Biomedical Informatics Commons^™

Germline Pathogenic Smarca4 Variants In Neuroblastoma, Leora Witkowski, Kim E Nichols, Marjolijn Jongmans, Nienke Van Engelen, Ronald R De Krijger, Jennifer Herrera-Mullar, Lieve Tytgat, Armita Bahrami, Helen Mar Fan, Aimee L Davidson, Thomas Robertson, Michael Anderson, Martin Hasselblatt, Sharon E Plon, William D Foulkes

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Heterozygous germline pathogenic variants (GPVs) in SMARCA4, the gene encoding the ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling protein SMARCA4 (previously known as BRG1), predispose to several rare tumour types, including small cell carcinoma of the ovary, hypercalcemic type, atypical teratoid and malignant rhabdoid tumor, and uterine sarcoma. The increase in germline testing of SMARCA4 in recent years has revealed putative GPVs affecting SMARCA4 in patients with other cancer types. Here we describe 11 patients with neuroblastoma, including four previously unreported cases, all of whom were found to harbour heterozygous germline variants in SMARCA4. Median age at diagnosis was 5 years (range 2 …

Views Of Adolescents And Young Adults With Cancer And Their Oncologists Toward Patients' Participation In Genomic Research, Amanda M Gutierrez, Jill O Robinson, Robin Raesz-Martinez, Isabel Canfield, Mary A Majumder, Sarah Scollon, Lauren R Desrosiers, Rebecca L Hsu, Wendy Allen-Rhoades, D Williams Parsons, Sharon E Plon, Amy L Mcguire, Janet Malek

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Purpose:

With increased use of genomic testing in cancer research and clinical care, it is important to understand the perspectives and decision-making preferences of adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer and their treating oncologists.

Methods:

We conducted an interview substudy of the BASIC3 Study, which enrolled newly diagnosed cancer patients <18 years of age with assent. Of 32 young adults (YAs) with cancer who reached the age of majority (AOM; 18 years) while on study, 12 were successfully approached and all consented to study continuation at AOM. Of those, seven completed an interview. Patients' oncologists, who enrolled and participated in return of clinical genomic results, were also interviewed (n = 12). Interviews were transcribed, deidentified, and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results:

YAs cited the possibility of helping others and advancing science as major reasons for their assent to initial study enrollment and their willingness to consent at AOM. YAs thought obtaining informed consent from research participants for …

Identification Of A Potential Pr50gag Binding Site Critical For Selective Encapsidation Of Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (Fiv) Genomic Rna, Anjana Krishnan

Dissertations

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is an important lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in cats, making FIV a potential small animal model for studying the pathogenesis of human AIDS. Furthermore, due to its phylogenetic distance from primate retroviruses like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and its ability to infect non-dividing cells, FIV is also being exploited for the development of vectors for human gene therapy. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that pertinent steps in the life cycle of FIV, such as genomic RNA (gRNA) packaging, are delineated at the molecular level. The process of retroviral gRNA packaging relies on …

A Ck2 And Sumo-Dependent, Pml Nb-Involved Regulatory Mechanism Controlling Blm Ubiquitination And G-Quadruplex Resolution, Shichang Liu, Erin Atkinson, Adriana Paulucci-Holthauzen, Bin Wang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The Boom syndrome helicase (BLM) unwinds a variety of DNA structures such as Guanine (G)-quadruplex. Here we reveal a role of RNF111/Arkadia and its paralog ARKL1, as well as Promyelocytic Leukemia Nuclear Bodies (PML NBs), in the regulation of ubiquitination and control of BLM protein levels. RNF111 exhibits a non-canonical SUMO targeted E3 ligase (STUBL) activity targeting BLM ubiquitination in PML NBs. ARKL1 promotes RNF111 localization to PML NBs through SUMO-interacting motif (SIM) interaction with SUMOylated RNF111, which is regulated by casein kinase 2 (CK2) phosphorylation of ARKL1 at a serine residue near the ARKL1 SIM domain. Upregulated BLM in …

Severe Covid-19 Outcomes And Hematological Cancers: The Clot Thickens-Are Platelets The Culprit?, Lenard M Lichtenberger, K Vinod Vijayan

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Elastic Stable Intramedullary Nail Fixation Versus Submuscular Plate Fixation Of Pediatric Femur Shaft Fractures In School Age Patients: A Prisma-Compliant Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Donglai Hu, Zihang Xu, Tao Shi, Hui Zhong, Yuting Xie, Junjie Chen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Studies of clinical outcomes that compare the elastic stable intramedullary nail (ESIN) with the submuscular plate (SMP) were controversial. The meta-analysis was performed to summarize existing evidence, aiming to determine whether ESIN was superior to SMP in pediatric femur shaft fractures.

METHODS: Search strategies followed the recommendations of the Cochrane collaboration. Electronic searches such as PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane were systematically searched for publications concerning ESIN and SMP from the inception date to March 2023. Two investigators independently searched, screened, and reviewed the full text of the article. Disagreements generated throughout the process were resolved by consensus, …

A Case Report: A Patient Rescued By Va-Ecmo After Cardiac Arrest Triggered By Trigeminocardiac Reflex After Nasal Surgery, Xu Zhang, Bin Sun, Chen Pac-Soo, Daqing Ma, Liwei Wang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Rationale:

Cardiac arrest (CA) caused by trigeminocardiac reflex (TCR) after endoscopic nasal surgery is rare. Hence, when a patient suffers from TCR induced CA in the recovery room, most doctors may not be able to find the cause in a short time, and standard cardiopulmonary resuscitation and resuscitation measures may not be effective. Providing circulatory assistance through venous-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) can help healthcare providers gain time to identify the etiology and initiate symptom-specific treatment.

Patient concerns:

We report a rare case of CA after endoscopic nasal surgery treated with VA-ECMO.

Diagnoses:

We excluded myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, allergies, …

Heterogenous Lung Inflammation Ct Patterns Distinguish Pneumonia And Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Pneumonitis And Complement Blood Biomarkers In Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Proof Of Concept, Muhammad Aminu, Naval Daver, Myrna C B Godoy, Girish Shroff, Carol Wu, Luis F Torre-Sada, Alberto Goizueta, Vickie R Shannon, Saadia A Faiz, Mehmet Altan, Guillermo Garcia-Manero, Hagop Kantarjian, Farhad Ravandi-Kashani, Tapan Kadia, Marina Konopleva, Courtney Dinardo, Sherry Pierce, Aung Naing, Sang T Kim, Dimitrios P Kontoyiannis, Fareed Khawaja, Caroline Chung, Jia Wu, Ajay Sheshadri

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) may cause pneumonitis, resulting in potentially fatal lung inflammation. However, distinguishing pneumonitis from pneumonia is time-consuming and challenging. To fill this gap, we build an image-based tool, and further evaluate it clinically alongside relevant blood biomarkers.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We studied CT images from 97 patients with pneumonia and 29 patients with pneumonitis from acute myeloid leukemia treated with ICIs. We developed a CT-derived signature using a habitat imaging algorithm, whereby infected lungs are segregated into clusters ("habitats"). We validated the model and compared it with a clinical-blood model to determine whether imaging can add …

New Jak3-Insl3 Fusion Transcript-An Oncogenic Event In Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma, Loka Reddy Velatooru, Cheng Hui Hu, Pedram Bijani, Xiaohong Wang, Pierr Bojaxhi, Hao Chen, Madeleine Duvic, Xiao Ni

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Constitutively activated tyrosine kinase JAK3 is implicated in the pathogenesis of cutaneous T-cell lymphomas (CTCL). The mechanisms of constitutive JAK3 activation are unknown although a JAK3 mutation was reported in a small portion of CTCL patients. In this study, we assessed the oncogenic roles of a newly identified JAK3-INSL3 fusion transcript in CTCL. Total RNA from malignant T-cells in 33 patients with Sézary syndrome (SS), a leukemic form of CTCL, was examined for the new JAK3-INSL3 fusion transcript by RT-PCR followed by Sanger sequencing. The expression levels were assessed by qPCR and correlated with patient survivals. Knockdown and/or knockout assays …

Development Of A Xylose-Inducible Promoter And Riboswitch Combination System For Manipulating Gene Expression In Fusobacterium Nucleatum, Bibek G C, Peng Zhou, Arindam Naha, Jianhua Gu, Chenggang Wu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Inducible gene expression systems are important for studying bacterial gene function, yet most exhibit leakage. In this study, we engineered a leakage-free hybrid system for precise gene expression controls in Fusobacterium nucleatum by integrating the xylose-inducible expression system with the theophylline-responsive riboswitch. This innovative method enables concurrent control of target gene expression at both transcription and translation initiation levels. Using luciferase and the indole-producing enzyme tryptophanase (TnaA) as reporters, we demonstrated that the hybrid system displays virtually no observable signal in the absence of inducers. We employed this system to express FtsX, a protein related to fusobacterial cytokinesis, in an …

Comparative Study Of Guanidine-, Acetamidine- And Urea-Based Chloroaluminate Electrolytes For An Aluminum Battery, Iwan Sumarlan, Anand Kunverji, Anthony J Lucio, A Robert Hillman, Karl S Ryder

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Aluminum-based batteries are a promising alternative to lithium-ion as they are considered to be low-cost and more friendly to the environment. In addition, aluminum is abundant and evenly distributed across the globe. Many studies and Al battery prototypes use imidazolium chloroaluminate electrolytes because of their good rheological and electrochemical performance. However, these electrolytes are very expensive, and so cost is a barrier to industrial scale-up. A urea-based electrolyte, AlCl3:Urea, has been proposed as an alternative, but its performance is relatively poor because of its high viscosity and low conductivity. This type of electrolyte has become known as an ionic liquid …

Lack Of Methylation Changes In Gjb2 And Rb1 Non-Coding Regions Of Cochlear Implant Patients With Sensorineural Hearing Loss, Angelo Augusto M Sumalde, Ivana V Yang, Talitha Karisse L Yarza, Celina Ann M Tobias-Grasso, Ma Leah C Tantoco, Elizabeth Davidson, Abner L Chan, Mahshid S Azamian, Teresa Luisa G Cruz, Seema R Lalani, Maria Rina T Reyes-Quintos, Eva Maria Cutiongco-De La Paz, Regie Lyn P Santos-Cortez, Charlotte M Chiong

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

OBJECTIVE: Recent advances in epigenetic studies continue to reveal novel mechanisms of gene regulation and control, however little is known on the role of epigenetics in sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in humans. We aimed to investigate the methylation patterns of two regions, one in

METHODS: We investigated an RB1 promoter region that was previously identified as differentially methylated in children with SNHL and lead exposure. Additionally, we investigated a sequence in an enhancer-like region within GJB2 that contains four CpGs in close proximity. Bisulfite conversion was performed on salivary DNA samples from 15 children with SNHL and 45 unrelated ethnically-matched …

Integrated Molecular And Multiparametric Mri Mapping Of High-Grade Glioma Identifies Regional Biologic Signatures, Leland S Hu, Fulvio D'Angelo, Taylor M Weiskittel, Francesca P Caruso, Shannon P Fortin Ensign, Mylan R Blomquist, Matthew J Flick, Lujia Wang, Christopher P Sereduk, Kevin Meng-Lin, Gustavo De Leon, Ashley Nespodzany, Javier C Urcuyo, Ashlyn C Gonzales, Lee Curtin, Erika M Lewis, Kyle W Singleton, Timothy Dondlinger, Aliya Anil, Natenael B Semmineh, Teresa Noviello, Reyna A Patel, Panwen Wang, Junwen Wang, Jennifer M Eschbacher, Andrea Hawkins-Daarud, Pamela R Jackson, Itamar S Grunfeld, Christian Elrod, Gina L Mazza, Sam C Mcgee, Lisa Paulson, Kamala Clark-Swanson, Yvette Lassiter-Morris, Kris A Smith, Peter Nakaji, Bernard R Bendok, Richard S Zimmerman, Chandan Krishna, Devi P Patra, Naresh P Patel, Mark Lyons, Matthew Neal, Kliment Donev, Maciej M Mrugala, Alyx B Porter, Scott C Beeman, Todd R Jensen, Kathleen M Schmainda, Yuxiang Zhou, Leslie C Baxter, Christopher L Plaisier, Jing Li, Hu Li, Anna Lasorella, C Chad Quarles, Kristin R Swanson, Michele Ceccarelli, Antonio Iavarone, Nhan L Tran

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Sampling restrictions have hindered the comprehensive study of invasive non-enhancing (NE) high-grade glioma (HGG) cell populations driving tumor progression. Here, we present an integrated multi-omic analysis of spatially matched molecular and multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) profiling across 313 multi-regional tumor biopsies, including 111 from the NE, across 68 HGG patients. Whole exome and RNA sequencing uncover unique genomic alterations to unresectable invasive NE tumor, including subclonal events, which inform genomic models predictive of geographic evolution. Infiltrative NE tumor is alternatively enriched with tumor cells exhibiting neuronal or glycolytic/plurimetabolic cellular states, two principal transcriptomic pathway-based glioma subtypes, which respectively demonstrate …

National Survey On The Availability Of Oncology Palliative Care Services At Tertiary General And Cancer Hospitals In China, Xiaomei Li, Xin Shelley Wang, Haili Huang, Miao Liu, Yinan Wu, Jiaojiao Qiu, Boran Zhang, Linhong Cui, David Hui

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: This nationwide survey studied the level of palliative care (PC) access for Chinese patients with cancer among cancer care providers either in tertiary general hospitals or cancer hospitals in China.

Methods: Using a probability-proportionate-to-size method, we identified local tertiary general hospitals with oncology departments to match cancer hospitals at the same geographic area. A PC program leader or a designee at each hospital reported available PC services, including staffing, inpatient and outpatient services, education, and research, with most questions adapted from a previous national survey on PC. The primary outcome was availability of a PC service.

Results: Most responders …

Antibodies To Coagulase Of Staphylococcus Aureus Crossreact To Efb And Reveal Different Binding Of Shared Fibrinogen Binding Repeats, Federico Bertoglio, Ya-Ping Ko, Sheila Thomas, Liliana Giordano, Francesca Romana Scommegna, Doris Meier, Saskia Polten, Marlies Becker, Srishtee Arora, Michael Hust, Magnus Höök, Livia Visai

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Staphylococcus aureus pathology is caused by a plethora of virulence factors able to combat multiple host defence mechanisms. Fibrinogen (Fg), a critical component in the host coagulation cascade, plays an important role in the pathogenesis of this bacterium, as it is the target of numerous staphylococcal virulence proteins. Amongst its secreted virulence factors, coagulase (Coa) and Extracellular fibrinogen-binding protein (Efb) share common Fg binding motives and have been described to form a Fg shield around staphylococcal cells, thereby allowing efficient bacterial spreading, phagocytosis escape and evasion of host immune system responses. Targeting these proteins with monoclonal antibodies thus represents a …

Pca-Clf: A Classifier Of Prostate Cancer Patients Into Patients With Indolent And Aggressive Tumors Using Machine Learning, Yashwanth Karthik Kumar Mamidi, Tarun Karthik Kumar Mamidi, Md Wasi Ul Kabir, Jiande Wu, Md Tamjidul Hoque, Chindo Hicks

School of Medicine Faculty Publications

A critical unmet medical need in prostate cancer (PCa) clinical management centers around distinguishing indolent from aggressive tumors. Traditionally, Gleason grading has been utilized for this purpose. However, tumor classification using Gleason Grade 7 is often ambiguous, as the clinical behavior of these tumors follows a variable clinical course. This study aimed to investigate the application of machine learning techniques (ML) to classify patients into indolent and aggressive PCas. We used gene expression data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and compared gene expression levels between indolent and aggressive tumors to identify features for developing and validating a range of ML …

Author Correction: Synthetic Oct-A Blood Vessel Maps Using Fundus Images And Generative Adversarial Networks, Ivan Coronado, Samiksha Pachade, Emanuele Trucco, Rania Abdelkhaleq, Juntao Yan, Sergio Salazar-Marioni, Amanda Jagolino-Cole, Mozhdeh Bahrainian, Roomasa Channa, Sunil A Sheth, Luca Giancardo

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Differential Effects Of Pancreatic Cancer-Derived Extracellular Vesicles Driving A Suppressive Environment, Anurag Purushothaman, Jacqueline Oliva-Ramírez, Warapen Treekitkarnmongkol, Deivendran Sankaran, Mark W Hurd, Nagireddy Putluri, Anirban Maitra, Cara Haymaker, Subrata Sen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells display extensive crosstalk with their surrounding environment to regulate tumor growth, immune evasion, and metastasis. Recent advances have attributed many of these interactions to intercellular communication mediated by small extracellular vesicles (sEVs), involving cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF). To explore the impact of sEVs on monocyte lineage transition as well as the expression of checkpoint receptors and activation markers, peripheral blood monocytes from healthy subjects were exposed to PDAC-derived sEVs. Additionally, to analyze the role of sEV-associated HA in immune regulation and tissue-resident fibroblasts, monocytes and pancreatic stellate cells were cultured in the presence of PDAC sEVs …

Axl-Initiated Paracrine Activation Of Pstat3 Enhances Mesenchymal And Vasculogenic Supportive Features Of Tumor-Associated Macrophages, Chia-Nung Hung, Meizhen Chen, Daniel T Dearmond, Cheryl H-L Chiu, Catherine A Limboy, Xi Tan, Meena Kusi, Chih-Wei Chou, Li-Ling Lin, Zhao Zhang, Chiou-Miin Wang, Chun-Liang Chen, Kohzoh Mitsuya, Pawel A Osmulski, Maria E Gaczynska, Nameer B Kirma, Ratna K Vadlamudi, Don L Gibbons, Steve Warner, Andrew J Brenner, Daruka Mahadevan, Joel E Michalek, Tim H-M Huang, Josephine A Taverna

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) are integral to the development of complex tumor microenvironments (TMEs) and can execute disparate cellular programs in response to extracellular cues. However, upstream signaling processes underpinning this phenotypic plasticity remain to be elucidated. Here, we report that concordant AXL-STAT3 signaling in TAMs is triggered by lung cancer cells or cancer-associated fibroblasts in the cytokine milieu. This paracrine action drives TAM differentiation toward a tumor-promoting "M2-like" phenotype with upregulation of CD163 and putative mesenchymal markers, contributing to TAM heterogeneity and diverse cellular functions. One of the upregulated markers, CD44, mediated by AXL-IL-11-pSTAT3 signaling cascade, enhances macrophage ability to …

A Peptide-Binding Domain Shared With An Antarctic Bacterium Facilitates, Cameron J Lloyd, Shuaiqi Guo, Brett Kinrade, Hossein Zahiri, Robert Eves, Syed Khalid Ali, Fitnat Yildiz, Ilja K Voets, Peter L Davies, Karl E Klose

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

In Vivo Crispr/Cas9 Screening Identifies Pbrm1 As A Regulator Of Myeloid Leukemia Development In Mice, Bin E Li, Grace Y Li, Wenqing Cai, Qian Zhu, Davide Seruggia, Yuko Fujiwara, Christopher R Vakoc, Stuart H Orkin

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

CRISPR/Cas9 screening approaches are powerful tool for identifying in vivo cancer dependencies. Hematopoietic malignancies are genetically complex disorders in which the sequential acquisition of somatic mutations generates clonal diversity. Over time, additional cooperating mutations may drive disease progression. Using an in vivo pooled gene editing screen of epigenetic factors in primary murine hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), we sought to uncover unrecognized genes that contribute to leukemia progression. We, first, modeled myeloid leukemia in mice by functionally abrogating both Tet2 and Tet3 in HSPCs, followed by transplantation. We, then, performed pooled CRISPR/Cas9 editing of genes encoding epigenetic factors and …

Using Artificial Intelligence To Learn Optimal Regimen Plan For Alzheimer’S Disease, Kritib Bhattarai, Sivaraman Rajaganapathy, Trisha Das, Yejin Kim, Yongbin Chen, Alzheimer’S Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, Australian Imaging Biomarkers And Lifestyle Flagship Study Of Ageing, Qiying Dai, Xiaoyang Li, Xiaoqian Jiang, Nansu Zong

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurological disorder with no specific curative medications. Sophisticated clinical skills are crucial to optimize treatment regimens given the multiple coexisting comorbidities in the patient population.

OBJECTIVE: Here, we propose a study to leverage reinforcement learning (RL) to learn the clinicians' decisions for AD patients based on the longitude data from electronic health records.

METHODS: In this study, we selected 1736 patients from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database. We focused on the two most frequent concomitant diseases-depression, and hypertension, thus creating 5 data cohorts (ie, Whole Data, AD, AD-Hypertension, AD-Depression, and AD-Depression-Hypertension). …

Mapping The Delineation Of Practice To The Amia Foundational Domains For Applied Health Informatics, Todd R Johnson, Eta S Berner, Sue S Feldman, Josette Jones, Annette L Valenta, Damian Borbolla, Gloria Deckard, Laverne Manos

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

OBJECTIVE: This article reports on the alignment between the foundational domains and the delineation of practice (DoP) for health informatics, both developed by the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). Whereas the foundational domains guide graduate-level curriculum development and accreditation assessment, providing an educational pathway to the minimum competencies needed as a health informatician, the DoP defines the domains, tasks, knowledge, and skills that a professional needs to competently perform in the discipline of health informatics. The purpose of this article is to determine whether the foundational domains need modification to better reflect applied practice.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Using an iterative …

Self-Supervised Deep Clustering Of Single-Cell Rna-Seq Data To Hierarchically Detect Rare Cell Populations., Tianyuan Lei, Ruoyu Chen, Shaoqiang Zhang, Yong Chen

College of Science & Mathematics Departmental Research

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) is a widely used technique for characterizing individual cells and studying gene expression at the single-cell level. Clustering plays a vital role in grouping similar cells together for various downstream analyses. However, the high sparsity and dimensionality of large scRNA-seq data pose challenges to clustering performance. Although several deep learning-based clustering algorithms have been proposed, most existing clustering methods have limitations in capturing the precise distribution types of the data or fully utilizing the relationships between cells, leaving a considerable scope for improving the clustering performance, particularly in detecting rare cell populations from large scRNA-seq data. …

Interpreting Randomized Controlled Trials, Pavlos Msaouel, Juhee Lee, Peter F Thall

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

This article describes rationales and limitations for making inferences based on data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We argue that obtaining a representative random sample from a patient population is impossible for a clinical trial because patients are accrued sequentially over time and thus comprise a convenience sample, subject only to protocol entry criteria. Consequently, the trial's sample is unlikely to represent a definable patient population. We use causal diagrams to illustrate the difference between random allocation of interventions within a clinical trial sample and true simple or stratified random sampling, as executed in surveys. We argue that group-specific statistics, …

Social Vulnerability Of The People Exposed To Wildfires In Us West Coast States, Arash Modaresi Rad, John T Abatzoglou, Erica Fleishman, Miranda H Mockrin, Volker C Radeloff, Yavar Pourmohamad, Megan Cattau, J Michael Johnson, Philip Higuera, Nicholas J Nauslar, Mojtaba Sadegh

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Understanding of the vulnerability of populations exposed to wildfires is limited. We used an index from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess the social vulnerability of populations exposed to wildfire from 2000-2021 in California, Oregon, and Washington, which accounted for 90% of exposures in the western United States. The number of people exposed to fire from 2000-2010 to 2011-2021 increased substantially, with the largest increase, nearly 250%, for people with high social vulnerability. In Oregon and Washington, a higher percentage of exposed people were highly vulnerable (>40%) than in California (~8%). Increased social vulnerability of …

Response Patterns And Impact Of Mrd In Patients With Idh1/2-Mutated Aml Treated With Venetoclax And Hypomethylating Agents, Danielle Hammond, Sanam Loghavi, Sa A Wang, Marina Y Konopleva, Tapan M Kadia, Naval G Daver, Maro Ohanian, Ghayas C Issa, Yesid Alvarado, Nicholas J Short, Koji Sasaki, Naveen Pemmaraju, Guillermo Montalban-Bravo, Curtis A Lachowiez, Abhishek Maiti, Guillermo Garcia-Manero, Elias J Jabbour, Gautam Borthakur, Farhad Ravandi, Koichi Takahashi, Sherry R Pierce, Hagop M Kantarjian, Courtney D Dinardo

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Epichaperome Inhibition Targets Tp53-Mutant Aml And Aml Stem/Progenitor Cells, Bing Z Carter, Po Yee Mak, Muharrem Muftuoglu, Wenjing Tao, Baozhen Ke, Jingqi Pei, Andrea D Bedoy, Lauren B Ostermann, Yuki Nishida, Sevinj Isgandarova, Mary Sobieski, Nghi Nguyen, Reid T Powell, Margarita Martinez-Moczygemba, Clifford Stephan, Mahesh Basyal, Naveen Pemmaraju, Steffen Boettcher, Benjamin L Ebert, Elizabeth J Shpall, Barbara Wallner, Robert A Morgan, Georgios I Karras, Ute M Moll, Michael Andreeff

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

TP 53-mutant acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remains the ultimate therapeutic challenge. Epichaperomes, formed in malignant cells, consist of heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) and associated proteins that support the maturation, activity, and stability of oncogenic kinases and transcription factors including mutant p53. High-throughput drug screening identified HSP90 inhibitors as top hits in isogenic TP53-wild-type (WT) and -mutant AML cells. We detected epichaperomes in AML cells and stem/progenitor cells with TP53 mutations but not in healthy bone marrow (BM) cells. Hence, we investigated the therapeutic potential of specifically targeting epichaperomes with PU-H71 in TP53-mutant AML based on its preferred binding to …

Systematic Investigation Of The Homology Sequences Around The Human Fusion Gene Breakpoints In Pan-Cancer – Bioinformatics Study For A Potential Link To Mmej, Pora Kim, Himansu Kumar, Chengyuan Yang, Ruihan Luo, Jiajia Liu, Xiaobo Zhou

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Microhomology-mediated end joining (MMEJ), an error-prone DNA damage repair mechanism, frequently leads to chromosomal rearrangements due to its ability to engage in promiscuous end joining of genomic instability and also leads to increasing mutational load at the sequences flanking the breakpoints (BPs). In this study, we systematically investigated the homology sequences around the genomic breakpoint area of human fusion genes, which were formed by the chromosomal rearrangements initiated by DNA double-strand breakage. Since the RNA-seq data is the typical data set to check the fusion genes, for the known exon junction fusion breakpoints identified from RNA-seq data, we have to …

Critical Functions Of Extracellular Matrix In Brain Metastasis Seeding, Arseniy E Yuzhalin, Dihua Yu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Human brain is characterized by extremely sparse extracellular matrix (ECM). Despite its low abundance, the significance of brain ECM in both physiological and pathological conditions should not be underestimated. Brain metastasis is a serious complication of cancer, and recent findings highlighted the contribution of ECM in brain metastasis development. In this review, we provide a comprehensive outlook on how ECM proteins promote brain metastasis seeding. In particular, we discuss (1) disruption of the blood-brain barrier in brain metastasis; (2) role of ECM in modulating brain metastasis dormancy; (3) regulation of brain metastasis seeding by ECM-activated integrin signaling; (4) functions of …