前沿科技及其它

Development of humoral and cellular immunity against self-cellular proteins in cancer patients is a phenomenal observation. The ability of immune system to sense the presence of the disease and to fight of the disease by generating autoantibodies against tumor antigens makes it a natural ...

With the identification of tumor antigens, the host immune response to various types of cancers can now be studied with a high degree of specificity in large cohorts of patients, in the hope of correlating immunity with clinical events and defining immunotherapeutic strategies. Several an ...

The comprehensive work of both clinical and basic science colleagues has demonstrated a clear proof of concept for “in vitro discovered- in vivo validated” biomarkers in translational metabolic profiling research using magnetic resonance techniques. Major tissue metabolites ...

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an introduction to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) of human brain tumors, including the primary applications and basic terminology involved. Readers who wish to know more about this broad subject should ...

Metabolomics, one of the “omic” sciences in systems biology, is the global assessment and validation of endogenous small-molecule biochemicals (metabolites) within a biologic system. Initially, putative quantitative metabolic biomarkers for cancer detection and/or asses ...

Many studies demonstrated that cancer sera contain antibodies which react with autologous cellular antigens generally known as tumor-associated antigens (TAAs). In our laboratories, the approach used in the identification of TAAs has involved initially examining the sera of can ...

The development of a successful classifier from multiple predictors (analytes) is a multistage process complicated typically by the paucity of the data samples when compared to the number of available predictors. Choosing an adequate validation strategy is key for drawing sound conc ...

Identification of germline mutations that may modulate individual risk of developing cancer is a rapidly developing field. Over the last few decades, germline mutations in p53, BRCA1, BRCA2, APC, MLH1, MSH2, and MSH6 have been identified in families with a large number of relatives who have been d ...

Pharmacogenomics encompasses several major areas including the identification and analysis of variations of DNA and RNA that affect the efficacy and toxicity of drug therapy. It represents an integration of analytical approaches including DNA and RNA detection and quantitation ...

Analysis of genetic altera tion in circulating DNA can have clinical utility in predicting disease outcome. Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) of DNA microsatellites has been shown to occur commonly among all chromosomes in various cancers, such as melanoma, breast cancer, and lung cancer. In this ...

Dideoxy DNA sequencing is routinely used in research and, increasingly, in clinical care for the detection of DNA sequence variants, single nucleotide changes, or small insertions or deletions, when the spectrum of DNA variation is unknown. DNA sequence variation can be present in tumor tis ...

Numerous innovative and high-throughput techniques have been established to identify human disease genes. However, DNA sequencing of candidate genes still remains as a major limitation in the identification of causative mutations. Much of this limitation is due to the time and labor ne ...

Clear identification among early-stage cancer patients of those at highest risk of having metastatic disease would be of great benefit in treatment planning and management. Considerable additional benefit would accrue to high-risk patients if their responses to specific therap ...

As companion diagnostics grow in prevalence and importance, the need for accurate assessment of in situ protein concentrations has increased. Traditional immunohistochemistry (IHC), while valuable for assessment of context of expression, is less valuable for quantification. ...

Tissue microarrays are a platform of condensed histopathology that has revolutionized the translation of basic science to clinical utility. Tissue microarrays have resulted in a paradigm shift from histopathology to immunopathology and moved analysis of small selected sampl ...

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) microarrays promise to be a powerful tool for the detection and validation of disease biomarkers. ELISA microarrays are capable of simultaneous detection of many proteins using a small sample volume. Although there are many potential pitf ...

Genetic abnormalities in leukaemia range from single gene defects to chromosomal translocations, inversions, losses and gains. While conventional technologies can detect macroscopic abnormalities, finding smaller regions remained a challenge until the recent introdu ...

Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) is arguably the most significant technical development in the molecular cytogenetics era, and has contributed considerably to our further understanding of the cancer genome. In essence, DNA from a cancer specimen (test DNA) labeled with the f ...

Minimal residual disease (MRD) diagnostics has proven to be clinically relevant for evaluation of treatment effectiveness in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). In most ALL treatment protocols, MRD diagnostics is performed by real-time quantitative PCR (RQ-PCR) a ...

Translocations and other rearrangements of the MLL gene at chromosome band 11q23 are biologically and clinically important molecular abnormalities in infant acute leukemias, leukemias associated with chemotherapeutic topoisomerase II poisons and, less often, acute leuk ...