1,721,190 research outputs found
T-cell Therapy for the Treatment of Epstein BarrVirus-Associated Malignancies.
No full textEpstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated malignancies offer a unique model to develop T cell-based immune therapies, targeting
viral antigens expressed on tumor cells. Throughout the last 15 years, EBV-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL) have been
successfully employed for the prophylaxis and treatment of EBV-related lymphoproliferative disorders (LPD) in immunocompromised hosts, particularly after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. More recently, their use has been extended to treat LPD developing after solid organ transplantation. The favourable experience with LPD has raised interest in applying this therapeutic strategy to other EBV-positive malignancies. Although the preliminary results of T-cell therapy for Hodgkin lymphoma or nasopharyngeal carcinoma have shown the potential for reaching objective responses in patients with advanced-stage cancer, EBV-specific CTLs demonstrated
lower efficacy in the treatment of virus-related neoplasia in the immunocompetent host. Thus, further improvements to the protocols employed in the transplantation setting are clearly necessary to increase anti-tumor activity. Promising implementations are underway,including harnessing the therapeutic potential of CTLs specific for subdominant EBV latent cycle epitopes, and delineating strategies aimed at targeting immune evasion mechanisms exerted by tumor cells
Allogeneic transplantation of haematopoietic progenitors for myelodysplastic syndromes and myeloproliferative disorders
No full textSince children with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and myeloproliferative disorders (MPD) have a poor prognosis and conventional chemotherapy did not prove to be effective in eradicating them, paediatric patients affected by these diseases and with an HLA-histocompatible donor are to be considered elective candidates for allogeneic transplantation of haematopoietic stem cells (HSC). For those patients with a compatible sibling relapse remains the most important problem, whereas in children rejection and transplant-related mortality significantly contribute to treatment failure. A detailed analysis on the different patient, disease and treatment factors correlated with transplant outcome in childhood MDS and MPD is discussed
Human alloantigen-specific anergic cells induced by a combination of CTLA4-Ig and CsA maintain anti-leukemia and anti-viral cytotoxic responses
No full textThe success of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation from HLA-disparate donors depends on the development of new strategies for graft-versus-host disease prevention able to target specifically donor antihost alloreactivity, while preserving GVL and antiviral immune surveillance. Recent experimental and clinical work has shown the feasibility of an approach based on induction of anergy to host alloantigens through blockade of B7/CD28 costimulatory signal in donor T cells, but data on the impact of this strategy on the recovery of the immune system are still lacking. We devised an ex vivo method for induction of host alloantigen-specific unresponsiveness based on treatment with the B7/CD28 blocking agent CTLA4-Ig associated with CsA. We then proceeded to assess the maintenance of an effective immune response towards viral pathogens and tumor cells after CTLA4-Ig/CsA treatment, by measuring the frequency of CTL precursors directed against CMV- and EBV-infected targets, and against autologous leukemic blasts. We demonstrated that (1) CTLA4-Ig and CsA can act synergistically in inducing a state of unresponsiveness to alloantigens; (2) the number of leukemia-reactive, EBV-specific and CMV-specific CTLp is not impaired by CTLA4-Ig/CsA treatment. Our data provide the first direct in vitro evidence that it is possible to preserve antiviral and antileukemia effector cells after blockade of CD28/B7 interaction during MLR
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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