1,721,007 research outputs found
Diffuse Low-Grade Glioma Associated Stem Cells
No full textPrecision medicine is a medical model that proposes the customization of healthcare, with medical decisions, practices, and/or products being tailored to the individual patient, taking advantage of a multimodal approach considering not only patient’s genetic content but also other molecular and cellular analysis. Because of their heterogeneous clinical behavior, low-grade glioma (LGG) can benefit from this approach. At this regard, recent publications took advantage of integrated wide-genome studies to identify genetic signatures endowed with a prognostic potential. However, there is evidence that cancer progression is driven not only by genetic alterations but also by the tumor microenvironment. To deepen the comprehension of the role played by this latter on LGG heterogeneity, we isolated from glioma a population of stem cells, named Glioma-Associated Stem Cell (GASC), representative of the tumor microenvironment. Importantly, GASC resulted to be the strongest predictors of LGG patients’ overall survival and malignant progression free survival, outperforming the state-of-the-art prognostic factors, including IDH1/2 mutation and 1p/19q co-deletion. In this chapter, we will first briefly review the increasing knowledge on the role played by the tumor microenvironment. Subsequently, we will focus our attention on GASC and their ability to increase the biological aggressiveness of glioma stem cells through the release of extracellular vesicles named exosomes. Finally we will demonstrate how this patient-based approach can provide a groundbreaking method to predict prognosis and to exploit novel strategies aimed at targeting the tumor stroma
TNF-α modulates the migratory response of mesenchymal stem cells to TRAIL
No full textThe number of circulating mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), analyzed after acutemyocardial infarction (AMI), was lower in AMI patients who developed heart failure (HF) in the follow-up. Conversely, the circulating levels of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, and osteoprotegerin (OPG) were higher in AMI
patients who developed HF with respect to the patients who did not develop HF. In vitro exposure to TNF-alpha enhanced the migration of MSC in response to TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) and significantly increased the release of OPG by endothelial cells. On the contrary, OPG dose-dependently
neutralized the in vitro pro-migratory activity of TRAIL. Thus, TNF-alpha exhibits opposite effects on MSC migration driven by TRAIL: it is capable of potentiating MSC migration as well as of inhibiting MSC migration as an indirect consequence of OPG induction, which might result in a suboptimal recruitment of
circulating MSC after AMI in those patients who develop HF in the follow-up
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Diffuse Low-Grade Gliomas in Adults
No full textNumerous diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic issues concerning lowgrade gliomas still remain to be clari fi ed. In this regard, in vitro and in vivo models of low-grade gliomas would represent a way to get insight into these crucial aspects. However, many of the in vitro and in vivo models assayed in the literature are focused on high-grade gliomas. For this reason, in this chapter we reviewed the literature on low-grade glioma culture describing the results so far obtained, highlighting limitations and envisioning promising innovative directions that research is undertaking in this critical fi eld. Speci fi cally, fi rst, we critically presented the conventional methods adopted to study low-grade gliomas, such as continuous human tumor cell lines and short-term glioma cultures. Then, we discussed the culture methods utilized to isolate and in vitro expand glioma cancer stem cells from adult and pediatric tumors, underlining the need of optimizing new culture conditions because of the partial failure of the simple transfer to low-grade gliomas of the methods ef fi cient in isolating glioma stem cells from highgrade gliomas. Finally, we presented the innovative, although still in its infancy, possibility to culture nonneoplastic stromal cells as a way to obtain cell lines representative of the biological behavior of the patient tumors. In conclusion, the aim of this chapter was to explain why the culture of patient-derived cancer cells represents a unique opportunity to create in vitro and in vivo models closely mimicking the biological properties of the patient tumor, thus allowing a patient-based approach
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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