Primary alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma of the bone: two cases and review of the literature

BACKGROUND: Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is a malignant tumor of mesenchymal origin and comprises the largest category of soft-tissue sarcomas both in children and adolescents. From a pediatric oncology point of view, RMS has traditionally been classified into alveolar (ARMS) and embryonal (ERMS) subtypes. The anatomical localization of the tumor may vary, but commonly involve the head/neck regions, male and female urogenital tract or the trunk and extremities. CASE PRESENTATION: Here, we report two challenging cases involving 17- and 9-years-olds males where diffuse and multiplex bone lesions suggested either a hematological disease or a primary bone tumor (mesenchymal chondrosarcoma). Biopsies, proved a massive infiltration of the bone marrow cavity with rhabdomyosarcoma. In both cases, the ARMS subtype was confirmed using FOXO1 break-apart probes (FISH). Radiological examination could not identify primary soft tissue component in any localization at the time of diagnosis in either cases. CONCLUSIONS: Primary alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma of the bone as a subtype of ARMS, seems to be a distinct clinico-pathological entity with challenging diagnostic difficulties and different, yet better, biological behavior in comparison to soft tissue ARMS. However, it is difficult to be characterized or predict its prognosis and long-term survival as only sporadic cases (four) were reported so far

Effective BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib therapy in a 2-year-old patient with sequentially diagnosed Langerhans cell histocytosis and Erdheim-Chester disease

Erdheim–Chester disease (ECD) is a rare histiocytic disorder, characterized by the xanthomatous infiltration of tissues by CD68-positive and CD1a-/CD100-negative foamy histiocytes. In childhood, ECD is exceptionally rare, and only a dozen cases have been published so far. The cooccurence of Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) and ECD is even rarer. Here, we report a 2-year-old boy, the youngest patient in the literature so far, who was diagnosed with concomitant BRAF mutation-positive LCH and ECD. In his case, conventional LCH treatment proved to be ineffective, but he is the youngest patient who was successfully treated with the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib

Az ABCG2 multidrog transzporter fehérje szerkezetének és működésének vizsgálata = Structure and function of the multidrug transporter ABCG2

Az ABCG2 multidrog transzporternek fontos szerepe van mind a daganatok kemoterápia-rezisztenciájában, mind a fiziológiás xenobiotikum transzportban. A projektben előállítottuk az ABCG2 fehérje különböző mutáns és polimorf változatait, elvégeztük ezek részletes funkcionális vizsgálatát. Egy sejtfelszínen reagáló, konformáció-érzékeny anti-ABCG2 monoklonális antitest alkalmazásával felderítettük a transzporter funkcionális állapotait, kémiai módosítások és mutációk segítségével elvégeztük az epitópok jellemzését és molekuláris szintű modellezését. Részletesen elemeztük az ABCG2 transzporter és a membrán lipidek kölcsönhatásait, megállapítottuk a membrán koleszterin jelentős szabályozó szerepét. Az ABCG2 transzporter és célzott hatású rákellenes vegyületek kölcsönhatásainak vizsgálata során klinikailag is alkalmazott gyógyszerekre vonatkozóan kaptunk új információkat. Új módszereket fejlesztettünk ki az ABCG2 szabályozásának, lokalizációjának és funkciójának vizsgálatára, elemeztük a transzporter expresszióját humán embrionális őssejtekben. Több, magas impakt faktorú nemzetközi folyóiratban közöltünk a témáról review cikkeket. | The human ABCG2 multidrug transporter plays a key role in the chemotherapy resistance of malignant tumors, as well as in the physiological elimination of xenobiotics. In this project we have prepared and expressed various mutant and polymorphic variants of the transporter, performed their detailed functional characterization. By using a cell-surface reacting, conformation-sensitive monoclonal antibody against ABCG2, we mapped the functional states of the transporter. In these experiments we applied specific chemical modifications and generated site-directed mutations to characterize the extracellular loop epitope region of ABCG2 and constructed a molecular model for this part of the transporter. We have investigated the modulation of ABCG2 by membrane lipids and found a major role for cholesterol in regulating the transport activity of this protein. By examining a number of new targeted anticancer agents we found that ABCG2 interacts with several of these compounds and may be involved in the resistance against clinically applied molecules. We have developed new methods for studying the regulation, localization and function of the ABCG2 protein, examined the expression profile of this transporter in human embryonic stem cells. During this project we have published several review articles in high-impact international journals

A new ParlaMint corpus for Hungarian 30m tokens of annotated parliamentary data

Parliamentary data constitute a rich source for research for academic fields in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). To facilitate such research, comparable, high-quality parliamentary corpora are needed. The ParlaMint project, funded by CLARIN-ERIC, aims to create such corpora for languages spoken in European parliaments in a shared framework consisting of uniform encoding schemas, metadata structure, and Universal Dependencies-type linguistic annotation. The newly built Hungarian corpus of ParlaMint II focuses on the minutes of the Hungarian National Assembly between May 2014 and June 2022 and can be considered a major improvement from the Hungarian corpus of ParlaMint I. It has a wider time frame, more extensive metadata on speakers and their affiliations, and more sophisticated linguistic analysis than what was available in ParlaMint I. The Hungarian ParlaMint II corpus is openly available, just as all the ParlaMint corpora for other languages. Some potential applications of ParlaMint corpora in SSH research are also discussed

Finnugor nyelvű közösségek nyelvtechnológiai támogatása online tartalmak létrehozásában

A cikkben bemutatott folyamatban levő projekt célja, hogy kisebb finnugor nyelvekre állítson elő nyelvi erőforrásokat, amelyekkel revitalizálni lehet ezeket a veszélyeztett nyelvi közösségeket. A projekt során párhuzamos és összevethető korpuszokból kétnyelvű protoszótárakat állítunk elő, melyeket anyanyelvi beszélők fognak ellenőrizni. A különböző nyelvű, egymásnak megfeleltetett szóalakok morfológiai, lexikai, etimológiai információkkal kibővítve kerülnek majd feltöltésre a Wiktionarybe. A projekt során számolnunk kell azzal a nehézséggel, hogy nyelvtechnológiai erőforrások a kisebb finnugor nyelvekre kevéssé állnak rendelkezésre, ezért a szövegfeldolgozás során nyelvfüggetlen gépi tanulási módszereket alkalmazunk. A projekt összes melléktermékét (modellek, korpuszok, szövegfeldolgozó eszközláncok, elemzett szövegek) nyilvánosan elérhetővé tesszük

The Role of Parents in Their Children’s Artistic Education: The Effect of Parental Involvement in the Transgenerational Process

Little is known about the methods and effects of parental involvement in art education. The aim of our systematic literature review is to explore the types of parental involvement in four branches of art (music, dance, visual arts, and theatre). We conducted our research with the help of the EBSCO database, using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) procedure. We found that the share of the different artistic fields is highly disproportionate in the literature on parental involvement. Compared to music, theatre, dance, and visual arts, coverage is negligible. During our study, we managed to classify types of parental involvement and found that it showed variety across different branches of art

Az áttétes kasztrációrezisztens prosztatarák gyógyszer-rezisztenciájának molekuláris vonatkozásai

A metasztatikus kasztrációrezisztens prosztatarák kezelésére az elmúlt években számos új, különböző hatásmechaniz- musú gyógyszeres kezelés vált elérhetővé. Ez a fejlődés a terápiás döntéshozatalt egyre nehezebbé teszi. Az újabb kezelésekkel szemben is megfigyelhető az alapvonali, a szerzett és a keresztrezisztencia jelensége is. Ezért tehát az elsődleges terápia helyes megválasztása mellett, az azt követő vonalakban alkalmazott kezelések sorrendje és alkalma- zásuk ideje is optimalizálásra szorul. Az újabb kezelésekkel kapcsolatos rezisztenciamechanizmusok egyre nagyobb mértékben válnak ismertté. Ezzel a terápiatervezés az eddigi empirikus – főleg a kipróbálásra építő – irányából egyre inkább a racionális – az adott daganat molekuláris sajátságait is figyelembe vevő –, személyre szabott kezelés irányába mozdul el. Ebben az összefoglaló közleményben ismertetjük azokat a rezisztenciamechanizmusokat, amelyek a me- tasztatikus kasztrációrezisztens prosztatarák kezelésében leggyakrabban használt három gyógyszerrel – docetaxel, abirateron és enzalutamid – kapcsolatosak. Többek között áttekintést nyújtunk a MDR- (multidrogrezisztens) fehér- jéken keresztül megvalósuló, az androgénreceptor-, a Wnt-, a p53-szignálút, valamint a DNS hibajavító mechaniz- musában részt vevő gének (mint például a BRCA és ATM) sérüléseivel összefüggésben kialakuló és a neuroendokrin differenciáció által kiváltott rezisztenciamechanizmusokról

Somatostatin and Its Receptors in Myocardial Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury and Cardioprotection

Little is known about the role of the neuropeptide somatostatin (SST) in myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury and cardioprotection. Here, we investigated the direct cardiocytoprotective effect of SST on ischemia/reperfusion injury in cardiomyocyte cultures, as well as the expression of SST and its receptors in pig and human heart tissues. SST induced a bell-shaped, concentration-dependent cardiocytoprotection in both adult rat primary cardiomyocytes and H9C2 cells subjected to simulated ischemia/ reperfusion injury. Furthermore, in a translational porcine closed-chest acute myocardial infarction model, ischemic preconditioning increased plasma SST-like immunoreactivity. Interestingly, SST expression was detectable at the protein, but not at the mRNA level in the pig left ventricles. SSTR1 and SSTR2, but not the other SST receptors, were detectable at the mRNA level by PCR and sequencing in the pig left ventricle. Moreover, remote ischemic conditioning upregulated SSTR1 mRNA. Similarly, SST expression was also detectable in healthy human interventricular septum samples at the protein level. Furthermore, SST-like immunoreactivity decreased in interventricular septum samples of patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy. SSTR1, SSTR2, and SSTR5 but not SST and the other SST receptors were detectable at the mRNA level by sequencing in healthy human left ventricles. In addition, in healthy human left ventricle samples, SSTR1 and SSTR2 mRNAs were expressed especially in vascular endothelial and some other cell types as detected by RNA Scope® in situ hybridization. This is the first demonstration that SST exerts a direct cardiocytoprotective effect against simulated ischemia/reperfusion injury. Moreover, SST is expressed in the heart tissue at the peptide level; however, it is likely to be of sensory neural origin since its mRNA is not detectable. SSTR1 and SSTR2 might be involved in the cardioprotective action of SST, but other mechanisms cannot be excluded

The transcriptional control of the VEGFA-VEGFR1 (FLT1) axis in alternatively polarized murine and human macrophages

Introduction: Macrophages significantly contribute to the regulation of vessel formation under physiological and pathological conditions. Although the angiogenesis-regulating role of alternatively polarized macrophages is quite controversial, a growing number of evidence shows that they can participate in the later phases of angiogenesis, including vessel sprouting and remodeling or regression. However, the epigenetic and transcriptional regulatory mechanisms controlling this angiogenesis-modulating program are not fully understood. Results: Here we show that IL-4 can coordinately regulate the VEGFA-VEGFR1 (FLT1) axis via simultaneously inhibiting the proangiogenic Vegfa and inducing the antiangiogenic Flt1 expression in murine bone marrow-derived macrophages, which leads to the attenuated proangiogenic activity of alternatively polarized macrophages. The IL-4-activated STAT6 and IL-4-STAT6 signaling pathway-induced EGR2 transcription factors play a direct role in the transcriptional regulation of the Vegfa-Flt1 axis. We demonstrated that this phenomenon is not restricted to the murine bone marrow-derived macrophages, but can also be observed in different murine tissue-resident macrophages ex vivo and parasites-elicited macrophages in vivo with minor cell type-specific differences. Furthermore, IL-4 exposure can modulate the hypoxic response of genes in both murine and human macrophages leading to a blunted Vegfa/VEGFA and synergistically induced Flt1/FLT1 expression. Discussion: Our findings establish that the IL-4-activated epigenetic and transcriptional program can determine angiogenesis-regulating properties in alternatively polarized macrophages under normoxic and hypoxic conditions