Lung cancer has traditionally been classified by histology. However, a greater understanding of disease biology and the identification of oncogenic driver alterations has dramatically altered the ...therapeutic landscape. Consequently, the new classification paradigm of non-small-cell lung cancer is further characterized by molecularly defined subsets actionable with targeted therapies and the treatment landscape is becoming increasingly complex. This review encompasses the current standards of care for targeted therapies in lung cancer with driver molecular alterations. Targeted therapies for
exon 19 deletion and L858R mutations, and
and
rearrangements are well established. However, there is an expanding list of approved targeted therapies including for
V600E,
exon 20 insertion, and
G12C mutations,
exon 14 alterations, and
and
rearrangements. In addition, there are numerous other oncogenic drivers, such as
exon 20 insertion mutations, for which there are emerging efficacy data for targeted therapies. The importance of diagnostic molecular testing, intracranial efficacy of novel therapies, the optimal sequencing of therapies, role for targeted therapies in early-stage disease, and future directions for precision oncology approaches to understand tumor evolution and therapeutic resistance are also discussed.
Diabetes is a global eye health issue. Given the rising in diabetes prevalence and ageing population, this poses significant challenge to perform diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening for these ...patients. Artificial intelligence (AI) using machine learning and deep learning have been adopted by various groups to develop automated DR detection algorithms. This article aims to describe the state-of-art AI DR screening technologies that have been described in the literature, some of which are already commercially available. All these technologies were designed using different training datasets and technical methodologies. Although many groups have published robust diagnostic performance of the AI algorithms for DR screening, future research is required to address several challenges, for examples medicolegal implications, ethics, and clinical deployment model in order to expedite the translation of these novel technologies into the healthcare setting.
Summary Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide, and is classically divided into two major histological subtypes: non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small-cell lung ...cancer (SCLC). Although NSCLC and SCLC are considered distinct entities with different genomic landscapes, emerging evidence highlights a convergence in therapeutically relevant targets for both histologies. In adenocarcinomas with defined alterations such as EGFR mutations and ALK translocations, targeted therapies are now first-line standard of care. By contrast, many experimental and targeted agents remain largely unsuccessful for SCLC. Intense preclinical research and clinical trials are underway to exploit unique traits of lung cancer, such as oncogene dependency, DNA damage response, angiogenesis, and cellular plasticity arising from presence of cancer stem cell lineages. In addition, the promising clinical activity observed in NSCLC in response to immune checkpoint blockade has spurred great interest in the field of immunooncology, with the scope to develop a diverse repertoire of synergistic and personalised immunotherapeutics. In this Review, we discuss novel therapeutic agents for lung cancer that are in early-stage development, and how prospective clinical trials and drug development may be shaped by a deeper understanding of this heterogeneous disease.
The discovery of vitamin E (α-tocopherol) began in 1922 as a vital component required in reproduction. Today, there are eight naturally occurring vitamin E isoforms, namely α-, β-, γ- and ...δ-tocopherol and α-, β-, γ- and δ-tocotrienol. Vitamin E is potent antioxidants, capable of neutralizing free radicals directly by donating hydrogen from its chromanol ring. α-Tocopherol is regarded the dominant form in vitamin E as the α-tocopherol transfer protein in the liver binds mainly α-tocopherol, thus preventing its degradation. That contributed to the oversight of tocotrienols and resulted in less than 3% of all vitamin E publications studying tocotrienols. Nevertheless, tocotrienols have been shown to possess superior antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties over α-tocopherol. In particular, inhibition of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase to lower cholesterol, attenuating inflammation via downregulation of transcription factor NF-κB activation, and potent radioprotectant against radiation damage are some properties unique to tocotrienols, not tocopherols. Aside from cancer, vitamin E has also been shown protective in bone, cardiovascular, eye, nephrological and neurological diseases. In light of the different pharmacological properties of tocopherols and tocotrienols, it becomes critical to specify which vitamin E isoform(s) are being studied in any future vitamin E publications. This review provides an update on vitamin E therapeutic potentials, protective effects and modes of action beyond cancer, with comparison of tocopherols against tocotrienols. With the concerted efforts in synthesizing novel vitamin E analogs and clinical pharmacology of vitamin E, it is likely that certain vitamin E isoform(s) will be therapeutic agents against human diseases besides cancer.
The gene encoding the receptor-tyrosine kinase RET was first discovered more than three decades ago, and activating RET rearrangements and mutations have since been identified as actionable drivers ...of oncogenesis. Several multikinase inhibitors with activity against RET have been explored in the clinic, and confirmed responses to targeted therapy with these agents have been observed in patients with RET-rearranged lung cancers or RET-mutant thyroid cancers. Nevertheless, response rates to RET-directed therapy are modest compared with those achieved using targeted therapies matched to other oncogenic drivers of solid tumours, such as sensitizing EGFR or BRAF
mutations, or ALK or ROS1 rearrangements. To date, no RET-directed targeted therapeutic has received regulatory approval for the treatment of molecularly defined populations of patients with RET-mutant or RET-rearranged solid tumours. In this Review, we discuss how emerging data have informed the debate over whether the limited success of multikinase inhibitors with activity against RET can be attributed to the tractability of RET as a drug target or to the lack, until 2017, of highly specific inhibitors of this oncoprotein in the clinic. We emphasize that novel approaches to targeting RET-dependent tumours are necessary to improve the clinical efficacy of single-agent multikinase inhibition and, thus, hasten approvals of RET-directed targeted therapies.
Background Asthma is related to airway inflammation and oxidative stress. High levels of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species can induce cytotoxic DNA damage. Nevertheless, little is known about the ...possible role of allergen-induced DNA damage and DNA repair as modulators of asthma-associated pathology. Objective We sought to study DNA damage and DNA damage responses induced by house dust mite (HDM) in vivo and in vitro. Methods We measured DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), DNA repair proteins, and apoptosis in an HDM-induced allergic asthma model and in lung samples from asthmatic patients. To study DNA repair, we treated mice with the DSB repair inhibitor NU7441. To study the direct DNA-damaging effect of HDM on human bronchial epithelial cells, we exposed BEAS-2B cells to HDM and measured DNA damage and reactive oxygen species levels. Results HDM challenge increased lung levels of oxidative damage to proteins (3-nitrotyrosine), lipids (8-isoprostane), and nucleic acid (8-oxoguanine). Immunohistochemical evidence for HDM-induced DNA DSBs was revealed by increased levels of the DSB marker γ Histone 2AX (H2AX) foci in bronchial epithelium. BEAS-2B cells exposed to HDM showed enhanced DNA damage, as measured by using the comet assay and γH2AX staining. In lung tissue from human patients with asthma, we observed increased levels of DNA repair proteins and apoptosis, as shown by caspase-3 cleavage, caspase-activated DNase levels, and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase–mediated dUTP nick end-labeling staining. Notably, NU7441 augmented DNA damage and cytokine production in the bronchial epithelium and apoptosis in the allergic airway, implicating DSBs as an underlying driver of asthma pathophysiology. Conclusion This work calls attention to reactive oxygen and nitrogen species and HDM-induced cytotoxicity and to a potential role for DNA repair as a modulator of asthma-associated pathophysiology.
Various forms of immunotherapy, such as checkpoint blockade immunotherapy, are proving to be effective at restoring T cell-mediated immune responses that can lead to marked and sustained clinical ...responses, but only in some patients and cancer types
. Patients and tumours may respond unpredictably to immunotherapy partly owing to heterogeneity of the immune composition and phenotypic profiles of tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) within individual tumours and between patients
. Although there is evidence that tumour-mutation-derived neoantigen-specific T cells play a role in tumour control
, in most cases the antigen specificities of phenotypically diverse tumour-infiltrating T cells are largely unknown. Here we show that human lung and colorectal cancer CD8
TILs can not only be specific for tumour antigens (for example, neoantigens), but also recognize a wide range of epitopes unrelated to cancer (such as those from Epstein-Barr virus, human cytomegalovirus or influenza virus). We found that these bystander CD8
TILs have diverse phenotypes that overlap with tumour-specific cells, but lack CD39 expression. In colorectal and lung tumours, the absence of CD39 in CD8
TILs defines populations that lack hallmarks of chronic antigen stimulation at the tumour site, supporting their classification as bystanders. Expression of CD39 varied markedly between patients, with some patients having predominantly CD39
CD8
TILs. Furthermore, frequencies of CD39 expression among CD8
TILs correlated with several important clinical parameters, such as the mutation status of lung tumour epidermal growth factor receptors. Our results demonstrate that not all tumour-infiltrating T cells are specific for tumour antigens, and suggest that measuring CD39 expression could be a straightforward way to quantify or isolate bystander T cells.
Bacterial sepsis is a major killer in hospitalized patients. Coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) with the leading species Staphylococcus epidermidis are the most frequent causes of nosocomial ...sepsis, with most infectious isolates being methicillin-resistant. However, which bacterial factors underlie the pathogenesis of CNS sepsis is unknown. While it has been commonly believed that invariant structures on the surface of CNS trigger sepsis by causing an over-reaction of the immune system, we show here that sepsis caused by methicillin-resistant S. epidermidis is to a large extent mediated by the methicillin resistance island-encoded peptide toxin, PSM-mec. PSM-mec contributed to bacterial survival in whole human blood and resistance to neutrophil-mediated killing, and caused significantly increased mortality and cytokine expression in a mouse sepsis model. Furthermore, we show that the PSM-mec peptide itself, rather than the regulatory RNA in which its gene is embedded, is responsible for the observed virulence phenotype. This finding is of particular importance given the contrasting roles of the psm-mec locus that have been reported in S. aureus strains, inasmuch as our findings suggest that the psm-mec locus may exert effects in the background of S. aureus strains that differ from its original role in the CNS environment due to originally "unintended" interferences. Notably, while toxins have never been clearly implied in CNS infections, our tissue culture and mouse infection model data indicate that an important type of infection caused by the predominant CNS species is mediated to a large extent by a toxin. These findings suggest that CNS infections may be amenable to virulence-targeted drug development approaches.
Targeting EGFR is a validated approach in the treatment of squamous-cell cancers (SCCs), although there are no established biomarkers for predicting response. We have identified a synonymous mutation ...in EGFR, c.2361G>A (encoding p.Gln787Gln), in two patients with head and neck SCC (HNSCC) who were exceptional responders to gefitinib, and we showed in patient-derived cultures that the A/A genotype was associated with greater sensitivity to tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) as compared to the G/A and G/G genotypes. Remarkably, single-copy G>A nucleotide editing in isogenic models conferred a 70-fold increase in sensitivity due to decreased stability of the EGFR-AS1 long noncoding RNA (lncRNA). In the appropriate context, sensitivity could be recapitulated through EGFR-AS1 knockdown in vitro and in vivo, whereas overexpression was sufficient to induce resistance to TKIs. Reduced EGFR-AS1 levels shifted splicing toward EGFR isoform D, leading to ligand-mediated pathway activation. In co-clinical trials involving patients and patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models, tumor shrinkage was most pronounced in the context of the A/A genotype for EGFR-Q787Q, low expression of EGFR-AS1 and high expression of EGFR isoform D. Our study reveals how a 'silent' mutation influences the levels of a lncRNA, resulting in noncanonical EGFR addiction, and delineates a new predictive biomarker suite for response to EGFR TKIs.
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