40 research outputs found
The triennial International Pigment Cell Conference (IPCC)
The International Federation of Pigment Cell Societies (IFPCS) held its XXIII
triennial International Pigment Cell Conference (IPCC) in Denver, Colorado in
August 2017. The goal of the summit was to provide a venue promoting a vibrant
interchange among leading basic and clinical researchers working on
leading-edge aspects of melanocyte biology and disease. The philosophy of the
meeting, entitled Breakthroughs in Pigment Cell and Melanoma Research, was to
deliver a comprehensive program in an inclusive environment fostering
scientific exchange and building new academic bridges. This document provides
an outlook on the history, accomplishments, and sustainability of the pigment
cell and melanoma research community. Shared progress in the understanding of
cellular homeostasis of pigment cells but also clinical successes and hurdles
in the treatment of melanoma and dermatological disorders continue to drive
future research activities. A sustainable direction of the societies creates an
international forum identifying key areas of imminent needs in laboratory
research and clinical care and ensures the future of this vibrant, diverse and
unique research community at the same time. Important advances showcase wealth
and breadth of the field in melanocyte and melanoma research and include
emerging frontiers in melanoma immunotherapy, medical and surgical oncology,
dermatology, vitiligo, albinism, genomics and systems biology, precision
bench-to-bedside approaches, epidemiology, pigment biophysics and chemistry,
and evolution. This report recapitulates highlights of the federate meeting
agenda designed to advance clinical and basic research frontiers from melanoma
and dermatological sciences followed by a historical perspective of the
associated societies and conferences
Frontiers in Pigment Cell and Melanoma Research
We identify emerging frontiers in clinical and basic research of melanocyte
biology and its associated biomedical disciplines. We describe challenges and
opportunities in clinical and basic research of normal and diseased melanocytes
that impact current approaches to research in melanoma and the dermatological
sciences. We focus on four themes: (1) clinical melanoma research, (2) basic
melanoma research, (3) clinical dermatology, and (4) basic pigment cell
research, with the goal of outlining current highlights, challenges, and
frontiers associated with pigmentation and melanocyte biology. Significantly,
this document encapsulates important advances in melanocyte and melanoma
research including emerging frontiers in melanoma immunotherapy, medical and
surgical oncology, dermatology, vitiligo, albinism, genomics and systems
biology, epidemiology, pigment biophysics and chemistry, and evolution
Recommended from our members
Evaluation of integrin αvβ6 cystine knot PET tracers to detect cancer and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Advances in precision molecular imaging promise to transform our ability to detect, diagnose and treat disease. Here, we describe the engineering and validation of a new cystine knot peptide (knottin) that selectively recognizes human integrin αvβ6 with single-digit nanomolar affinity. We solve its 3D structure by NMR and x-ray crystallography and validate leads with 3 different radiolabels in pre-clinical models of cancer. We evaluate the lead tracer's safety, biodistribution and pharmacokinetics in healthy human volunteers, and show its ability to detect multiple cancers (pancreatic, cervical and lung) in patients at two study locations. Additionally, we demonstrate that the knottin PET tracers can also detect fibrotic lung disease in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis patients. Our results indicate that these cystine knot PET tracers may have potential utility in multiple disease states that are associated with upregulation of integrin αvβ6
Recommended from our members
Erratum: Jeter JM, Bowles TL, Curiel-Lewandrowski C, et al. Chemoprevention agents for melanoma: A path forward into phase 3 clinical trials. Cancer. 2019:125:18-44.
Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search
Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe
Precision medicine driven by cancer systems biology.
Molecular insights from genome and systems biology are influencing how cancer is diagnosed and treated. We critically evaluate big data challenges in precision medicine. The melanoma research community has identified distinct subtypes involving chronic sun-induced damage and the mitogen-activated protein kinase driver pathway. In addition, despite low mutation burden, non-genomic mitogen-activated protein kinase melanoma drivers are found in membrane receptors, metabolism, or epigenetic signaling with the ability to bypass central mitogen-activated protein kinase molecules and activating a similar program of mitogenic effectors. Mutation hotspots, structural modeling, UV signature, and genomic as well as non-genomic mechanisms of disease initiation and progression are taken into consideration to identify resistance mutations and novel drug targets. A comprehensive precision medicine profile of a malignant melanoma patient illustrates future rational drug targeting strategies. Network analysis emphasizes an important role of epigenetic and metabolic master regulators in oncogenesis. Co-occurrence of driver mutations in signaling, metabolic, and epigenetic factors highlights how cumulative alterations of our genomes and epigenomes progressively lead to uncontrolled cell proliferation. Precision insights have the ability to identify independent molecular pathways suitable for drug targeting. Synergistic treatment combinations of orthogonal modalities including immunotherapy, mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors, epigenetic inhibitors, and metabolic inhibitors have the potential to overcome immune evasion, side effects, and drug resistance