1,720,969 research outputs found
IDENTIFICATION OF NEW TARGETS AND THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES FOR THE TREATMENT OF MELANOMA
Get PDFMalignant melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer. Its incidence is still increasing and when not diagnosed at early stages its prognosis is poor. Such aggressiveness is due to its metastatic invasive features, high genetic mutation rate and resistance to chemotherapeutic treatments. The attempt to find possible genetic oncotargets and pharmacological treatments aiming to reduce the aggressivity of this cancer and ameliorate its prognosis is very challenging. In this work, by exploiting a human metastatic melanoma xenograft zebrafish model, both aspects were explored, studying on one side the effects of genetic engineering on transcription factor activity in melanoma and on the other side how pharmacological treatments based on a fungal molecule can be exploited to restrain the invasive potential of this tumor. Indeed, several transcription factors affect cellular processes by modulating gene expression in cancers. In particular, it has been reported a higher expression of RUNX2 in melanoma cells than in normal melanocytes. To investigate the role of this transcription factor in melanoma development, a deletion in the Runt domain of RUNX2 was obtained with Crispr/Cas9 in a human metastatic melanoma cell line. The present study pointed out that cells harbouring the deletion in the Runt domain when transplanted in zebrafish had reduced abilities to proliferate, to migrate and to form metastases. Furthermore, the deletion affected neoangiogenesis indicating the potential role of RUNX2 and particularly of its Runt domain as a new melanoma oncotarget. On the other side, a hint came from studies that underlined the anti-neoplastic potential of vegetal and fungal lectins due to their specific binding to the T antigen of human cancer cells. In fact, it has been shown that a fungal lectin purified from the fruiting bodies of Boletus edulis mushrooms named BEL β trefoil was able to decrease viability and proliferative ability of human metastatic melanoma cells in vitro. The present work showed the ability of BEL β trefoil to spread in the tissue of treated zebrafish xenografts and to reduce melanoma cell migration and formation of metastases, indicating this lectin as an effective biomolecule with potential of counteracting melanoma disease progression
Zebrafish: a suitable tool for the study of cell signaling in bone
Get PDFIn recent decades, many studies using the zebrafish model organism have been performed. Zebrafish, providing genetic mutants and reporter transgenic lines, enable a great number of studies aiming at the investigation of signaling pathways involved in the osteoarticular system and at the identification of therapeutic tools for bone diseases. In this review, we will discuss studies which demonstrate that many signaling pathways are highly conserved between mammals and teleost and that genes involved in mammalian bone differentiation have orthologs in zebrafish. We will also discuss as human diseases, such as osteogenesis imperfecta, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and Gaucher disease can be investigated in the zebrafish model
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
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
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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