NUT carcinoma arising from the parotid gland: a case report and review of the literature

NUT carcinoma is an aggressive carcinoma with an overall poor survival outcome. The mediastinum and head and neck area, especially the sinonasal region, are among the common sites of disease. Histopathological diagnosis of NUT carcinoma is often very challenging due to its overlapping features with other poorly differentiated carcinomas. We report a case of NUT carcinoma arising from the parotid gland of a young female patient. Primary NUT carcinoma of salivary gland is very rare, with only 15 such cases reported in the literature to date. Our case highlights the diagnostic challenges associated with such lesions

Photoinduced Excited State Electron Transfer at Liquid/Liquid Interfaces

Several aspects of the photoinduced electron transfer (ET) reaction betweencoumarin 314 (C314) and N,N-dimethylaniline (DMA) at the water/DMA interface areinvestigated by molecular dynamics simulations. New DMA and water/DMA potentialenergy surfaces are developed and used to characterize the neat water/DMA interface.The adsorption free energy, the rotational dynamics and the solvation dynamics of C314at the liquid/liquid interface are investigated and are generally in reasonable agreementwith available experimental data. The solvent free energy curves for the ET reactionbetween excited C314 and DMA molecules are calculated and compared with thosecalculated for a simple point charge model of the solute. It is found that thereorganization free energy is very small when the full molecular description of the soluteis taken into account. An estimate of the ET rate constant is in reasonable agreement withexperiment. Our calculations suggest that the polarity of the surface “reported” by thesolute, as reflected by solvation dynamics and the reorganization free energy, is strongly solute-dependent

Recent advances in 3D tissue models

Physiologically relevant tissue models that bridge the gap between 2D tissue culture and animal trials would be highly desirable to study the function of tissues in health and disease as well as for the validation of lead compounds during drug development. The field has made impressive advances in 3D culturing cells and organoids in naturally derived materials. Novel, rationally designed, biomimetic materials have been established, which allow the almost individual variation of matrix parameters, such as stiffness, cell adhesion, degradability, or growth factor binding and controlled release. The combination of innovative materials with novel technological platforms such as printing, microfluidics, and additive or preventive manufacturing provides a great potential to build unprecedented, complex tissue models. Here we review recent advances in the design of materials building blocks which allow the formation of 3D structured microenvironments. We will mainly focus on strategies to locally position cell-instructive molecular cues and discuss needs to generate models which would allow the investigator to controllably manipulate cells in their 3D context with the aim to generate complex but yet scalable tissue models