La politique du vide comme riposte à l'hétéronormativité : regard foucaldien sur le militantisme de Queer Nation

Queer Nation est un groupe d'action politique états-unien qui a émergé au début des années 1990 dans le cadre plus large de la mouvance queer. Son passage dans le paysage du militantisme contre l'hétéronormativité fut de courte durée et a souvent été perçu comme une aventure sans fondement idéologique et stratégique. À partir de la pensée de Michel Foucault, nous érigerons un cadre théorique novateur de façon à donner un sens totalisant aux idées et aux actions du groupe. Autour du concept de politique du vide, nous proposerons d'abord que Queer Nation a entrepris son combat en tentant de renverser le processus historique de la scientia sexualis mis au jour par Foucault. Nous verrons que cela passe par une volonté de faire travailler le sens de l'homosexualité, exercice d'inspiration postmoderne qui s'articule autour de deux axes. Le premier est la désidentification qui consiste à explorer à l'infini de nouveaux plaisirs à travers une identité vide de contenu, fonctionnant davantage en mode relationnel que définitionnel. Le deuxième a trait à la grande importance accordée par la politique du vide à la visibilisation dans l'espace public de ces expérimentations corporelles. Ensuite, afin de rattacher cette pratique au domaine de la science politique, nous expliquerons que son succès est conditionnel à ce qu'elle s'inscrive dans une démarche oscillatoire, laquelle comprend deux volets. D'une part, nous parlerons de la nécessité d'adopter une optique de résistance où les luttes s'apparentent à une entrée en danse avec le pouvoir. D'autre part, nous référerons brièvement aux réflexions de Machiavel sur la virtù de manière à saisir les avantages de l'ouverture du programme politique de Queer Nation.\ud ______________________________________________________________________________ \ud MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : homosexualité, queer, hétéronormativité, identité, militantisme, Michel Foucault

Wide-field optical spectroscopy system integrating reflectance and spatial frequency domain imaging to measure attenuation-corrected intrinsic tissue fluorescence in radical prostatectomy specimens

The development of a multimodal optical imaging system is presented that integrates endogenous fluorescence and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy with single-wavelength spatial frequency domain imaging (SFDI) and surface profilometry. The system images specimens at visible wavelengths with a spatial resolution of 70 microm, a field of view of 25 cm(2) and a depth of field of approximately 1.5 cm. The results of phantom experiments are presented demonstrating the system retrieves absorption and reduced scattering coefficient maps using SFDI with <6% reconstruction errors. A phase-shifting profilometry technique is implemented and the resulting 3-D surface used to compute a geometric correction ensuring optical properties reconstruction errors are maintained to <6% in curved media with height variations <20 mm. Combining SFDI-computed optical properties with data from diffuse reflectance spectra is shown to correct fluorescence using a model based on light transport in tissue theory. The system is used to image a human prostate, demonstrating its ability to distinguish prostatic tissue (anterior stroma, hyperplasia, peripheral zone) from extra-prostatic tissue (urethra, ejaculatory ducts, peri-prostatic tissue). These techniques could be integrated in robotic-assisted surgical systems to enhance information provided to surgeons and improve procedural accuracy by minimizing the risk of damage to extra-prostatic tissue during radical prostatectomy procedures and eventually detect residual cancer

Cryoglobulinemia and Glomerular Rhomboid Inclusions in a Child With Acute Kidney Injury

Cryoglobulinemia is rarely reported in children, and kidney failure secondary to cryoglobulinemia is even more uncommon. We report the case of a 7-year-old boy with cryoglobulins and a systemic illness, including persistent fever, arthralgias, rash, hypocomplementemia, and acute kidney injury associated with nephritic urine sediment. An extensive workup showed no infectious, neoplastic, or rheumatological cause of his kidney injury. The kidney biopsy specimen showed membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis type 1 with electron microscopic evidence of rhomboid crystalloid inclusions. These inclusions have rarely been reported in adult patients with cryoglobulinemia. The patient underwent spontaneous remission, including full recovery of kidney function, and required no immune suppression. The patient’s course is consistent with cryoglobulinemia-associated kidney injury, which supports the inclusion of essential cryoglobulinemia in the differential diagnosis of pediatric patients with hypocomplementemic glomerulonephritis

Brain metastasis from urachal carcinoma: the importance of locally aggressive treatment

We present the case of a 52 years old woman who developed multiple brain metastasis after cystectomy with anterior exenteration and chemotherapy. She received whole-brain radiotherapy with 20 gray in 5 sessions. On magnetic resonance imaging 8 weeks after radiotherapy she showed a regression of some lesions while others responded only partially. This case-report and a review of the literature show the importance of aggressive local treatment in patients with brain metastasis from urachal carcinoma

Strategies for Biochemical and Pathologic Quality Assurance in a Large Multi-Institutional Biorepository; The Experience of the PROCURE Quebec Prostate Cancer Biobank

Well-characterized, high-quality fresh-frozen prostate tissue is required for prostate cancer research. As part of the PROCURE Prostate Cancer Biobank launched in 2007, four University Hospitals in Quebec joined to bank fresh frozen prostate tissues from radical prostatectomies (RP). As the biobank progressed towards allocation, the nature and quality of the tissues were determined. RP tissues were collected by standardized alternate mirror-image or biopsy-based targeted methods, and frozen for banking. Clinical/pathological parameters were captured. For quality control, two presumed benign and two presumed cancerous frozen, biobanked tissue blocks per case (10/site) were randomly selected during the five years of collection. In a consensus meeting, 4 pathologists blindly evaluated slides (n = 160) and graded quality, Gleason score (GS), and size of cancer foci. The quality of tissue RNA (37/40 cases) was assessed using the RNA Integrity Number. The biobank included 1819 patients of mean age: 62.1 years; serum PSA: 8ng/ml; prostate weight: 47.8 g; GS: 7; and pathological stage: T2 in 64.5%, T3A in 25.5% and T3B in 10% of cases. Of the 157 evaluable slides, 79 and 78 had benign and cancer tissue, respectively. GS for the 37 cancer-positive cases were: 6 in 9, 7 in 18 and &gt; 7 in 10 and, in most instances, in concordance with final GS. In 40% of slides containing cancer, foci occupied ‡ 50% of block surface and 42% had a diameter ‡ 1 cm. Tissue was well preserved and consistently yielded RNA of very good quality with RNA Integrity Number (RIN) &gt; 7 for 97% of cases (mean = 8.7 -0.7) during the five-year collection period. This study confirms the high quality of randomly selected benign and cancerous fresh-frozen prostate tissues of the PROCURE Quebec Prostate Cancer Biobank. These results strengthen the uniqueness of this large prospective resource for prostate cancer research

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Spatial Organization and Molecular Correlation of Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes Using Deep Learning on Pathology Images

Beyond sample curation and basic pathologic characterization, the digitized H&E-stained images of TCGA samples remain underutilized. To highlight this resource, we present mappings of tumorinfiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) based on H&E images from 13 TCGA tumor types. These TIL maps are derived through computational staining using a convolutional neural network trained to classify patches of images. Affinity propagation revealed local spatial structure in TIL patterns and correlation with overall survival. TIL map structural patterns were grouped using standard histopathological parameters. These patterns are enriched in particular T cell subpopulations derived from molecular measures. TIL densities and spatial structure were differentially enriched among tumor types, immune subtypes, and tumor molecular subtypes, implying that spatial infiltrate state could reflect particular tumor cell aberration states. Obtaining spatial lymphocytic patterns linked to the rich genomic characterization of TCGA samples demonstrates one use for the TCGA image archives with insights into the tumor-immune microenvironment