Assessment of Educational Environment of Newly Established Medical College by UG Medical Students: A Mixed Method Study

Introduction: Educational environment always play a crucial role in the development of students as well as faculty of any institution. In India, there is a continuous increase in the number of medical colleges and the number of MBBS seats, but the quality of education with quantity is questionable. To answer this question, the present study was planned to know the educational environment in a new Medical Institution that ejected its alumni in 2018. Aim: To analyze the educational environment of a newly established Medical College in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Materials and Methods: The present study was a descriptive cross-sectional which took six months to complete. This study used the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) questionnaire, open-ended questions and focus group discussions (FGDs). The study was conducted on MBBS students in Government Medical College, Azamgarh, UP. Results: The batch-wise Global DREEM scores were 169.08 (alumni), 156.23 (interns), 168.76 (2015), 164.16 (2016), 176.23 (2017), 176.94 (2018). This demonstrates that the educational environment is satisfactory in all domains and comes under the 3rd category of the educational environment index. The FGDs showed a positive response in all batches but with high variability in scores, which indicates lack of standardization in Medical Education. The open-ended questions’ responses revealed many merits and demerits about five domains. Conclusion: The variability of DREEM score, FGDs and open ended questions denotes the lack of standardization in the Medical Education system and the scores of the Education Environment Index (all domains) must move from category III (satisfactory) to category IV (excellence)

Intracranial microcapsule chemotherapy delivery for the localized treatment of rodent metastatic breast adenocarcinoma in the brain

Metastases represent the most common brain tumors in adults. Surgical resection alone results in 45% recurrence and is usually accompanied by radiation and chemotherapy. Adequate chemotherapy delivery to the CNS is hindered by the blood–brain barrier. Efforts at delivering chemotherapy locally to gliomas have shown modest increases in survival, likely limited by the infiltrative nature of the tumor. Temozolomide (TMZ) is first-line treatment for gliomas and recurrent brain metastases. Doxorubicin (DOX) is used in treating many types of breast cancer, although its use is limited by severe cardiac toxicity. Intracranially implanted DOX and TMZ microcapsules are compared with systemic administration of the same treatments in a rodent model of breast adenocarcinoma brain metastases. Outcomes were animal survival, quantified drug exposure, and distribution of cleaved caspase 3. Intracranial delivery of TMZ and systemic DOX administration prolong survival more than intracranial DOX or systemic TMZ. Intracranial TMZ generates the more robust induction of apoptotic pathways. We postulate that these differences may be explained by distribution profiles of each drug when administered intracranially: TMZ displays a broader distribution profile than DOX. These microcapsule devices provide a safe, reliable vehicle for intracranial chemotherapy delivery and have the capacity to be efficacious and superior to systemic delivery of chemotherapy. Future work should include strategies to improve the distribution profile. These findings also have broader implications in localized drug delivery to all tissue, because the efficacy of a drug will always be limited by its ability to diffuse into surrounding tissue past its delivery source.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01 EB006365-06)Brain Science Foundation (Private Grant 106708

Distinguishing grade I meningioma from higher grade meningiomas without biopsy

BACKGROUND: Many meningiomas are identified by imaging and followed, with an assumption that they are WHO Grade I tumors. The purpose of our investigation is to find clinical or imaging predictors of WHO Grade II/III tumors to distinguish them from Grade I meningiomas. METHODS: Patients with a pathologic diagnosis of meningioma from 2002-2009 were included if they had pre-operative MRI studies and pathology for review. A Neuro-Pathologist reviewed and classified all tumors by WHO 2007. All Brain MRI imaging was reviewed by a Neuro-radiologist. Pathology and Radiology reviews were blinded from each other and clinical course. Recursive partitioning was used to create predictive models for identifying meningioma grades. RESULTS: Factors significantly correlating with a diagnosis of WHO Grade II-III tumors in univariate analysis: prior CVA (p = 0.005), CABG (p = 0.010), paresis (p = 0.008), vascularity index = 4/4: (p = 0.009), convexity vs other (p = 0.014), metabolic syndrome (p = 0.025), non-skull base (p = 0.041) and non-postmenopausal female (p = 0.045). Recursive partitioning analysis identified four categories: 1. prior CVA, 2. vascular index (vi) = 4 (no CVA), 3. premenopausal or male, vi \u3c 4, no CVA. 4. Postmenopausal, vi \u3c 4, no CVA with corresponding rates of 73, 54, 35 and 10% of being Grade II-III meningiomas. CONCLUSIONS: Meningioma patients with prior CVA and those grade 4/4 vascularity are the most likely to have WHO Grade II-III tumors while post-menopausal women without these features are the most likely to have Grade I meningiomas. Further study of the associations of clinical and imaging factors with grade and clinical behavior are needed to better predict behavior of these tumors without biopsy

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight: bold" lang="EN-US">Isolation of Cholesterol Binding Proteins from Cultured <i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight: bold" lang="EN-US">Spodoptera frugiparda </span></i><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold" lang="EN-US">(Sf-9) Cells </span></span>

26-30Extraction of cholesterol binding proteins from cultured insect cells is described. These proteins are found in buffer soluble cell homogenates. The determination of cholesterol binding sites at cell surface is described by two methods: by centrifugation and by gel filtration. From the first method 1.27 ± 0.15 ×10-8 mole/L binding sites are determined and from the second, 4.48 ± 0.84 × 10-8 mole/L binding sites arc reported . By centrifugation method, soluble portion of cell culture homogenate is separated. From this soluble portion, two low molecular weight proteins of 14 kD and 18 kD are isolated on a gel filtration column (Sepharose CI-6B-200)

Correction for Upadhyay et al., Intracranial microcapsule chemotherapy delivery for the localized treatment of rodent metastatic breast adenocarcinoma in the brain

Correction for “Intracranial microcapsule chemotherapy delivery for the localized treatment of rodent metastatic breast adenocarcinoma in the brain,” by Urvashi M. Upadhyay, Betty Tyler, Yoda Patta, Robert Wicks, Kevin Spencer, Alexander Scott, Byron Masi, Lee Hwang, Rachel Grossman, Michael Cima, Henry Brem, and Robert Langer, which appeared in issue 45, November 11, 2014, of Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (111:16071–16076; first published October 27, 2014, 10.1073/pnas.1313420110)