Carboplatin/taxane-induced gastrointestinal toxicity: a pharmacogenomics study on the SCOTROC1 trial

Carboplatin/taxane combination is first-line therapy for ovarian cancer. However, patients can encounter treatment delays, impaired quality of life, even death because of chemotherapy-induced gastrointestinal (GI) toxicity. A candidate gene study was conducted to assess potential association of genetic variants with GI toxicity in 808 patients who received carboplatin/taxane in the Scottish Randomized Trial in Ovarian Cancer 1 (SCOTROC1). Patients were randomized into discovery and validation cohorts consisting of 404 patients each. Clinical covariates and genetic variants associated with grade III/IV GI toxicity in discovery cohort were evaluated in replication cohort. Chemotherapy-induced GI toxicity was significantly associated with seven single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the ATP7B, GSR, VEGFA and SCN10A genes. Patients with risk genotypes were at 1.53 to 18.01 higher odds to develop carboplatin/taxane-induced GI toxicity (P<0.01). Variants in the VEGF gene were marginally associated with survival time. Our data provide potential targets for modulation/inhibition of GI toxicity in ovarian cancer patients

Wall shear stress measurement in carotid artery phantoms with variation in degree of stenosis using plane wave vector doppler

Wall shear stress (WSS) plays an important role in the formation, growth, and rupture of atherosclerotic plaques in arteries. This study measured WSS in diseased carotid artery phantoms with degrees of stenosis varying from 0 to 60% with both steady and pulsatile flow. Experiments were performed using in silico and real flow phantoms. Blood velocities were estimated using plane wave (PW) vector Doppler. Wall shear stress was then estimated from the velocity gradient near the wall multiplied by the viscosity of a blood-mimicking fluid. The estimated WSS using the in silico phantom agreed within 10% of the ground-truth values (root-mean-square error). The phantom experiment showed that the mean WSS and maximum WSS increased with the increasing degree of stenosis. The simulation and experiment results provide the necessary validation data to give confidence in WSS measurements in patients using the PW vector Doppler technique

Interaction of amosite and surface-modified amosite with a V79-4 (Chinese hamster lung) cell line.

We have been examining a number of chemically modified mineral fibers, derived from amosite asbestos, by in vitro methods to clarify the role of the fiber surface in determining biological activity. The various fibers have identical size distributions but differ in their affinities for components of the cell membrane. They were treated with boiling toluene or chemically modified by treatment with alkyldimethylchlorosilanes (R = C8, C18) that react with free-surface hydroxyl groups to form the corresponding siloxanes. Fibers in MEM supplemented with 15% fetal calf serum were added to a suspension of V79-4 cells labeled with tritiated thymidine and the mixture was incubated. Aliquots of this mixture were spun down on a density gradient to determine the degree of cell-fiber interaction. At 37 degrees C native amosite (UICC standard) stuck to cells within 15 min of incubation, and the amount of sticking was maximum within 70 min. Decreasing the temperature decreased the amount of sticking, and at 20 degrees C no sticking was observable. The chemically modified amosite and the amosite treated with boiling toluene did not stick to the cells even after 70 min. Soaking the toluene-treated amosite with aqueous solutions at room temperature for 48 hr produced a material that had the same sticking properties as the original untreated fiber. These results indicate that the silanol content, and possibly the degree of hydration of the fiber surface, is important for a fiber to stick to a cell surface

On the nonlinearity interpretation of q- and f-deformation and some applications

q-oscillators are associated to the simplest non-commutative example of Hopf algebra and may be considered to be the basic building blocks for the symmetry algebras of completely integrable theories. They may also be interpreted as a special type of spectral nonlinearity, which may be generalized to a wider class of f-oscillator algebras. In the framework of this nonlinear interpretation, we discuss the structure of the stochastic process associated to q-deformation, the role of the q-oscillator as a spectrum-generating algebra for fast growing point spectrum, the deformation of fermion operators in solid-state models and the charge-dependent mass of excitations in f-deformed relativistic quantum fields.Comment: 11 pages Late

Volatilization-devolatilization reactions

Experiments that explore chemical and physical aspects of volatilization reactions that require the microgravity and low pressure in or near the projected Space Station are proposed