前沿科技及其它

We review biostatistical aspects of biomarker studies, including design and analysis issues, covering the range of settings required for translational research—from early exploratory studies through clinical trials.

Detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in human blood and lymph systems has the potential to aid clinical decision making in the treatment of cancer (Cristofanilli et al. New Engl J Med 351:781–791, 2004; Check Cap Today 19:1.76–1.86, 2005; Braun and Naume J Clin Oncol 8:1623–1626, 2005). The prese ...

Intact miRNAs can be isolated from the circulation in significant quantities despite the presence of extremely high levels of RNase activity. The remarkable stability of circulating miRNAs makes them excellent candidates for biomarkers in diagnostic applications as well as ther ...

Detection of low-level mutations is important for cancer biomarker and therapy targets discovery, but reliable detection remains a technical challenge. The newly developed method of CO-amplification at Lower Denaturation temperature PCR (COLD-PCR) helps to circumvent this is ...

Immunohistochemistry is an essential tool for clinical and translational research laboratories. It is mostly used as a qualitative measure of morphology and cell types within tissue. We have developed a high-resolution multispectral imaging method to expand the uses of immunohis ...

The development of cancer immunotherapies has been ongoing for many years and has shown limited success. Novel biomarkers are needed to identify patients most likely to respond to anticancer immune-therapeutic approaches. Moreover, a systems-level approach is required for compr ...

Positron emission tomography combined with computed tomography (PET/CT) has emerged in the last decade as a dominant imaging modality used for staging, monitoring response and surveillance of various cancers, including melanoma. Using 2-deoxy-2-(18F)fluoro-d-glucose (18F- ...

Damage-associated molecular pattern molecules (DAMPs) are proteins released from cells under stress due to nutrient deprivation, hypoxia, trauma, or treatment with chemotherapy, among a variety of other causes. When released, DAMPs activate innate immunity, providing a pathway ...

The tumor antigen chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan 4 (CSPG4) appears to be a useful biomarker to identify melanoma cells and an attractive target to apply antibody-based immunotherapy for the treatment of melanoma. Here we described the reverse transcription-polymerase chain re ...

Detection of circulating tumor cells (CTC) in peripheral blood has been investigated for its prognostic ability, and its potential to measure the effectiveness of treatment(s) in patients with melanoma. However, a highly sensitive and specific assay is required to detect CTC in patients’ ...

Melanomas are phenotypically and functionally heterogeneous tumors comprising of distinct subpopulations that drive disease progression and are responsible for resistance to therapy. Identification and characterization of such subpopulations are highly importa ...

Prognostic molecular markers are urgently needed for allowing to discriminate the clinical course of disease of melanoma patients, which is highly heterogeneous and unpredictable also within a specific clinicopathological stage and substage of disease. Alterations in DNA met ...

Uveal melanoma is the most common cancer of the eye in which approximately 50 % of cases develop metastases that are fatal within 2–15 years. Thus it is critical to identify prognostic markers to select high-risk patients into an adjuvant treatment. Chromosomal copy number alterations have been ...

Recent sequencing efforts in melanoma have elucidated many previously unknown molecular pathways and biological mechanisms involved in melanoma development and progression and have yielded a number of promising targets for molecular therapy. As sequencing technologies h ...

Uveal (ocular) melanoma is an aggressive cancer that metastasizes in up to half of patients. Uveal melanoma spreads preferentially to the liver, and the metastatic disease is almost always fatal. There are no effective therapies for advanced metastatic disease, so the most promising stra ...

Uveal melanoma has unique clinical and pathologic features including virtually exclusive metastasis to the liver in high-risk cases. In this chapter, the clinical findings in uveal melanoma and diagnostic methods including imaging tests and serum markers are described. Addition ...

Familial melanoma accounts for approximately a tenth of all melanoma cases. The most commonly known melanoma susceptibility gene is the highly penetrant CDKN2A (p16INK4a) locus, which is transmitted in an autosomal dominant fashion and accounts for approximately 20–50 % of familial m ...

Melanoma have been shown to escape immune surveillance by different mechanisms such as loss of HLA class I antigens, upregulation of nonclassical HLA-G antigen and Fas, increased secretion of immune suppressive cytokines and metabolites as well as altered expression of co-stimulato ...

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) comprises a set of genes that are essential to immunity and surveillance against neoplastic transformation. MHC antigens not only regulate antitumor immune responses in experimental animal models but also directly correlate with sur ...

Staging of cancer is a shorthand system of describing the extent of disease. Pathological staging, often called microstaging, uses the methods of histopathology to achieve this goal. Microstaging for melanoma utilizes attributes that are associated with outcome, generally in asso ...