Search

Upregulation of Forkhead box G1 (FOXG1) has recently been observed in many cancers, while its effect on radiosensitivity in glioma is still unclear. In this study, we hypothesized that FOXG1 be a major player in radioresistance of glioma as well as the underlying mechanism.Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was conducted to assess FOXG1 expression in glioma tissues and glioma-adjacent tissues. Western Blot was implemented to detect the expression of autophagy-related proteins. CCK-8, colony formation and flow cytometry assays were implemented to assess cell viability, proliferation and apoptosis, respectively. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) was used to observe autophagic vesicles. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) assay was applied to detect the expression of FOXG1.The present study demonstrated that FOXG1 was highly expressed in glioma tissues. FOXG1 expression level was up-regulated in glioma cells following exposure to X-ray irradiation. FOXG1 can attenuate radiosensitivity of glioma cells. Moreover, it revealed that FOXG1 attenuate radiosensitivity of glioma cells by promoting autophagy.The present study suggests that FOXG1 is a pivotal molecule for circumventing radiation-induced cell death in malignant glioma cells through the regulation of autophagy, and it may be a target for the treatment of human brain glioma.

Purpose and objective Auto planning might reduce the manual time required for the optimization and could also potentially improve the overall plan quality. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the statistical comparison of automatic (AU) and manually (MA) generated nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) plans. Materials and methods The study included 105 nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients, admitted to our hospital. The patients underwent IMRT treatments. The clinically delivered plans were performed with Eclipse (Version 11.0) using manual optimization. The same plans were optimized successively in PinnacleTM3 (version 9.10) treatment planning system using the auto plan software package module. D95 (dose of 95% volume) and D98 (dose of 98% volume) were calculated for the targets and maximum dose (Dmax) and mean dose (Dmean) for the organ at risks (OARs); moreover, the average doses of each target and OARs for 105 patients were evaluated. Results There is no significant difference in the homogeneity of the target between AU and MA treatment plans, while a significant difference is observed for what is concerning the OARs or most of OARs in 105 patients, OAR doses were significantly reduced in AU plan. For OARs which have no significant difference between AU and MA plans are highlighted, the mean dose of OARs in AU plans was at least not higher than MA plans. Conclusion Nasopharyngeal carcinoma IMRT plans made by an automatic planning tool met the clinical requirements for target prescription dose; moreover, the dose of normal tissues was lower than in MA plans. Clinical physicists' time can be saved and the influence of factors such as the lack of experience in treatment planning can be avoided.

It is critical for patients who cannot undergo eradicable surgery to predict the risk of lung cancer recurrence and metastasis; therefore, the physicians can design the appropriate adjuvant therapy plan. However, traditional circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection or next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based methods are usually expensive and time-inefficient, which urge the need for more efficient computational models. In this study, we have established a convolutional neural network (CNN) framework called DeepLRHE to predict the recurrence risk of lung cancer by analyzing histopathological images of patients. The steps for using DeepLRHE include automatic tumor region identification, image normalization, biomarker identification, and sample classification. In practice, we used 110 lung cancer samples downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database to train and validate our CNN model and 101 samples as independent test dataset. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) for test dataset was 0.79, suggesting a relatively good prediction performance. Our study demonstrates that the features extracted from histopathological images could be well used to predict lung cancer recurrence after surgical resection and help classify patients who should receive additional adjuvant therapy.

Background/Aim forkhead box G1 (FOXG1) has recently been observed in many cancers, while its effect on radio-sensitivity in glioma is still unclear. In this study, we hypothesized that FOXG1 be a major players in radio-resistance of glioma as well as the underlying mechanism.Methods Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was conducted to assess FOXG1 expression in the glioma tissues and glioma-adjacent tissues. Western Blot was applied to detect the expression of autophagy-related proteins. CCK-8 and flow cytometry assays were applied to assess proliferation and apoptosis, respectively.Results The present study demonstrated that FOXG1 was highly expressed in glioma tissues. FOXG1 silencing enhances the effect of X-ray irradiation on proliferation inhibition and apoptosis of glioma cells, while FOXG1 overexpression has the opposite effect. Interestingly, the chloroquine (CQ) of autophagy inhibitor enhanced X-ray irradiation induces proliferation inhibition and apoptosis in glioma cells.Conclusions The present study suggests that FOXG1 is a pivotal molecule for circumventing radiation-induced cell death in malignant glioma cells through the regulation of autophagy and provide a target for the treatment of human brain glioma.

In this study the relationship between brain structure and brain metastases (BM) occurrence was analyzed. A model for predicting the time of BM onset in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was proposed. Twenty patients were used to develop the model, whereas the remaining 69 were used for independent validation and verification of the model. Magnetic resonance images were segmented into cerebrospinal fluid, gray matter (GM), and white matter using voxel-based morphometry. Automatic anatomic labeling template was used to extract 116 brain regions from the GM volume. The elapsed time between the MRI acquisitions and BM diagnosed was analyzed using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator method. The model was validated using the leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) and permutation test. The GM volume of the extracted 11 regions of interest increased with the progression of BM from NSCLC. LOOCV test on the model indicated that the measured and predicted BM onset were highly correlated (r = 0.834, P = 0.0000). For the 69 independent validating patients, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of the model for predicting BM occurrence were 70, 75, and 66%, respectively, in 6 months and 74, 82, and 60%, respectively, in 1 year. The extracted brain GM volumes and interval times for BM occurrence were correlated. The established model based on MRI data may reliably predict BM in 6 months or 1 year. Further studies with larger sample size are needed to validate the findings in a clinical setting.

Background The purpose of this study is to compare the efficacy and safety of concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) versus chemotherapy alone for patients with stage IV esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Methods Eligible patients were retrospectively enrolled at the authors’s institution from January 2010 to October 2015. Of the 141 patients enrolled, 55 (39.0%) received CCRT and 86 (61.0%) received chemotherapy alone. The outcomes and adverse events (AEs) were compared between the two groups. Results The baseline clinical characteristics of the two groups were similar. However, the CCRT group showed a significantly better primary tumor objective response rate (ORR) than that of the chemotherapy group (74.5% versus 45.3%, p = 0.001). The 1-year, 2-year, 3-year overall survival (OS) rates and median OS were 58.0% versus 43.0%, 25.5% versus 14.0%, 10.7% versus 4.7%, and 14 months versus 11 months for patients treated with CCRT or chemotherapy, respectively (p = 0.007). The 1-year and median progression-free survival (PFS) were 29.8% versus 14.9% and 8 months versus 6 months (p = 0.005). Multivariate analysis identified CCRT (p = 0.013) and solitary metastasis (p = 0.037) as independent factors for greater OS. The frequency of leucocytopenia (grade 3 or higher) was significantly higher in the CCRT group than in the chemotherapy-alone group (p = 0.040), whereas the rates of other AEs did not differ. Conclusions In this study, it is suggested that CCRT is more effective than chemotherapy alone for stage IV ESCC, yielding better primary responses and survival outcomes with tolerable side effects.

Purpose To report an implementation method and the results of independent brachytherapy dose verification software (DVS). Material and methods The DVS was developed based on Visual C++ and adopted a modular structure design. The DICOM RT files exported from a treatment planning system (TPS) were automatically loaded into the DVS. The DVS used the TG-43 formalism for dose calculation. A total of 15 cervical cancer patients who underwent brachytherapy were retrospectively selected to test the DVS. Dosimetric parameters and γ analysis (0.1 cm, 5%) were used to evaluate the dose differences between the DVS and the TPS. Results Compared with the TPS dose, the γ pass rates of the dose calculated by the DVS were higher than 98%. For the clinical target volume (CTV), the dosimetric differences were less than 0.63% for D90% and D100%. For the bladder, rectum, and sigmoid, the agreement of D0.1cc, D1cc, and D2cc were within a 0.78% level. Conclusions With minimal human-computer interactions, the DVS can verify the accuracy of doses calculated by the TPS.

Background MicroRNA-21 (miR-21) was previously reported being dysregulated in many kinds of cancer including esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). In the present study, we aimed to investigate the role of miR-21 in ESCC, especially in its effects on radiation-sensitivity of ESCC. Methods Expression of miR-21 was detected in 63 pairs ESCC tumor and adjacent non-tumoral tissues using qRT-PCR, correlation between miR-21 and clinicopathological feature of ESCC was analyzed. The role of miR-21 in the proliferation, cell cycle and apoptosis of ESCC cells during irradiation were studied. Results MicroRNA-21 expression was significantly increased in ESCC tumor tissues. Expression of miR-21 was positively associated with advanced clinical stage. Under irradiation, overexpression of miR-21 increased cell proliferation and cells in S phase, and inhibited cell apoptosis of ESCC cells. In contrast, knockdown of miR-21 had an opposite effect. Conclusions Downregulation of miR-21 inhibited the radiation-resistance of ESCC, whereas overexpression of miR-21 increased the radiation-resistance. MiR-21 is a potential novel target for developing specific treatment interventions in ESCC in future.

Aims and background Esophageal cancer can cause substantial mortality and there is controversy about the effectiveness of concurrent and sequential chemoradiotherapy (CRT) for this disease. Methods and Study Design Based on established criteria, we searched electronic databases including PubMed, Excerpta Medica Database (Embase), China National Knowledge Infrastruction (CNKI), Wanfang, and Weipu databases up to March 2014 to collect eligible studies. Relative risks (RRs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. Q and I2 test were applied to test statistical heterogeneities among studies. Publication bias of total effective rate was evaluated through a funnel plot and sensitive analysis was conducted. Results We identified 10 Chinese studies including 1024 esophageal cancer patients. The RRs of total effective rate and 1-, 2-, and 3-year survival rate for concurrent versus sequential CRT were 1.15 (95% CI 1.07 to 1.24), 1.15 (95% CI 1.05 to 1.26), 1.44 (95% CI 1.21 to 1.73), and 1.66 (95% CI 1.37 to 2.01), respectively, all with statistically significant differences (pConclusions Concurrent CRT was superior to sequential CRT for esophageal cancer management among Chinese people. Though higher toxic effects were revealed in concurrent CRT, it was tolerable. Therefore, concurrent CRT could be applied into esophageal cancer treatments for Chinese patients.

Purpose: To review the potential protective role of hydrogen against cisplatin-induced side effects during chemotherapy.Methods: We searched PubMed and SCOPUS using the following keywords and combinations in titles, keywords, abstracts and full texts: cisplatin; side effects; chemotherapy; tumor; toxicity; hydrogen; reactive oxidative species; and ischemic reperfusion.Results: The pathogenesis of cisplatin-induced side effects is suggested based on the increased level of reactive oxidative species (ROS). Cisplatin induces ROS-dependent platelet apoptosis via the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) signaling pathway, which might have contributed to cisplatininduced hematotoxicity, and in particular, thrombocytopenia. Molecular hydrogen has been shown to have therapeutic effects against damage to various organs (especially kidney, brain and liver) caused by ischemic reperfusion (IR) through selective elimination of the most cytotoxic ROS hydrogen radicals without affecting other types of ROS involved in signal transduction in vitro and in vivo.Conclusion: Hydrogen may not only alleviate hematotoxicity in patients with hemorrhagic tendencies during cisplatin-based chemotherapy, but also has a potential protective effect against other side effects induced by cisplatin.Keywords: Reactive oxygen species, Hydrogen radicals, Cisplatin, Hepatotoxicity, Chemotherapy, Side effects, Antagonism

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a rare malignancy worldwide, but it is endemic in a few areas including Southern China, Southeast Asia, North Africa and the Arctic. The underlying mechanisms behind this remarkable geographic distribution remain unclear. Although Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection has been suggested as a necessary cause of undifferentiated NPC, EBV itself is not sufficient to cause this malignancy. Other co-factors, such as environmental risk factors, and/or genetic susceptibility, may interact with EBV to play a role in the carcinogenesis of NPC. Survival rates differ significantly between NPC patients in early stages and late stages. Due to the close associations between EBV infection and NPC risk, EBV-related biomarkers have been used for early detection and screening for NPC in a few high-incidence areas. In the present review article the latest updates are discussed.

Telomerase maintains the length of telomeric DNA at the end of chromosomes; stabilizes the functions of chromosomes, protects the structure of chromosome DNA and regulates normal cell growth. The length and stability of telomeres determine the cellular lifespan, furthermore, they correlate with cellular aging and carcinogenesis. Researches on the role of telomerase in degenerative diseases and cancers show that it regulates cellular senescence in degenerative diseases. Although telomerase is not an oncogene, it does make tumor cells immortal by maintaining the stability of telomeric DNA. Telomerase-based therapies have become a hotspot in new anticancer and degenerative diseases treatments. This review aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the role of telomerase and telomere in cellular senescence and cancer.

e19008 Background: Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) carries a poor prognosis with a median survivals of 8-10 months. The standard treatment has traditionally been systemic chemotherapy a...

4035 Background: Recombinant human endostatin (endostar) has been documented to be an inhibitor of tumor angiogenesis. The aim of this randomized phase II study was to assess the efficacy and safet...