Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Investigation Of Quatitative Image Features From Pretreatment Ct And Fdg-Pet Scans In Stage Iii Nsclc Patients Undergoing Defintive Radiation Therapy, David Fried

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

The purpose of this work was to determine if quantitative image features (QIFs) extracted from computed tomography (CT) and flourodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) could provide prognostic information to improve outcome models. Our goal for this work was to determine if it may one day be feasible to incorporate QIFs into personalized cancer care. QIFs were used to quantitatively characterize patient disease as seen on imaging. A leave-one-out cross-validation procedure was used to assess the prognostic ability of QIFs extracted from CT and PET in addition to conventional prognostic factors (CPFs). QIFs were found to improve model fit for …

Regulation Of The Oxidative Stress Response By Arid1a, Suet Yan Kwan

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

SWI/SNF is mutated in about 20% of all human cancers; in particular ARID1A is the most frequently mutated SWI/SNF subunit. ARID1A is a tumor suppressor gene, inactivating mutations in ARID1A are most frequently found in ovarian and endometrial cancers, specifically uterine corpus endometrioid carcinomas (UCEC), ovarian clear cell carcinomas (OCCC) and ovarian endometrioid carcinomas (OEC). The functional roles of ARID1A are not completely understood and there are limited therapeutic strategies that specifically target ARID1A-mutant cancers. Given that ARID1A expression is lost in cancer, ARID1A mutations cannot be targeted directly and novel therapeutic strategies are required to target ARID1A-mutant …

Quantification Of Imrt Severity Scores For Improvement Of Fmea Results, Jacqueline T. Faught

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Accurate delivery of intensity modulation radiation therapy (IMRT) requires perfect execution of a long, complicated chain of events; failure of any component of this process may contribute to dose delivery errors, compromising treatment quality and, more importantly, patient safety. Prospective, process-wide risk mitigation techniques are becoming more prevalent in radiotherapy to establish comprehensive quality management (QM) programs, such as failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA). The subjective nature of the ordinal scores used for FMEA leads questionable reliability and validity of the results. Additionally, physics components are commonly grouped together, leaving out valuable details important to physics QM. While the …

Cancer Associated Fibroblast Derived Angiogenic Factor Mfap5 In Ovarian Cancer Progression, Sze Lee Cecilia Leung

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Advanced stage ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecologic malignancy. No major improvement on patient survival has been achieved in the past decade. Therefore, identification of predictive or prognostic markers and further understanding of the molecular mechanisms in ovarian cancer progression are of paramount importance.

While cancer cells have always been the targets for the identification of prognostic and predictive markers, the potential for developing new diagnosis and treatments based on the tumor supporting stromal microenvironment is relatively unexplored. Using transcriptome profiling analysis on microdissected stromal and epithelial components of normal and malignant ovarian tissues, we identified a gene signature …

Evaluating The Nccn Clinical Criteria For Hereditary Breast And Ovarian Cancer Syndrome Genetic Testing, Caiqian Wu

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer (HBOC) syndrome predisposes females with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation to an up to 85% lifetime risk for breast cancer and an up to 40% lifetime risk for ovarian cancer. It is crucial for individuals with HBOC to be identified to allow for proper screening, management, and identification of at-risk family members in order to reduce mortality. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has established clinical guidelines for when to recommend BRCA1/2 testing. A retrospective chart review of 1123 M.D. Anderson Cancer Center breast cancer patients was performed in order to evaluate the positive predictive …

Serum Omentin As A Potential Biomarker For Complex Atypical Hyperplasia And Endometrioid Endometrial Adenocarcinoma, Laura L. Holman Md

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Obesity is a significant risk factor for endometrial cancer, the most common gynecologic malignancy in the United States, but much remains unclear about the relationship between obesity-related factors and the development of endometrial cancer. Omentin, a recently discovered adipokine, has been shown to be present in lower levels in patients who are obese and/or insulin resistant. A case-control study was conducted using the serum of 140 women with endometrial cancer and 75 women with endometrial hyperplasia who were matched 1:1 based on body mass index (BMI) and menopausal status to women with no history of endometrial cancer (controls). The concentration …

Cancer Incidence In First And Second Degree Relatives Of Brca1 And Brca2 Mutation Carriers, Haley Streff

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes are associated with increased risks for breast, ovarian, and several other cancers. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the incidence of cancers in first and second degree relatives of BRCA mutation carriers compared to the general population. A total of 1086 pedigrees of BRCA mutation carriers were obtained from a prospectively maintained, internal review board approved study of persons referred for clinical genetic counseling at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. We identified 9032 first and second degree relatives from 784 pedigrees which demonstrated a clear indication of parental …

Gene Set Analysis Of Post-Lactational Mammary Gland Involution Gene Signatures In Inflammatory And Triple Negative Breast Cancer, Arvind Bambhroliya

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

With each cycle of pregnancy and lactation, the mammary gland undergoes dramatic changes. Clarkson et al. (2004) and Stein et al. (2004) conducted a detailed analysis of these changes in the mouse mammary gland. Their results showed that tissue remodeling during post-lactational involution period mimics wound healing and tumorigenesis like pathological conditions. This indicates that post-lactational involution may create the microenvironment that initiates the development of precancerous mammary cells and promotes the progression of precancerous cells into cancer cells. Moreover, epidemiological studies have found that triple-negative (TN) breast cancer (BC) is associated with lower frequency and duration of breastfeeding compared …

Correlation Matrix Analysis Identifies Gene Signatures Of Immune Cell Subsets And Their Interactions In Follicular Lymphoma, Jason R. Westin

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

There are important but ill-defined interactions between benign immune cell subsets and neoplastic B cells within follicular lymphoma (FL). Using the novel technique of correlation matrix analysis (CMA) of publicly available FL whole-tumor gene expression profiling (GEP) data, we have identified signatures of immune cell subsets. Overall survival correlated most highly with a model using signatures of macrophages, T cells, and stroma, which was able to add significantly to existing clinical prognostic tools. From our own data of a cohort of 43 FL tumors sorted into B-cell and non-B cell (NB) fractions for GEP, CMA of the tumor infiltrating NB …