Giant cell tumor of the spine: computed tomography appearance and review of the literature

Giant cell tumor of the vertebral body is a rare but well-recognized entity with a reported incidence between 1.3% and 9.3% of all giant cell tumors. It has been suggested that computed tomography may be helpful in making the diagnosis, although computed tomography appearances have only been described on two occasions. A case of giant cell tumor of the thoracic spine and a review of the literature regarding this entity are presented. The computed tomography appearance of this lesion is described. However, a distinctive pattern, as previously suggested, is not demonstrated. Although we are not convinced that computed tomography provides a definitive diagnosis in cases of spinal giant cell tumor, it is a valuable asset in defining the extent of the tumor and in posttherapy evaluation and follow-up.     

Shared heart failure knowledge and self-care outcomes in patient-caregiver dyads

Background

Patient's knowledge about heart failure (HF) contributes to successful HF self-care, but less is known about shared patient-caregiver knowledge.

Cell penetrating elastin-like polypeptides for therapeutic peptide delivery

Current treatment of solid tumors is limited by side effects that result from the non-specific delivery of drugs to the tumor site. Alternative targeted therapeutic approaches for localized tumors would significantly reduce systemic toxicity. Peptide therapeutics are a promising new strategy for targeted cancer therapy because of the ease of peptide design and the specificity of peptides for their intracellular molecular targets. However, the utility of peptides is limited by their poor pharmacokinetic parameters and poor tissue and cellular membrane permeability in vivo. This review article summarizes the development of elastin-like polypeptide (ELP) as a potential carrier for thermally targeted delivery of therapeutic peptides (TP), and the use of cell penetrating peptides (CPP) to enhance the intracellular delivery of the ELP-fused TPs. CPP-fused ELPs have been used to deliver a peptide inhibitor of c-Myc function and a peptide mimetic of p21 in several cancer models in vitro, and both polypeptides are currently yielding promising results in in vivo models of breast and brain cancer.     

A thermally targeted c-Myc inhibitory polypeptide inhibits breast tumor growth

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have emerged as excellent candidates for clinical application because of their capabilities of immunomodulatory and supporting hematopoiesis. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether the characteristics of MSCs are altered in diseased states. In this study, we obtained and expanded MSCs from bone marrow of patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Our results showed that MSCs derived from MDS (MDS-MSCs) were similar to normal adult bone marrow derived MSCs in morphology, growth property, surface epitopes, and differentiation ability in vitro. In addition, MDS-MSCs had normal karyotype and ultrastructure. However, MDS-MSCs appeared to be impaired in immunomodulatory and supporting hematopoiesis function. Although, MDS-MSCs could express hematopoietic cytokines and support hematopoiesis in long term culture, Real time quantitative polymerase chain reaction showed that the expression of hematopoietic cytokines in MDS-MSCs was much lower than that of normal adult derived MSCs. Moreover, MDS-MSCs showed reduced hematopoiesis support function, as compared to their normal counterparts. Lastly, the capacity of MDS-MSCs to inhibit T lymphocyte activation and proliferation was impaired in vitro. These results indicate that MDS-MSCs have impaired immunomodulatory and hematopoiesis support functions, suggesting their critical role in the pathogenesis of MDS.     

The neural basis of sustained and transient attentional control in young adults with ADHD

Differences in neural activation during performance on an attentionally demanding Stroop task were examined between 23 young adults with ADHD carefully selected to not be co-morbid for other psychiatric disorders and 23 matched controls. A hybrid blocked/single-trial design allowed for examination of more sustained vs. more transient aspects of attentional control. Our results indicated neural dysregulation across a wide range of brain regions including those involved in overall arousal, top-down attentional control, response selection, and inhibition. Furthermore, this dysregulation was most notable in lateral regions of DLPFC for sustained attentional control and in medial areas for transient aspects of attentional control. Because of the careful selection and matching of our two groups, these results provide strong evidence that the neural systems of attentional control are dysregulated in young adults with ADHD and are similar to dysregulations seen in children and adolescents with ADHD.