Digital Commons Network^™

Pomalidomide, Dexamethasone, And Daratumumab In Relapsed Refractory Multiple Myeloma After Lenalidomide Treatment., David S Siegel, Gary J Schiller, Christy Samaras, Michael Sebag, Jesus Berdeja, Siddhartha Ganguly, Jeffrey Matous, Kevin Song, Christopher S Seet, Giampaolo Talamo, Mirelis Acosta-Rivera, Michael Bar, Donald Quick, Bertrand Anz, Gustavo Fonseca, Donna Reece, William E Pierceall, Weiyuan Chung, Faiza Zafar, Amit Agarwal, Nizar J Bahlis

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Patients with multiple myeloma who have relapsed after or become refractory to lenalidomide in early treatment lines represent a clinically important population in need of effective therapies. The safety and efficacy of pomalidomide, low-dose dexamethasone, and daratumumab was evaluated in lenalidomide-pretreated patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma (RRMM) after one to two prior treatment lines in the phase 2 MM-014 study. Patients received pomalidomide 4 mg daily from days 1-21 and dexamethasone 40 mg weekly (28-day cycles). Daratumumab 16 mg/kg was administered per label. Primary endpoint was overall response rate (ORR); secondary endpoints included progression-free survival (PFS) and safety. …

Health And Disease Markers Correlate With Gut Microbiome Composition Across Thousands Of People., Ohad Manor, Chengzhen L Dai, Sergey A Kornilov, Brett Smith, Nathan D Price, Jennifer C Lovejoy, Sean M Gibbons, Andrew T Magis

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Variation in the human gut microbiome can reflect host lifestyle and behaviors and influence disease biomarker levels in the blood. Understanding the relationships between gut microbes and host phenotypes are critical for understanding wellness and disease. Here, we examine associations between the gut microbiota and ~150 host phenotypic features across ~3,400 individuals. We identify major axes of taxonomic variance in the gut and a putative diversity maximum along the Firmicutes-to-Bacteroidetes axis. Our analyses reveal both known and unknown associations between microbiome composition and host clinical markers and lifestyle factors, including host-microbe associations that are composition-specific. These results suggest potential opportunities …

Raman-Guided Subcellular Pharmaco-Metabolomics For Metastatic Melanoma Cells., Jiajun Du, Yapeng Su, Chenxi Qian, Dan Yuan, Kun Miao, Dongkwan Lee, Alphonsus H C Ng, Reto S Wijker, Antoni Ribas, Raphael D Levine, James R Heath, Lu Wei

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Non-invasively probing metabolites within single live cells is highly desired but challenging. Here we utilize Raman spectro-microscopy for spatial mapping of metabolites within single cells, with the specific goal of identifying druggable metabolic susceptibilities from a series of patient-derived melanoma cell lines. Each cell line represents a different characteristic level of cancer cell de-differentiation. First, with Raman spectroscopy, followed by stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy and transcriptomics analysis, we identify the fatty acid synthesis pathway as a druggable susceptibility for differentiated melanocytic cells. We then utilize hyperspectral-SRS imaging of intracellular lipid droplets to identify a previously unknown susceptibility of lipid …

Long Term Survival And Local Control Outcomes From Single Dose Targeted Intraoperative Radiotherapy During Lumpectomy (Targit-Iort) For Early Breast Cancer: Targit-A Randomised Clinical Trial., Jayant S Vaidya, Max Bulsara, Michael Baum, Frederik Wenz, Samuele Massarut, Steffi Pigorsch, Michael Alvarado, Michael Douek, Christobel Saunders, Henrik L Flyger, Wolfgang Eiermann, Chris Brew-Graves, Norman R Williams, Ingrid Potyka, Nicholas Roberts, Marcelle Bernstein, Douglas Brown, Elena Sperk, Siobhan Laws, Marc Sütterlin, Tammy Corica, Steinar Lundgren, Dennis R Holmes, Lorenzo Vinante, Fernando Bozza, Montserrat Pazos, Magali Le Blanc-Onfroy, Günther Gruber, Wojciech Polkowski, Konstantin J Dedes, Marcus Niewald, Jens Blohmer, David Mccready, Richard Hoefer, Pond Kelemen, Gloria Petralia, Mary Falzon, David J Joseph, Jeffrey S Tobias

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether risk adapted intraoperative radiotherapy, delivered as a single dose during lumpectomy, can effectively replace postoperative whole breast external beam radiotherapy for early breast cancer.

DESIGN: Prospective, open label, randomised controlled clinical trial.

SETTING: 32 centres in 10 countries in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, the United States, and Canada.

PARTICIPANTS: 2298 women aged 45 years and older with invasive ductal carcinoma up to 3.5 cm in size, cN0-N1, eligible for breast conservation and randomised before lumpectomy (1:1 ratio, blocks stratified by centre) to either risk adapted targeted intraoperative radiotherapy (TARGIT-IORT) or external beam radiotherapy (EBRT).

INTERVENTIONS: …

Artificial Intelligence For Rapid Meta-Analysis: Case Study On Ocular Toxicity Of Hydroxychloroquine., Matthew Michelson, Tiffany Chow, Neil A Martin, Mike Ross, Amelia Tee Qiao Ying, Steven Minton

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

BACKGROUND: Rapid access to evidence is crucial in times of an evolving clinical crisis. To that end, we propose a novel approach to answer clinical queries, termed rapid meta-analysis (RMA). Unlike traditional meta-analysis, RMA balances a quick time to production with reasonable data quality assurances, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to strike this balance.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate whether RMA can generate meaningful clinical insights, but crucially, in a much faster processing time than traditional meta-analysis, using a relevant, real-world example.

METHODS: The development of our RMA approach was motivated by a currently relevant clinical question: is ocular toxicity and …

The Accidental Academic Library: Meeting The Needs Of A Health System–Affiliated University, Heather Martin

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Background: In 2017 a small liberal arts college affiliated with a large western health system was re-branded, and a School of Health Professions was created to prepare for future staffing shortages and to train the next generation of healthcare workers. Instead of relying solely upon its own library, University administration reached out to the health system library to meet the information needs of this new group of students, most of whom were active employees of the healthcare enterprise. Thus, a group of hospital librarians found themselves as accidental academic librarians.

Description: Library leadership researched academic library bench-marking to propose a …

Secukinumab Provides Sustained Low Rates Of Radiographic Progression In Psoriatic Arthritis: 52-Week Results From A Phase 3 Study, Future 5., Désirée Van Der Heijde, Philip Mease, Robert B M Landewé, Proton Rahman, Hasan Tahir, Atul Singhal, Elke Boettcher, Sandra Navarra, Xuan Zhu, Gregory Ligozio, Aimee Readie, Shephard Mpofu, Luminita Pricop

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of secukinumab on radiographic progression through 52 weeks in patients with PsA from the FUTURE 5 study.

METHODS: Patients with active PsA, stratified by prior anti-TNF use (naïve or inadequate response), were randomized to s.c. secukinumab 300 mg load (300 mg), 150 mg load (150 mg), 150 mg no load regimens or placebo at baseline, at weeks 1, 2 and 3 and every 4 weeks starting at week 4. Radiographic progression was assessed by change in van der Heijde-modified total Sharp score (vdH-mTSS; mean of two readers). Statistical analysis used a linear mixed-effects model (random …

Protein-Altering Germline Mutations Implicate Novel Genes Related To Lung Cancer Development., Xuemei Ji, Semanti Mukherjee, Maria Teresa Landi, Yohan Bosse, Philippe Joubert, Dakai Zhu, Ivan Gorlov, Xiangjun Xiao, Younghun Han, Olga Gorlova, Rayjean J Hung, Yonathan Brhane, Robert Carreras-Torres, David C Christiani, Neil Caporaso, Mattias Johansson, Geoffrey Liu, Stig E Bojesen, Loic Le Marchand, Demetrios Albanes, Heike Bickeböller, Melinda C Aldrich, William S Bush, Adonina Tardon, Gad Rennert, Chu Chen, Jinyoung Byun, Konstantin H Dragnev, John K Field, Lambertus Fa Kiemeney, Philip Lazarus, Shan Zienolddiny, Stephen Lam, Matthew B Schabath, Angeline S Andrew, Pier A Bertazzi, Angela C Pesatori, Nancy Diao, Li Su, Lei Song, Ruyang Zhang, Natasha Leighl, Jakob S Johansen, Anders Mellemgaard, Walid Saliba, Christopher Haiman, Lynne Wilkens, Ana Fernandez-Somoano, Guillermo Fernandez-Tardon, Erik H F M Van Der Heijden, Jin Hee Kim, Michael P A Davies, Michael W Marcus, Hans Brunnström, Jonas Manjer, Olle Melander, David C Muller, Kim Overvad, Antonia Trichopoulou, Rosario Tumino, Gary E Goodman, Angela Cox, Fiona Taylor, Penella Woll, Erich Wichmann, Thomas Muley, Angela Risch, Albert Rosenberger, Kjell Grankvist, Mikael Johansson, Frances Shepherd, Ming-Sound Tsao, Susanne M Arnold, Eric B Haura, Ciprian Bolca, Ivana Holcatova, Vladimir Janout, Milica Kontic, Jolanta Lissowska, Anush Mukeria, Simona Ognjanovic, Tadeusz M Orlowski, Ghislaine Scelo, Beata Swiatkowska, David Zaridze, Per Bakke, Vidar Skaug, Lesley M Butler, Kenneth Offit, Preethi Srinivasan, Chaitanya Bandlamudi, Matthew D Hellmann, David B Solit, Mark E Robson, Charles M Rudin, Zsofia K Stadler, Barry S Taylor, Michael F Berger, Richard Houlston, John Mclaughlin, Victoria Stevens, David C Nickle, Ma'en Obeidat, Wim Timens, María Soler Artigas, Sanjay Shete, Hermann Brenner, Stephen Chanock, Paul Brennan, James D Mckay, Christopher I Amos

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Few germline mutations are known to affect lung cancer risk. We performed analyses of rare variants from 39,146 individuals of European ancestry and investigated gene expression levels in 7,773 samples. We find a large-effect association with an ATM L2307F (rs56009889) mutation in adenocarcinoma for discovery (adjusted Odds Ratio = 8.82, P = 1.18 × 10-15) and replication (adjusted OR = 2.93, P = 2.22 × 10-3) that is more pronounced in females (adjusted OR = 6.81 and 3.19 and for discovery and replication). We observe an excess loss of heterozygosity in lung tumors among ATM L2307F allele carriers. L2307F is …

Multi-Omic Single-Cell Snapshots Reveal Multiple Independent Trajectories To Drug Tolerance In A Melanoma Cell Line., Yapeng Su, Melissa E Ko, Hanjun Cheng, Ronghui Zhu, Min Xue, Jessica Wang, Jihoon W Lee, Luke Frankiw, Alexander Xu, Stephanie Wong, Lidia Robert, Kaitlyn Takata, Dan Yuan, Yue Lu, Sui Huang, Antoni Ribas, Raphael Levine, Garry P Nolan, Wei Wei, Sylvia K Plevritis, Guideng Li, David Baltimore, James R Heath

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

The determination of individual cell trajectories through a high-dimensional cell-state space is an outstanding challenge for understanding biological changes ranging from cellular differentiation to epigenetic responses of diseased cells upon drugging. We integrate experiments and theory to determine the trajectories that single BRAFV600E mutant melanoma cancer cells take between drug-naive and drug-tolerant states. Although single-cell omics tools can yield snapshots of the cell-state landscape, the determination of individual cell trajectories through that space can be confounded by stochastic cell-state switching. We assayed for a panel of signaling, phenotypic, and metabolic regulators at points across 5 days of drug treatment to …

Randomized Phase Ii Study Of Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy And Interleukin-2 Versus Interleukin-2 In Patients With Metastatic Melanoma., Brendan Curti, Marka R Crittenden, Steven K Seung, Christopher B Fountain, Roxanne Payne, Shuching Chang, Jessica Fleser, Kimberly Phillips, Ian Malkasian, Lyn B Dobrunick, Walter Urba

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

BACKGROUND: A pilot study of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) followed by high-dose interleukin-2 (IL-2) showed a higher than anticipated objective response rate (ORR) among patients with metastatic melanoma (MM). We performed a prospective randomized study to determine if the ORR of SBRT + IL-2 was greater than IL-2 monotherapy in patients with advanced melanoma.

METHODS: Patients with MM who had adequate physiological reserve for IL-2 and at least one site suitable for SBRT were eligible. There was a 1:1 randomization to SBRT + IL-2 or IL-2 monotherapy. Patients received one or two doses of SBRT (20 Gy per fraction) …

Effect Of Pembrolizumab Plus Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy On Pathologic Complete Response In Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer: An Analysis Of The Ongoing Phase 2 Adaptively Randomized I-Spy2 Trial., Rita Nanda, Minetta C Liu, Christina Yau, Rebecca Shatsky, Lajos Pusztai, Anne Wallace, A Jo Chien, Andres Forero-Torres, Erin D Ellis, Heather Han, Amy Clark, Kathy Albain, Judy C Boughey, Nora T Jaskowiak, Anthony Elias, Claudine Isaacs, Kathleen Kemmer, Teresa Helsten, Melanie Majure, Erica Stringer-Reasor, Catherine Parker, Marie C Lee, Tufia Haddad, Ronald N Cohen, Smita Asare, Amy Wilson, Gillian L Hirst, Ruby Singhrao, Katherine Steeg, Adam Asare, Jeffrey B Matthews, Scott Berry, Ashish Sanil, Richard Schwab, W Fraser Symmans, Laura Van 'T Veer, Douglas Yee, Angela Demichele, Nola M Hylton, Michelle Melisko, Jane Perlmutter, Hope S Rugo, Donald A Berry, Laura J Esserman

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Importance: Approximately 25% of patients with early-stage breast cancer who receive (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy experience a recurrence within 5 years. Improvements in therapy are greatly needed.

Objective: To determine if pembrolizumab plus neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) in early-stage breast cancer is likely to be successful in a 300-patient, confirmatory randomized phase 3 neoadjuvant clinical trial.

Design, Setting, and Participants: The I-SPY2 study is an ongoing open-label, multicenter, adaptively randomized phase 2 platform trial for high-risk, stage II/III breast cancer, evaluating multiple investigational arms in parallel. Standard NACT serves as the common control arm; investigational agent(s) are added to this backbone. Patients with …

A Head-To-Head Comparison Of The Efficacy And Safety Of Ixekizumab And Adalimumab In Biological-Naïve Patients With Active Psoriatic Arthritis: 24-Week Results Of A Randomised, Open-Label, Blinded-Assessor Trial., Philip Mease, Josef S Smolen, Frank Behrens, Peter Nash, Soyi Liu Leage, Lingnan Li, Hasan Tahir, Melinda Gooderham, Eswar Krishnan, Hong Liu-Seifert, Paul Emery, Sreekumar G Pillai, Philip S Helliwell

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

OBJECTIVES: To compare efficacy and safety of ixekizumab (IXE) to adalimumab (ADA) in biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drug-naïve patients with both active psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and skin disease and inadequate response to conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (csDMARDs).

METHODS: Patients with active PsA were randomised (1:1) to approved dosing of IXE or ADA in an open-label, head-to-head, blinded assessor clinical trial. The primary objective was to evaluate whether IXE was superior to ADA at week 24 for simultaneous achievement of a ≥50% improvement from baseline in the American College of Rheumatology criteria (ACR50) and a 100% improvement from baseline in the …

Unmet Need In Rheumatology: Reports From The Targeted Therapies Meeting 2019., Kevin L Winthrop, Michael E Weinblatt, Joan Bathon, Gerd R Burmester, Philip Mease, Leslie Crofford, Vivian Bykerk, Maxime Dougados, James Todd Rosenbaum, Xavier Mariette, Joachim Sieper, Fritz Melchers, Bruce N Cronstein, Ferry C Breedveld, Joachim Kalden, Josef S Smolen, Daniel Furst

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

OBJECTIVES: To detail the greatest areas of unmet scientific and clinical needs in rheumatology.

METHODS: The 21st annual international Advances in Targeted Therapies meeting brought together more than 100 leading basic scientists and clinical researchers in rheumatology, immunology, epidemiology, molecular biology and other specialties. During the meeting, breakout sessions were convened, consisting of 5 disease-specific groups with 20-30 experts assigned to each group based on expertise. Specific groups included: rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, axial spondyloarthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and other systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases. In each group, experts were asked to identify unmet clinical and translational research needs in general …

Prospective Molecular Profiling Of Circulating Tumor Cells From Patients With Melanoma Receiving Combinatorial Immunotherapy., Selena Y Lin, Shu-Ching Chang, Stella Lam, Romela Irene Ramos, Kevin Tran, Shuichi Ohe, Matthew P Salomon, Ali Asgar S Bhagat, Chwee Teck Lim, Trevan D Fischer, Leland J Foshag, Christine L Boley, Steven J O'Day, Dave Hoon

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

BACKGROUND: Blood molecular profiling of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) can enable monitoring of patients with metastatic melanoma during checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy (CII) and in combination with targeted therapies. We developed a microfluidics-based CTC platform to explore CTC profiling utility in CII-treated patients with melanoma using a melanoma messenger RNA (mRNA)/DNA biomarker panel.

METHODS: Blood samples (n = 213) were collected prospectively from 75 American Joint Committee on Cancer-staged III/IV melanoma patients during CII treatment and those enriched for CTCs. CTC profiling was performed using 5 known melanoma mRNA biomarkers and BRAF V600E DNA mutation. CTC biomarker status associations with clinical …

Transcriptional And Immunohistological Assessment Of Immune Infiltration In Pancreatic Cancer., Brady Bernard, Venkatesh Rajamanickam, Christopher Dubay, Brian D. Piening, Emilio Alonso, Zeljka Jutric, Ephraim Tang, Pippa Newell, Paul D Hansen, Terry R Medler, Andrew J Gunderson, Kristina H Young, Carlo Bifulco, Joanna Pucilowska, Marka R Crittenden, Michael J. Gough

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is characterized by a complex tumor environment with a wide diversity of infiltrating stromal and immune cell types that impact the tumor response to conventional treatments. However, even in this poorly responsive tumor the extent of T cell infiltration as determined by quantitative immunohistology is a candidate prognostic factor for patient outcome. As such, even more comprehensive immunophenotyping of the tumor environment, such as immune cell type deconvolution via inference models based on gene expression profiling, holds significant promise. We hypothesized that RNA-Seq can provide a comprehensive alternative to quantitative immunohistology for immunophenotyping pancreatic cancer. We performed RNA-Seq …