1,721,039 research outputs found
Design and application of oncolytic viruses for cancer immunotherapy
No full textThe approval of the first oncolytic virus (OV) for the treatment of metastatic melanoma and the recent discovery that the use of oncolytic viruses may enhance cancer immunotherapies targeted against various immune checkpoint proteins have attracted great interest in the field of cancer virotherapy. OVs are designed to target and kill cancer cells leaving normal cell unharmed. OV infection and concomitant cancer cell killing stimulate anti-tumour immunity and modulates tumour microenvironment towards less immunosuppressive phenotype. The intrinsic capacity of OVs to turn immunologically cold tumours into immunologically hot tumours, and to increase immune cell and cytokine infiltration, can be further enhanced by arming OVs with transgenes that increase their immunostimulatory activities and direct immune responses specifically towards cancer cells. These OVs, specifically engineered to be used as cancer immunotherapeutics, can be synergized with other immune modulators or cytotoxic agents to achieve the most potent immunotherapy for cancer
Oncolytic adenoviruses for cancer therapy
Full text linkMany immuno-therapeutic strategies are currently being developed to fight cancer. In this scenario, oncolytic adenoviruses (Onc.Ads) have an interesting role for their peculiar tumor selectivity, safety, and transgene-delivery capability. The major strength of the Onc.Ads is the extraordinary immunogenicity that leads to a strong T-cell response, which, together with the possibility of the delivery of a therapeutic transgene, could be more effective than current strategies. In this review, we travel in the adenovirus (Ads) and Onc.Ads world, focusing on a variety of strategies that can enhance Onc.Ads antitumoral efficacy, passing through tumor microenvironment modulation. Onc.Ads-based therapeutic strategies constitute additional weapons in the fight against cancer and appear to potentiate conventional and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs)-based therapies leading to a promising scenario
Uncovering the tumor antigen landscape: What to know about the discovery process
No full textAccording to the latest available data, cancer is the second leading cause of death, highlighting the need for novel cancer therapeutic approaches. In this context, immunotherapy is emerging as a reliable first-line treatment for many cancers, particularly metastatic melanoma. Indeed, cancer immunotherapy has attracted great interest following the recent clinical approval of antibodies targeting immune checkpoint molecules, such as PD-1, PD-L1, and CTLA-4, that release the brakes of the immune system, thus reviving a field otherwise poorly explored. Cancer immunotherapy mainly relies on the generation and stimulation of cytotoxic CD8 T lymphocytes (CTLs) within the tumor microenvironment (TME), priming T cells and establishing efficient and durable anti-tumor immunity. Therefore, there is a clear need to define and identify immunogenic T cell epitopes to use in therapeutic cancer vaccines. Naturally presented antigens in the human leucocyte antigen-1 (HLA-I) complex on the tumor surface are the main protagonists in evocating a specific anti-tumor CD8+ T cell response. However, the methodologies for their identification have been a major bottleneck for their reliable characterization. Consequently, the field of antigen discovery has yet to improve. The current review is intended to define what are today known as tumor antigens, with a main focus on CTL antigenic peptides. We also review the techniques developed and employed to date for antigen discovery, exploring both the direct elution of HLA-I peptides and the in silico prediction of epitopes. Finally, the last part of the review analyses the future challenges and direction of the antigen discovery field
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe 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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