Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Through The Lens: Youth Experiences With Cancer In Rural Appalachian Kentucky Using Photovoice, Katie Gaines, Courtney Martin, Chris Prichard, Nathan L. Vanderford

Markey Cancer Center Faculty Publications

Rural Appalachian Kentucky experiences disproportionately high cancer incidence and mortality rates. This cancer burden is due to social determinants of health and cultural factors prominent in the region. The firsthand experiences of community members—especially young people—can highlight these factors and identify areas for improvement. The purpose of this study was to encourage Appalachian Kentucky youth to consider determinants of cancer and visualize the effects that cancer has on their families or communities by asking them to take photographs of cancer-related objects around them. Content analysis was performed on 238 photographs submitted by 25 students, and photographs were organized into themes, …

The Role Of Decorin And Biglycan Signaling In Tumorigenesis, Valentina Diehl, Lisa Sophie Huber, Jonel Trebicka, Malgorzata Wygrecka, Renato V. Iozzo, Liliana Schaefer

Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Cell Biology Faculty Papers

The complex and adaptive nature of malignant neoplasm constitute a major challenge for the development of effective anti-oncogenic therapies. Emerging evidence has uncovered the pivotal functions exerted by the small leucine-rich proteoglycans, decorin and biglycan, in affecting tumor growth and progression. In their soluble forms, decorin and biglycan act as powerful signaling molecules. By receptor-mediated signal transduction, both proteoglycans modulate key processes vital for tumor initiation and progression, such as autophagy, inflammation, cell-cycle, apoptosis, and angiogenesis. Despite of their structural homology, these two proteoglycans interact with distinct cell surface receptors and thus modulate distinct signaling pathways that ultimately affect cancer …

Bay Leaf Extract‐Based Near‐Infrared Fluorescent Probe For Tissue And Cellular Imaging, Benilde Adriano, Nycol Cotto, Neeraj Chauhan, Vinitha Karumuru, Meena Jaggi, Subhash C. Chauhan, Murali M. Yallapu

School of Medicine Publications and Presentations

The development of fluorescence dyes for near‐infrared (NIR) fluorescence imaging has been a significant interest for deep tissue imaging. Among many imaging fluoroprobes, indocyanine green (ICG) and its analogues have been used in oncology and other medical applications. However, these imaging agents still experience poor imaging capabilities due to low tumor targetability, photostability, and sensitivity in the biological milieu. Thus, developing a biocompatible NIR imaging dye from natural resources holds the potential of facilitating cancer cell/tissue imaging. Chlorophyll (Chl) has been demonstrated to be a potential candidate for imaging purposes due to its natural NIR absorption qualities and its wide …

Editorial: Recent Advances In Cardiotoxicity Testing, Tamer M. A. Mohamed, Javid Moslehi, Jonathan Satin

Physiology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Conference Proceedings: Select Abstracts Presented At 2021 Advocate Aurora Health Scientific Day

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Abstracts published within this supplement were presented at the 47th annual Advocate Aurora Health Scientific Day, held virtually on May 26, 2021. This research symposium provides a forum for disseminating results from studies conducted by faculty, fellows, residents, and other allied health professionals associated with Midwest-based health system Advocate Aurora Health, which publishes the Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews.

Association Of Lung Cancer With Pneumonia And Chlamydia Pneumoniae Infection, Johnny Zakhour Md, Daniel Muller, Alex Glynn, Jose Bordon

The University of Louisville Journal of Respiratory Infections

Introduction: The degree of association and type of causal versus non-causal relationship between pneumonia and lung cancer (LC) are evolving discussions. We reviewed English publications on the degree of association between pneumonia and subsequent LC.

Methods: We searched the PubMed database using key words for pneumonia, LC, and chlamydia infection. We selected peer-reviewed studies of patients with pneumonia and LC. Case reports and other literature reviews were excluded from this review.

Results: Five studies examined the incidence and/or risk of LC for a total of 415,750 patients, and four studies examined cases with Chlamydia pneumoniae chronic infection at the time …

Design And Application Of Hybrid Cyclic-Linear Peptide-Doxorubicin Conjugates As A Strategy To Overcome Doxorubicin Resistance And Toxicity, Saghar Mozaffari, David Salehi, Parvin Mahdipoor, Richard Beuttler, Rakesh Tiwari, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, Keykavous Parang

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Doxorubicin (Dox) is used for breast cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma treatment as an effective chemotherapeutic agent. However, Dox use is restricted due to inherent and acquired resistance and an 8-fold increase in the risk of potentially fatal cardiotoxicity. Hybrid cyclic-linear peptide [R5K]W7A and linear peptide R5KW7A were conjugated with Dox through a glutarate linker to afford [R5K]W7A-Dox and R5KW7A-Dox conjugates to generate Dox derivatives. Alternatively, [R5K]W7C was conjugated with Dox via a disulfide linker to generate [R5K]W7C–S–S-Dox conjugate, where S–S is a disulfide bond. Comparative antiproliferative assays between conjugates [R5K]W7A-Dox, [R5K]W7C–S–S-Dox, linear R5KW7A-Dox, the corresponding physical mixtures of the peptides, …

Real-World Evaluation Of Universal Germline Screening For Cancer Treatment-Relevant Pharmacogenes, Megan L. Hutchcraft, Nan Lin, Shulin Zhang, Catherine Sears, Kyle Zacholski, Elizabeth A. Belcher, Eric B. Durbin, John L. Villano, Michael J. Cavnar, Susanne M. Arnold, Frederick R. Ueland, Jill M. Kolesar

Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of clinically actionable treatment-relevant germline pharmacogenomic variants in patients with cancer and assess the real-world clinical utility of universal screening using whole-exome sequencing in this population. Cancer patients underwent research-grade germline whole-exome sequencing as a component of sequencing for somatic variants. Analysis in a clinical bioinformatics pipeline identified clinically actionable pharmacogenomic variants. Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium guidelines defined clinical actionability. We assessed clinical utility by reviewing electronic health records to determine the frequency of patients receiving pharmacogenomically actionable anti-cancer agents and associated outcomes. This observational study evaluated 291 patients with …

Uncovering A Myc-Driven Tumor-Suppressive Program In Proliferating Lymphocytes, Elena Tonc

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rapid cell proliferation is a hallmark feature of adaptive immune cells lymphocytes. It is essential for the establishment of diverse antigen receptor repertoires and amplification of antigen-specific immune responses. While such proliferation is beneficial for host protection from infections and cancers, it inevitably elevates the risk of oncogenic transformation. In developing and germinal center B lymphocytes, the risk is further increased by endogenous, genomic insults due to antigen receptor rearrangements and somatic mutations, with which expression of the proto-oncogene c-MYC is closely associated. Nonetheless, frequencies of cancers originated from B lymphocytes are relatively low, suggesting that they are protected from …

The Role Of Ifitm3 In The Immune Response Of Brca-Deficient High Grade Serous Ovarian Carcinoma, Han Cun

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Background: Prior studies showed that BRCA-deficient high grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSOC) had increased tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) compared to BRCA-wildtype (WT). To better understand the underlying immune mechanism in these tumors, a preliminary transcriptome analysis was performed on a set of microdissected HGSOC tumor specimens with BRCA1-mutation, BRCA2-mutation, or WT. This demonstrated an upregulation of IFITM3, an essential gene in modulating immune function. Based on these findings, we hypothesized that BRCA-deficient HGSOC have increased DNA damage leading to upregulation of IFITM3 and subsequent increase in antigen presentation and T-cell activation.

Methods: Following IRB approval, preliminary transcriptome analysis was performed …

Incidence Of Cancer And Stage At Diagnosis Among People With Recent-Onset Psychotic Disorders, Jared C. Wootten

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Evidence on cancer incidence in people with psychotic disorders, compared to the general population, is equivocal, although those with psychotic disorders so have more advanced stage of cancer at the time of diagnosis. The objective of this thesis was to compare cancer incidence and stage at diagnosis for people with psychotic disorders, relative to the general population. Our systematic review did not observe a significant difference in overall cancer incidence among people diagnosed with psychotic disorders (RR = 1.08, 95% CI: 1.00 to 1.16), however people with psychotic disorders were more likely to be present with advanced stage cancer at …

Human Oncoprotein 5mp Suppresses General And Repeat-Associated Non-Aug Translation Via Eif3 By A Common Mechanism, Chingakham Ranjit Singh, M. Rebecca Glineburg, Chelsea Moore, Naoki Tani, Rahul Jaiswal, Ye Zou, Eric Aube, Sarah Gillaspie, Mackenzie Thornton, Ariana Cecil, Madelyn Hilgers, Azuma Takasu, Izumi Asano, Masayo Asano, Carlos R. Escalante, Akira Nakamura, Peter K. Todd, Katsura Asano

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

eIF5-mimic protein (5MP) is a translational regulatory protein that binds the small ribosomal subunit and modulates its activity. 5MP is proposed to reprogram non-AUG translation rates for oncogenes in cancer, but its role in controlling non-AUG initiated synthesis of deleterious repeat-peptide products, such as FMRpolyG observed in fragile-X-associated tremor ataxia syndrome (FXTAS), is unknown. Here, we show that 5MP can suppress both general and repeat-associated non-AUG (RAN) translation by a common mechanism in a manner dependent on its interaction with eIF3. Essentially, 5MP displaces eIF5 through the eIF3c subunit within the preinitiation complex (PIC), thereby increasing the accuracy of initiation. …

Characterization Of Oral Cavity And Oropharyngeal Cancer In The Texas Rio Grande Valley, Jared A. Sperling, Rachel Giese

MEDI 9331 Scholarly Activities Clinical Years

Cancers of the oral cavity (OC) and oropharynx (OP) account for 3% of cancers diagnosed in the United States each year. A primary cause of death among the Hispanic population in the United States is cancer, accounting for 20% of annual mortality. The Rio Grande Valley (RGV) is a medically-underserved area of South Texas with a large Hispanic population facing health disparities. In this study, we examine the incidence and mortality of OC and OP cancer in the RGV. CDC population-level incidence and mortality rate per 100,000 of OC/OP cancer among patients in the RGV counties of Hidalgo and Cameron …

A Time-Course Characterization Of Muscle Function And Mitochondrial Markers During Colorectal Cancer-Induced Cachexia In Tumor-Bearing Male Mice, Ana Cabrera Ayuso

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cachexia is a multisystemic and multifactorial syndrome prevalent in cancer patients. It is clinically defined by involuntary loss of >5% weight in a six-month window, despite nutritional interventions. A negative energy balance characterizes cancer cachexia (CC), it is associated with weakness and fatigue in skeletal muscle. Impaired muscle function is associated with lower quality of life in cancer patients. Defects in mitochondrial function are strongly associated with muscle wasting. This study explored muscular contractile function and mitochondrial quality control (MQC) markers in soleus, gastrocnemius, and tibialis anterior (TA) muscles of C26-induced male tumor-bearing mice during a 25-day time course. It …

Evolution Of Targeted Therapy Resistance In Eml4-Alk Positive Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Robert Vander Velde

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Targeted therapies have emerged as potent treatments that lead to the remission of many tumors. However, they rarely cure cancers in advanced, metastatic settings. This is due to the evolution of resistance, which in turn can be ascribed to the survival of small subpopulations of tolerant and/or resistant cells. Here we investigated the evolution of resistance to EML4-ALK inhibitors in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and demonstrated that resistance evolves gradually, from unique pre-treatment sub-populations, as multiple resistance mechanisms accumulate in a Darwinian fashion. Despite accumulating multiple changes, cells evolved, in parallel, toward similar inhibitor specific phenotypes. Evolving cells have …

Full Issue: The International Undergraduate Journal Of Health Sciences, Volume 1, Issue 1, June 2021

International Undergraduate Journal of Health Sciences

The full June 2021 issue (Volume 1, Issue 1) of the International Undergraduate Journal of Health Sciences

Abstracts From The 2021 Health Care Systems Research Network Annual Conference

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

The Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN) is comprised of 19 not-for-profit health systems with embedded research departments. The network’s annual conference serves as a forum for member institutions to highlight research findings, explore new collaborations, and share insights and opportunities. Abstracts accepted for oral and poster presentation at the 2021 HCSRN Conference are published in this supplement of Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews, the official scientific journal of the annual conference.

Diabetes In The Oncology Setting Webinar Series, Jennifer Williams, Denise A. Palma, Michael Rizk Msn, Aprn, Fnp-C, Bc-Adm

2021 Education Week Posters

Department of Endocrine Neoplasia and Hormonal Disorders

Differential Effects Of Kim-1 In Subcutaneous And Orthotopic Renca Models Of Kidney Cancer, Demitra M. Yotis Dy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) is the most common and fatal type of kidney cancer. Over 30% of patients that are diagnosed with RCC exhibit metastases. Almost 88% of patients with distant metastases succumb to the disease within 5 years of diagnosis. Kidney Injury Molecule-1 (KIM-1) is a cell surface glycoprotein that is not expressed in a healthy kidney but becomes highly expressed on proximal tubular epithelial cells (PTECs) following injury. Data from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) reveals that >90% of RCC tumours express KIM-1 mRNA and that higher expression levels correlate with increased overall survival rates of patients. The …

Disclosing Bad News Of Cancer Diagnosis: Patients' Preference For Communication, Sabah Uddin Saqib, K. M. Inam Pal

Section of General Surgery

The majority of relatives of cancer patients in Pakistan request their clinicians to adopt a "do not tell approach" while counselling the patients regarding their disease. The current study aimed to assess patients' understanding of their disease and how they would prefer the physicians to deliver news about cancer diagnosis and its management plan. This was a cross-sectional study in which both patients and their immediate relatives were interviewed. The study enrolled 55 patients with six different types of cancers. The study showed that 35 (65.5%) patients did not know the stage of their illness at the time of diagnosis, …

Validation Of The Distress Thermometer In A Mexican Population With Brain Tumors: A Diagnostic Accuracy Study, Dan Morgenstern-Kaplan, Sergio Moreno-Jiménez, Fernanda Páez-Plascencia, Angel Ruiz-Chow, Fabiola Flores-Vázquez

Archives of Neurosurgery

Objective: Mental health in cancer patients must be addressed. This study's main objective was to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the DT in a population of patients with brain tumors and determine the optimal cut-off point for the DT. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study at the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Mexico City, in a cohort of 110 patients. Results: Of the 108 participants with brain tumors that were included in the analysis (2 patients excluded by incomplete DT), 40 had gliomas, 31 had pituitary adenomas, 21 had meningiomas, and 16 had other types of tumors. …

Biophysical Characterization Of The Par-4 Tumor Suppressor: Evidence Of Structure Outside The Coiled Coil Domain And Interactions With Platinum Chemotherapeutics, Andrea Megan Clark

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses & Dissertations

Prostate apoptosis response-4 (Par-4) is an apoptosis-inducing tumor suppressor protein. Full-length Par-4 has previously been shown to be a predominantly intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) under neutral conditions, with significant regular secondary structure evident only within the C-terminal coiled coil domain. However, IDPs can gain ordered structure through the process of induced folding, which often occurs under non-neutral conditions. Previous work has shown that the Par-4 leucine zipper, which is a subset of the C-terminal coiled coil domain, is disordered under neutral conditions, but forms a dimeric coiled coil at acidic pH. Increase in ionic strength was also shown to increase …

Impact Of Pregnancy On Cancer Survival: Experience At A Tertiary Care Hospital, Dur-E- Shahwar, Sheikh Irfan, Zaheena Islam, Lumaan Sheikh

Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology

Objectives: To assess the overall survival of pregnant women diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy or became pregnant thereafter.
Methods: A retrospective medical record review of 90 patients who were diagnosed with cancer when pregnant or who became pregnant thereafter between 1996 and 2015 in Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi.
Results: A total of 90 patients were analyzed. The malignancies that expectant mothers had were, breast cancer 38 (42.2%), hematological cancers 29 (32.2%), brain cancer 10 (11.1%), and other malignancies 13 (14.4%) that included thyroid cancers, gestational trophoblastic disease and synovial tumor of foot. We observed only four deaths out of …

Limitations Of Transformers On Clinical Text Classification, Shang Gao, Mohammed Alawad, Michael Todd Young, John Gounley, Noah Schaefferkoetter, Hong-Jun Yoon, Xiao-Cheng Wu, Eric B. Durbin, Jennifer Doherty, Antoinette Stroup, Linda Coyle, Georgia D. Tourassi

Kentucky Cancer Registry Faculty Publications

Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and BERT-based approaches are the current state-of-the-art in many natural language processing (NLP) tasks; however, their application to document classification on long clinical texts is limited. In this work, we introduce four methods to scale BERT, which by default can only handle input sequences up to approximately 400 words long, to perform document classification on clinical texts several thousand words long. We compare these methods against two much simpler architectures -- a word-level convolutional neural network and a hierarchical self-attention network -- and show that BERT often cannot beat these simpler baselines when classifying …

Cancer Curriculum For Appalachian Kentucky Middle And High Schools, Lauren Hudson, Katherine Sharp, Chris Prichard, Melinda J. Ickes, Sahar Alameh, Nathan L. Vanderford

Journal of Appalachian Health

Background: Appalachian Kentucky faces the highest cancer incidence and mortality rates in the country due to poor health behaviors and lifestyle choices. These poor health behaviors are facilitated by a lack of cancer education. Youth represent a vulnerable population that could be greatly impacted by increased cancer education. Teachers have the power to facilitate this learning.

Purpose: This study examined the need for cancer education curriculum in Appalachian Kentucky middle and high schools from the perspective of educators.

Methods: An online survey was conducted with science and health teachers (n=21) in Appalachian Kentucky, consisting of questions that investigated existing cancer …

[(Wr)8Wkβa]-Doxorubicin Conjugate: A Delivery System To Overcome Multi-Drug Resistance Against Doxorubicin, Khalid Zoghebi, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, Rakesh Kumar Tiwari, Keykavous Parang

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Doxorubicin (Dox) is an anthracycline chemotherapeutic agent used to treat breast, leukemia, and lymphoma malignancies. However, cardiotoxicity and inherent acquired resistance are major drawbacks, limiting its clinical application. We have previously shown that cyclic peptide [WR]₉ containing alternate tryptophan (W) and arginine (R) residues acts as an efficient molecular transporter. An amphiphilic cyclic peptide containing a lysine (K) residue and alternative W and R was conjugated through a free side chain amino group with Dox via a glutarate linker to afford [(WR)₈WKβA]-Dox conjugate. Antiproliferative assays were performed in different cancer cell lines using the conjugate and the …

Medical Oncology Professionals’ Perceptions Of Telehealth Video Visits, Arianna Heyer, Rachel E. Granberg, Kristin L. Rising, Adam F. Binder, Alexzandra T. Gentsch, Nathan R. Handley

Department of Medical Oncology Faculty Papers

IMPORTANCE: Telehealth has emerged as a means of improving access and reducing cost for medical oncology care; however, use by specialists prior to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic still remained low. Medical oncology professionals’ perceptions of telehealth for cancer care are largely unknown, but are critical to telehealth utilization and expansion efforts.

OBJECTIVE: To identify medical oncology health professionals’ perceptions of the barriers to and benefits of telehealth video visits.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This qualitative study used interviews conducted from October 30, 2019, to March 5, 2020, of medical oncology health professionals at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, …

Myc Regulates Ribosome Biogenesis And Mitochondrial Gene Expression Programs Through Its Interaction With Host Cell Factor-1., Tessa M. Popay, Jing Wang, Clare M. Adams, Gregory Caleb Howard, Simona G. Codreanu, Stacy D. Sherrod, John A. Mclean, Lance R. Thomas, Shelly L. Lorey, Yuichi J. Machida, April M. Weissmiller, Christine M. Eischen, Qi Liu, William P. Tansey

Department of Cancer Biology Faculty Papers

The oncoprotein transcription factor MYC is a major driver of malignancy and a highly validated but challenging target for the development of anticancer therapies. Novel strategies to inhibit MYC may come from understanding the co-factors it uses to drive pro-tumorigenic gene expression programs, providing their role in MYC activity is understood. Here we interrogate how one MYC co-factor, host cell factor (HCF)-1, contributes to MYC activity in a human Burkitt lymphoma setting. We identify genes connected to mitochondrial function and ribosome biogenesis as direct MYC/HCF-1 targets and demonstrate how modulation of the MYC-HCF-1 interaction influences cell growth, metabolite profiles, global …

Bone In The Breast: A Case Report Of A Metaplastic Breast Cancer With Osseous Differentiation, Kyle Luo, Xiaoqin Wang

Radiology Faculty Publications

Metaplastic breast carcinoma is an uncommon malignant tumor with various pathologic subtypes. Diagnosis is often challenging due to the wide spectrum of clinical and imaging presentations. Here, we present the case of a very rare subtype of metaplastic breast carcinoma-a mixed-type metaplastic breast cancer with osseous differentiation in a 55-year-old female patient. The clinical presentation, imaging-pathology diagnosis, and treatment options are reviewed. Knowing this rarely reported but aggressive breast cancer is very important for clinicians to establish a timely diagnosis for effective management.

Inhibiting Fatty Acid Binding Protein Family Members Decreases Multiple Myeloma Cell Proliferation Through Effecting The Myc Pathway, Mariah Farrell, Heather Fairfield, Anastasia D'Amico, Carolyne Falank, Connor Murphy, Michaela Reagan

Costas T. Lambrew Research Retreat 2021

FABP inhibition leads to increased survival of myeloma bearing mice and decreased cell growth by inhibiting MYC signaling.