Digital Commons Network^™

Popular Justice Or Populist Justice? Penal Populism And Its Impact On Democracy, Kuan-Wu Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Populism, a pervasive phenomenon in contemporary politics, manifests as an anti-establishment, anti-pluralistic, morally charged framing that advocates for direct rule between leader and populace. Among its variants, penal populism emerges as a particularly concerning manifestation. It is characterized by a leader's deployment of panicking, punitive, and politically targeted rhetoric to enhance social control and accrue political capital rather than address crime prevention. This research argues that penal populism poses the most significant threat to democratic rule, as evidenced by theoretical, framing, and mobilization analyses. A novel categorization of populist variants is proposed based on dimensions of social categorization and exclusivity. …

Providing A Social Emotional Learning Opportunity To Virtual Students Struggling With Social Anxiety: Group Counseling As An Intervention, Josie Kate White Ivey

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods action research dissertation was to offer a social/emotional learning opportunity for virtual students struggling with social anxiety. A six-week group counseling experience was offered to on-campus high school students focused on social anxiety in order to determine is group counseling would be a beneficial intervention strategy for virtual students also dealing with social anxiety. An observer protocol was used to make note of participants responses and physical characteristics related to social anxiety and make reflective notes after each counseling session. Group participants also completed quick-check exit tickets to help the researcher determine the student’s …

Measurement Of Single Differential Cross Sections, Polarization Observables, And Beam-Spin Asymmetry In Charged Two-Pion Electroproduction Off The Proton, Christopher Andrew Mclauchlin

Theses and Dissertations

Emergent phenomena are described as such due to functional differences in paradigms based on observation scale, one of the most fundamental being the emergence of hadronic structure from bare quarks and gluons, as dictated by the strong interaction. Measurement of charged two-pion electroproduction off the proton with CLAS in run group E1-6 and the extraction of single differential cross sections, polarization observables, and beam-spin asymmetries was performed as a necessary step in illuminating the length scale currently dark to Quantum Chromodynamics within the structure of the proton. Understanding the scale-dependent nature of this hadronic structure is integral to understanding nature …

Rethinking Democratic Backsliding: Events, Regimes, And Instituitonal Structures, Kelsey Martin-Morales

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation rethinks the concept of democratic backsliding, proposing a unified framework termed "regime contraction," which emphasizes the incremental erosion of democratic institutions. The research explores how domestic institutions, particularly NGOs, face legal and extralegal attacks as states transition toward autocracy. Chapter 3 justifies the use of the Freedom House dataset and introduces innovative methods such as leveraging large language models (LLMs) like GPT for understanding institutional dynamics. It highlights the use of LLMs to analyze changes in legislatures and governance, offering a novel approach to event-based analysis. Chapter 4 focuses on the validation of the Event-Regime Institutional Structures (ERIS) …

The Fifth Element In Three Dimensions: Boron Systematics Along And Across The Aleutian Volcanic Arc, Owen Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

This study uses abundances and isotope ratios of the fluid-mobile element boron (B) to better understand the role of fluids in volcanism at the Aleutian arc in Alaska. In volcanic rocks from the Aleutian volcanic front, patterns in B abundance and isotope ratios (δ11B) point to three endmembers: a sediment melt, a slab interior melt, and a slab-top melt. Most lavas from the eastern Aleutian Islands have δ11B of -2 to +5‰, similar to Aleutian sediment. Hence, sediment is likely to be the dominant B source in the Aleutian Island samples. In lavas from the western Aleutian seafloor, high δ11B …

Winning And Losing At The Federal District Courts, Madison Shanks

Theses and Dissertations

The federal criminal courts are unique compared to the rest of the justice system. Cases in these courts pit a government backed prosecutor with an informational and first-moving advantage, against an often-disadvantaged defendant in an adversarial system that ultimately determines who wins and who loses. This asymmetry in criminal cases at the federal district courts presents a situation in which we can understand how courtroom actors matter for the justice process, and specifically if and how attorneys’ strategies differ and ultimately influence outcomes for their clients. This dissertation project builds on an existing data collection project that captures motion filings …

In Search Of Cognitive Justice: One District’S Approach To Implementing Culturally Responsive Practices, Anne Marie Mancini

Theses and Dissertations

This action research study examined district leaders' approach to integrating culturally responsive practices into classrooms in a medium-sized urban Connecticut public school system. The framework for this study was supported by two theories: transformative learning and culturally responsive pedagogy. Following a case study model of design, the project focused on the work of the Supervisor of Professional Learning and the Department Supervisor for English Language Arts (ELA) as they provided training, support, and resources to the Grade 7 team. Two research questions guided this study: (1) What successes, if any, did district leaders experience in implementing culturally responsive teaching practices …

Development Of Avalanche Photo Detector For Uv-C Using Gallium Oxide Material System, Md Ghulam Ghulam Zakir

Theses and Dissertations

This work describes the metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) optimization process for epitaxially grown gallium oxide (Ga2O3) layers, electrical field distribution, and the design for Avalanche Photo Detector (APD). MOCVD is a well-accepted process in the semiconductor industry, as it is well-known for its precise deposition of ultra-thin, high-quality semiconductor layers with extraordinary control over composition and thickness. The choice of Ga2O3 is due to r its distinctive properties of ultra-wide bandgap and low turn-on resistance. Thus, Ga₂O₃-based materials can withstand high voltage and current with the least energy loss, making them an attractive choice for …

Cross-Silo Federated Learning With Record-Level Personalized Differential Privacy, Junxu Liu, Jian Lou, Li Xiong, Jinfei Liu, Xiaofeng Meng

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Federated learning (FL) enhanced by differential privacy has emerged as a popular approach to better safeguard the privacy of client-side data by protecting clients’ contributions during the training process. Existing solutions typically assume a uniform privacy budget for all records and provide one-size-fits-all solutions that may not be adequate to meet each record’s privacy requirement. In this paper, we explore the uncharted territory of cross-silo FL with record-level personalized differential privacy. We devise a novel framework named rPDP-FL, employing a two-stage hybrid sampling scheme with both uniform client-level sampling and non-uniform record-level sampling to accommodate varying privacy requirements.

A …

Enhanced Privacy Bound For Shuffle Model With Personalized Privacy, Yixuan Liu, Yuhan Liu, Li Xiong, Yujie Gu, Hong Chen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The shuffle model of Differential Privacy (DP) is an enhanced privacy protocol which significantly amplifies the central DP guarantee by anonymizing and shuffling the local randomized data. Yet, deriving a tight privacy bound is challenging due to its complicated randomization protocol. While most existing works focused on uniform local privacy settings, this work focuses on a more practical personalized privacy setting. To bound the privacy after shuffling, we need to capture the probability of each user generating clones of the neighboring data points and quantify the indistinguishability between two distributions of the number of clones on neighboring datasets. Existing works …

Precurious: How Innocent Pre-Trained Language Models Turn Into Privacy Traps, Ruixuan Liu, Tianhao Wang, Yang Cao, Li Xiong

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The pre-training and fine-tuning paradigm has demonstrated its effectiveness and has become the standard approach for tailoring language models to various tasks. Currently, community-based platforms offer easy access to various pre-trained models, as anyone can publish without strict validation processes. However, a released pre-trained model can be a privacy trap for fine-tuning datasets if it is carefully designed. In this work, we propose PreCurious framework to reveal the new attack surface where the attacker releases the pre-trained model and gets a black-box access to the final fine-tuned model. PreCurious aims to escalate the general privacy risk of both membership inference …

Neoadjuvant And Adjuvant Treatments For Early Stage Resectable Nsclc: Consensus Recommendations From The International Association For The Study Of Lung Cancer, Jonathan D Spicer, Tina Cascone, Murry W Wynes, Myung-Ju Ahn, Sanja Dacic, Enriqueta Felip, Patrick M Forde, Kristin A Higgins, Mark G Kris, Tetsuya Mitsudomi, Mariano Provencio, Suresh Senan, Benjamin J Solomon, Ming Sound Tsao, Masahiro Tsuboi, Heather A Wakelee, Yi-Long Wu, James Chih-Hsin Yang, Caicun Zhou, David H Harpole, Karen L Kelly

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Advances in the multidisciplinary care of early stage resectable NSCLC (rNSCLC) are emerging at an unprecedented pace. Numerous phase 3 trials produced results that have transformed patient outcomes for the better, yet these findings also require important modifications to the patient treatment journey trajectory and reorganization of care pathways. Perhaps, most notably, the need for multispecialty collaboration for this patient population has never been greater. These rapid advances have inevitably left us with important gaps in knowledge for which definitive answers will only become available in several years. To this end, the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer …

Mutational Characteristics And Clinical Outcomes For Lung Adenocarcinoma With Egfr Germline Mutations, Kelsey Pan, Jennifer Owens, Yasir Elamin, Charles Lu, Mark Routbort, Jianjun Zhang, Frank Fossella, Marcelo V Negrao, Mehmet Altan, Jenny Pozadzides, Ferdinandos Skoulidis, Anne Tsao, Tina Cascone, John V Heymach, Edwin Ostrin, Xiuning Le

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: Germline mutations driving lung cancer have been infrequently reported in the literature, with EGFR T790M being a known germline mutation identified in 1% of NSCLCs. Typically, a somatic EGFR mutation is acquired to develop lung adenocarcinoma. Osimertinib has become a standard-of-care treatment for EGFR T790M-positive lung cancer.

Methods: We perform a retrospective analysis through the Lung Cancer Moon Shot GEMINI database at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Of the patients that underwent cell-free DNA analysis, germline mutations were identified by those with high variant allelic fraction approximating 50%, followed by further confirmation on genetic testing.

Results: …

Mechanisms By Which The Intratumoral Microbiome May Potentiate Immunotherapy Response, Dalissa Negrón-Figueroa, Lauren E Colbert

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Lower Intensity Therapy With Cladribine/Low Dose Cytarabine/Venetoclax In Older Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia Compares Favorably With Intensive Chemotherapy Among Patients Undergoing Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation, Jayastu Senapati, Hagop M Kantarjian, Alexandre Bazinet, Patrick Reville, Nicholas J Short, Naval Daver, Gautam Borthakur, Alex Bataller, Elias Jabbour, Courtney Dinardo, Fadi Haddad, Koji Sasaki, Uday Popat, Betul Oran, Amin M Alousi, Sanam Loghavi, Elizabeth Shpall, Guillermo Garcia-Manero, Farhad Ravandi, Tapan M Kadia

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) remains the best consolidative modality in most patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Along with factors directly pertaining to SCT, pretransplantation disease control, performance status, and prior treatment-related complications are important factors that affect posttransplantation survival outcomes.

Methods: The authors compared the survival outcomes of patients ≥60 years of age treated on the phase 2 clinical trial of venetoclax (Ven) added to cladribine (CLAD) and low dose cytarabine (LDAC) alternating with azacitidine (CLAD/LDAC/Ven arm) (NCT03586609) who underwent allogeneic SCT in first remission to a retrospective cohort of patients ≥60 years of age …

Drug-Resistant Epilepsy In Tuberous Sclerosis Complex Is Associated With Tsc2 Genotype: More Findings From The Preventing Epilepsy Using Vigatrin (Prevent) Trial, Laura S Farach, Melissa A Richard, Aynara C Wulsin, Elizabeth M Bebin, Darcy A Krueger, Mustafa Sahin, Brenda E Porter, Tarrant O Mcpherson, Jurriaan M Peters, Sarah O'Kelley, Katherine S Taub, Rajsekar Rajaraman, Stephanie C Randle, William M Mcclintock, Mary Kay Koenig, Michael D Frost, Klaus Werner, Danielle A Nolan, Michael Wong, Gary Cutter, Hope Northrup, Kit Sing Au

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Children with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) are at high risk for drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE). The ability to stratify those at highest risk for DRE is important for counseling and prompt, aggressive management, necessary to optimize neurocognitive outcomes. Using the extensively phenotyped PREVeNT cohort, we aimed to characterize whether the TSC genotype was associated with DRE.

Methods: The study group (N = 70) comprised participants with TSC enrolled at age less than or equal to six months with detailed epilepsy and other phenotypic and genotypic data, prospectively collected as part of the PREVeNT trial. Genotype-phenotype correlations of DRE, time to …

Collision Tumor: Multinodular And Vacuolating Neuronal Tumor With Isocitrate Dehydrogenase-Mutant Diffuse Astrocytoma, Vinodh A Kumar, Alejandro Perez, Angela L Young, Julia Jones, Barbara J O'Brien, Frederick F Lang, Jason T Huse, Gregory N Fuller

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Herein, we report a case of a collision tumor involving a multinodular and vacuolating neuronal tumor (MVNT) and a diffuse astrocytoma. A collision tumor between these two entities has not previously been reported. The patient is a 35-year-old woman who presented with new-onset hearing loss and ringing in her right ear. Magnetic resonance imaging identified a non-enhancing mass involving the gray matter and subcortical white matter of the left middle frontal gyrus. Additionally, tiny clustered nodules were noted along the underlying subcortical ribbon and superficial subcortical white matter of the left superior frontal gyrus. The patient underwent a left frontal …

Asxl1/Tet2 Genotype-Based Risk Stratification Outperforms Asxl1 Mutational Impact And Is Independent Of Mutant Variant Allele Fractions In Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia, Clifford M Csizmar, Mark Gurney, Rashmi Kanagal-Shamanna, Kelly Chien, Danielle Hammond, Terra L Lasho, Christy M Finke, Christopher Dean, Anuya Natu, Abhishek A Mangaonkar, Aref Al-Kali, Naseema Gangat, Ayalew Tefferi, Hassan Alkhateeb, Guillermo Garcia-Manero, Rami S Komrokji, Najla A Ali, Eric Padron, Guillermo Montalban-Bravo, Mrinal M Patnaik

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Downregulation Of Uba1 Expression In Myelodysplastic Neoplasm, Yue Wei, Hong Zheng, Ziyi Li, Pamela Pennington Lockyer, Faezeh Darbaniyan, Rashmi Kanagal-Shamanna, Hui Yang, Danielle Hammond, Guillermo Garcia-Manero

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Fast Model Calibration For Predicting The Response Of Breast Cancer To Chemotherapy Using Proper Orthogonal Decomposition, Chase Christenson, Chengyue Wu, David A Hormuth, Casey E Stowers, Megan Lamonica, Jingfei Ma, Gaiane M Rauch, Thomas E Yankeelov

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Constructing digital twins for predictive tumor treatment response models can have a high computational demand that presents a practical barrier for their clinical adoption. In this work, we demonstrate that proper orthogonal decomposition, by which a low-dimensional representation of the full model is constructed, can be used to dramatically reduce the computational time required to calibrate a partial differential equation model to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data for rapid predictions of tumor growth and response to chemotherapy. In the proposed formulation, the reduction basis is based on each patient's own MRI data and controls the overall size of the "reduced …

Artificial Intelligence Applications In Oral Cancer And Oral Dysplasia, Chi T Viet, Michael Zhang, Neeraja Dharmaraj, Grace Y Li, Alexander T Pearson, Victoria A Manon, Anupama Grandhi, Ke Xu, Bradley E Aouizerat, Simon Young

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a highly unpredictable disease with devastating mortality rates that have not changed over the past decades, in the face of advancements in treatments and biomarkers, which have improved survival for other cancers. Delays in diagnosis are frequent, leading to more disfiguring treatments and poor outcomes for patients. The clinical challenge lies in identifying those patients at the highest risk of developing OSCC. Oral epithelial dysplasia (OED) is a precursor of OSCC with highly variable behavior across patients. There is no reliable clinical, pathological, histological, or molecular biomarker to determine individual risk in OED patients. …

Subsyndromes And Symptom Clusters: Multilevel Factor Analysis Of Behavioral And Psychological Symptoms Of Dementia With Intensive Longitudinal Data, Carolyn E Z Pickering, Vicki Winstead, Mustafa Yildiz, Danny Wang, Maria Yefimova, Andrew M Pickering

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: Behavioral and psychological symptoms in dementia (BPSD) are dynamic phenomena with a high amount of intraindividual variability. We applied a multilevel framework to identify subsyndromes (between-person factors) that represent clinically relevant profiles of BPSD and identify symptom clusters (within-person factors) that represent contextually driven daily symptom experiences.

Methods: This study used an intensive longitudinal design in which 68 co-residing family caregivers to persons living with dementia were recruited to proxy report on their care recipient's daily symptom experiences of 23 different BPSD for eight consecutive days (n = 443 diaries). A multilevel exploratory/confirmatory factor analysis was used to account …

Structures And Compositional Dynamics Of Mediator In Transcription Regulation, Tao Li, Ti-Chun Chao, Kuang-Lei Tsai

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The eukaryotic Mediator, comprising a large Core (cMED) and a dissociable CDK8 kinase module (CKM), functions as a critical coregulator during RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) transcription. cMED recruits RNAPII and facilitates the assembly of the pre-initiation complex (PIC) at promoters. In contrast, CKM prevents RNAPII binding to cMED while simultaneously exerting positive or negative influence on gene transcription through its kinase function. Recent structural studies on cMED and CKM have revealed their intricate architectures and subunit interactions. Here, we explore these structures, providing a comprehensive insight into Mediator (cMED-CKM) architecture and its potential mechanism in regulating RNAPII transcription. Additionally, we …

Impact Of Race And Ethnicity On Outcomes After Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation, Karen Ballen, Tao Wang, Naya He, Jennifer M Knight, Sanghee Hong, Haydar Frangoul, Leo F Verdonck, Amir Steinberg, Miguel A Diaz, C Fred Lemaistre, Sherif M Badawy, Jeffrey J Pu, Hasan Hashem, Bipin Savani, Akshay Sharma, Hillard M Lazarus, Muhammad Bilal Abid, Jason Tay, Hemalatha G Rangarajan, Tamila Kindwall-Keller, Cesar O Freytes, Amer Beitinjaneh, Lena E Winestone, Usama Gergis, Nosha Farhadfar, Neel S Bhatt, Raquel M Schears, David Gómez-Almaguer, Mahmoud Aljurf, Vaibhav Agrawal, Yachiyo Kuwatsuka, Sachiko Seo, David I Marks, Leslie Lehmann, William A Wood, Shahrukh Hashmi, Wael Saber

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Umbilical cord blood transplant (UCBT) improves access to transplant for patients lacking a fully matched donor. Previous Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) showed that Black patients had a lower overall survival (OS) than White patients following single UCBT. The current study draws on a larger modern cohort and compares outcomes among White, Latinx, Black, and Asian patients.

Objective: To compare outcomes by social determinants of health.

Study design: We designed a retrospective study using CIBMTR data. US patients were between ages 1 and 80; 983 received single and 1529 double UCBT as reported to CIBMTR, …

Vessel-Targeted Compensation Of Deformable Motion In Interventional Cone-Beam Ct, Alexander Lu, Heyuan Huang, Yicheng Hu, Wojciech Zbijewski, Mathias Unberath, Jeffrey H Siewerdsen, Clifford R Weiss, Alejandro Sisniega

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The present standard of care for unresectable liver cancer is transarterial chemoembolization (TACE), which involves using chemotherapeutic particles to selectively embolize the arteries supplying hepatic tumors. Accurate volumetric identification of intricate fine vascularity is crucial for selective embolization. Three-dimensional imaging, particularly cone-beam CT (CBCT), aids in visualization and targeting of small vessels in such highly variable anatomy, but long image acquisition time results in intra-scan patient motion, which distorts vascular structures and tissue boundaries. To improve clarity of vascular anatomy and intra-procedural utility, this work proposes a targeted motion estimation and compensation framework that removes the need for any prior …

A Brave New Framework For Glioma Drug Development, Kelly M Hotchkiss, Philipp Karschnia, Karisa C Schreck, Marjolein Geurts, Timothy F Cloughesy, Jason Huse, Elizabeth S Duke, Justin Lathia, David M Ashley, Edjah K Nduom, Georgina Long, Kirit Singh, Anthony Chalmers, Manmeet S Ahluwalia, Amy Heimberger, Stephen Bagley, Tomoki Todo, Roel Verhaak, Patrick D Kelly, Shawn Hervey-Jumper, John De Groot, Anoop Patel, Peter Fecci, Ian Parney, Victoria Wykes, Colin Watts, Terry C Burns, Nader Sanai, Matthias Preusser, Joerg Christian Tonn, Katharine J Drummond, Michael Platten, Sunit Das, Kirk Tanner, Michael A Vogelbaum, Michael Weller, James R Whittle, Mitchel S Berger, Mustafa Khasraw

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Patients with brain tumours are motivated to participate in clinical trials involving repeat tissue sampling. Normalising the use of neoadjuvant and staged surgical trials necessitates collaboration among patients, regulatory agencies, and researchers. Initial and repetitive tissue sampling plays a crucial role in enhancing our understanding of resistance mechanisms and vulnerabilities in brain tumour therapy. Standardising biopsy techniques and ensuring technical uniformity across institutions are vital for effective interinstitutional collaboration. Although liquid biopsy technologies hold promise, they are not yet ready to replace tissue analysis. Clear communication about the risks and benefits of biopsies is essential, particularly regarding potential postoperative deficits. …

A Commissioning Protocol For Portal Imaging-Based Radiotherapy In Vivo Dosimetry Systems, Marco Esposito, Riccardo Baldoni, Evy Bossuyt, Sara Bresciani, Catharine H Clark, Matthew Jones, Stephen Kry, Joseph Perry, Jeroen Van De Kamer, Dirk Verellen, Nuria Jornet

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background and purpose: With the availability of commercial electronic portal imaging detector-based in vivo dosimetry (EPID-based IVD) solutions, many radiotherapy departments are adopting this technology. However, comprehensive commissioning guidance is lacking. This study aims to provide a protocol for testing the accuracy and sensitivity of EPID-based IVD systems.

Material and methods: The protocol was tested across four institutions using two different systems. Accuracy was evaluated with homogeneous slab phantoms using different square regular fields, and clinical plans in a CIRS lung phantom. Multiple forward and back-projected algorithm implementations were assessed for different energies. Sensitivity analysis in the lung phantom examined …

Prognostic Scores For Ursodeoxycholic Acid-Treated Patients Predict Graft Loss And Mortality In Recurrent Primary Biliary Cholangitis After Liver Transplantation, Aldo J Montano-Loza, Ellina Lytvyak, Gideon Hirschfield, Bettina E Hansen, Maryam Ebadi, Thierry Berney, Christian Toso, Giulia Magini, Alejandra Villamil, Frederik Nevens, Natalie Van Den Ende, Albert Pares, Pablo Ruiz, Débora Terrabuio, Palak J Trivedi, Nadir Abbas, Maria Francesca Donato, Lei Yu, Charles Landis, Jérôme Dumortier, Jessica Katharine Dyson, Adriaan J Van Der Meer, Rozanne De Veer, Mark Pedersen, Marlyn Mayo, Michael P Manns, Richard Taubert, Theresa Kirchner, Luca S Belli, Chiara Mazzarelli, Guido Stirnimann, Annarosa Floreani, Nora Cazzagon, Francesco Paolo Russo, Patrizia Burra, Udi Zigmound, Inbal Houri, Marco Carbone, Giacomo Mulinacci, Stefano Fagiuoli, Daniel Stephan Pratt, Alan Bonder, Thomas D Schiano, Brandy Haydel, Ansgar Lohse, Christoph Schramm, Darius Rüther, Stefania Casu, Xavier Verhelst, Benedetta Terziroli Beretta-Piccoli, Mercedes Robles, Andrew L Mason, Christophe Corpechot, Global Pbc Study Group

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background & aims: Recurrent primary biliary cholangitis (rPBC) develops in approximately 30% of patients and negatively impacts graft and overall patient survival after liver transplantation (LT). There is a lack of data regarding the response rate to ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) in rPBC. We evaluated a large, international, multi-center cohort to assess the performance of PBC scores in predicting the risk of graft and overall survival after LT in patients with rPBC.

Methods: A total of 332 patients with rPBC after LT were evaluated from 28 centers across Europe, North and South America. The median age at the time of rPBC …

Inulin-Gel-Based Oral Immunotherapy Remodels The Small Intestinal Microbiome And Suppresses Food Allergy, Kai Han, Fang Xie, Olamide Animasahun, Minal Nenwani, Sho Kitamoto, Yeji Kim, May Thazin Phoo, Jin Xu, Fulei Wuchu, Kehinde Omoloja, Abhinav Achreja, Srinadh Choppara, Zhaoheng Li, Wang Gong, Young Seok Cho, Hannah Dobson, Jinsung Ahn, Xingwu Zhou, Xuehui Huang, Xinran An, Alexander Kim, Yao Xu, Qi Wu, Soo-Hong Lee, Jessica J O'Konek, Yuying Xie, Yu Leo Lei, Nobuhiko Kamada, Deepak Nagrath, James J Moon

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Despite the potential of oral immunotherapy against food allergy, adverse reactions and loss of desensitization hinder its clinical uptake. Dysbiosis of the gut microbiota is implicated in the increasing prevalence of food allergy, which will need to be regulated to enable for an effective oral immunotherapy against food allergy. Here we report an inulin gel formulated with an allergen that normalizes the dysregulated ileal microbiota and metabolites in allergic mice, establishes allergen-specific oral tolerance and achieves robust oral immunotherapy efficacy with sustained unresponsiveness in food allergy models. These positive outcomes are associated with enhanced allergen uptake by antigen-sampling dendritic cells …

Diffusion Tensor Imaging For Characterizing Changes In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer During Neoadjuvant Systemic Therapy, Benjamin C Musall, David E Rauch, Rania M M Mohamed, Bikash Panthi, Medine Boge, Rosalind P Candelaria, Huiqin Chen, Mary S Guirguis, Kelly K Hunt, Lei Huo, Ken-Pin Hwang, Anil Korkut, Jennifer K Litton, Tanya W Moseley, Sanaz Pashapoor, Miral M Patel, Brandy J Reed, Marion E Scoggins, Jong Bum Son, Debu Tripathy, Vicente Valero, Peng Wei, Jason B White, Gary J Whitman, Zhan Xu, Wei T Yang, Clinton Yam, Beatriz E Adrada, Jingfei Ma

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Assessment of treatment response in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) may guide individualized care for improved patient outcomes. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures tissue anisotropy and could be useful for characterizing changes in the tumors and adjacent fibroglandular tissue (FGT) of TNBC patients undergoing neoadjuvant systemic treatment (NAST).

Purpose: To evaluate the potential of DTI parameters for prediction of treatment response in TNBC patients undergoing NAST.

Study type: Prospective.

Population: Eighty-six women (average age: 51 ± 11 years) with biopsy-proven clinical stage I-III TNBC who underwent NAST followed by definitive surgery. 47% of patients (40/86) had pathologic complete response (pCR). …