classical cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, 5-fluorouracil (CMF); (ii) concurrent control: doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide (AC)(60/600 mg/m. 2) × 4 →CMF; (iii) sequential docetaxel: A (75 mg/m. 2) × 3 → docetaxel (T) (100 mg/m. 2) × 3 → CMF and (iv) concurrent docetaxel: AT(50/75 mg/m. 2) × 4 →CMF. The primary comparison evaluated docetaxel efficacy regardless of the schedule. Exploratory analyses were undertaken within biologically defined subtypes. Results: Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven patients were enrolled. After 93.4 months of median follow-up, there were 916 DFS events. For the primary comparison, there was no significant improvement in DFS from docetaxel [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.91, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.80-1.05, P = 0.187]. In secondary comparisons, sequential docetaxel significantly improved DFS compared with sequential control (HR = 0.81, 95% CI = 0.67-0.99, P = 0.036), and significantly improved DFS (HR = 0.84, 95% CI = 0.72-0.99, P = 0.035) and overall survival (OS) (HR = 0.79, 95% CI = 0.65-0.98, P = 0.028) compared with concurrent doxorubicin-docetaxel. Luminal-A disease had the best prognosis. HRs favored addition of sequential docetaxel in all subtypes, except luminal-A; but this observation was not statistically supported because of limited numbers. Conclusion: With further follow-up, the sequential docetaxel schedule resulted in significantly better OS than concurrent doxorubicin-docetaxel, and continued to show better DFS than sequential doxorubicin-based control. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society for Medical Oncology. All rights reserved.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe