Correction: Thrombotic and bleeding events,mortality, and anticoagulant use among 546,656 hospitalized patients with COVID‑19 in the United States: a retrospective cohort study

Journal of Thrombosis and Thrombolysis -     

A Phase I Trial of Trametinib in Combination with Sorafenib in Patients with Advanced Hepatocellular Cancer

Lessons Learned

• The combination of trametinib and sorafenib has an acceptable safety profile, albeit at doses lower than approved for monotherapy.
• Maximum tolerated dose is trametinib 1.5 mg daily and sorafenib 200 mg twice daily.
• The limited anticancer activity observed in this unselected patient population does not support further exploration of trametinib plus sorafenib in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

BackgroundThe RAS/RAF/MEK/ERK signaling pathway is associated with proliferation and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Preclinical data suggest that paradoxical activation of the MAPK pathway may be one of the resistance mechanisms of sorafenib; therefore, we evaluated trametinib plus sorafenib in HCC.MethodsThis was a phase I study with a 3+3 design in patients with treatment‐naïve advanced HCC. The primary objective was safety and tolerability. The secondary objective was clinical efficacy.ResultsA total of 17 patients were treated with three different doses of trametinib and sorafenib. Two patients experienced dose‐limiting toxicity, including grade 4 hypertension and grade 3 elevation of aspartate aminotransferase (AST)/alanine aminotransferase (ALT)/bilirubin over 7 days. Maximum tolerated dose was trametinib 1.5 mg daily and sorafenib 200 mg twice a day. The most common grade 3/4 treatment‐related adverse events were elevated AST (37%) and hypertension (24%). Among 11 evaluable patients, 7 (63.6%) had stable disease with no objective response. The median progression‐free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were 3.7 and 7.8 months, respectively. Phosphorylated‐ERK was evaluated as a pharmacodynamic marker, and sorafenib plus trametinib inhibited phosphorylated‐ERK up to 98.1% (median: 81.2%) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells.ConclusionTrametinib and sorafenib can be safely administered up to trametinib 1.5 mg daily and sorafenib 200 mg twice a day with limited anticancer activity in advanced HCC.     

Pharmacological doses of melatonin impede cognitive decline in tau‐related Alzheimer models,once tauopathy is initiated,by restoring the autophagic flux

Alterations in autophagy are increasingly being recognized in the pathogenesis of proteinopathies like Alzheimer's disease (AD). This study was conducted to evaluate whether melatonin treatment could provide beneficial effects in an Alzheimer model related to tauopathy by improving the autophagic flux and, thereby, prevent cognitive decline. The injection of AAV‐hTau^P301L viral vectors and treatment/injection with okadaic acid were used to achieve mouse and human ex vivo, and in vivo tau‐related models. Melatonin (10 μmol/L) impeded oxidative stress, tau hyperphosphorylation, and cell death by restoring autophagy flux in the ex vivo models. In the in vivo studies, intracerebroventricular injection of AAV‐hTau^P301L increased oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and tau hyperphosphorylation in the hippocampus 7 days after the injection, without inducing cognitive impairment; however, when animals were maintained for 28 days, cognitive decline was apparent. Interestingly, late melatonin treatment (10 mg/kg), starting once the alterations mentioned above were established (from day 7 to day 28), reduced oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, tau hyperphosphorylation, and caspase‐3 activation; these observations correlated with restoration of the autophagy flux and memory improvement. This study highlights the importance of autophagic dysregulation in tauopathy and how administration of pharmacological doses of melatonin, once tauopathy is initiated, can restore the autophagy flux, reduce proteinopathy, and prevent cognitive decline. We therefore propose exogenous melatonin supplementation or the development of melatonin derivatives to improve autophagy flux for the treatment of proteinopathies like AD.     

On the Relationship between Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Parameters and the Underlying Vascular Architecture Extracted from Acoustic Angiography

Dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound (DCE-US) has been proposed as a powerful tool for cancer diagnosis by estimation of perfusion and dispersion parameters reflecting angiogenic vascular changes. This work was aimed at identifying which vascular features are reflected by the estimated perfusion and dispersion parameters through comparison with acoustic angiography (AA). AA is a high-resolution technique that allows quantification of vascular morphology. Three-dimensional AA and 2-D DCE-US bolus acquisitions were used to monitor the growth of fibrosarcoma tumors in nine rats. AA-derived vascular properties were analyzed along with DCE-US perfusion and dispersion to investigate the differences between tumor and control and their evolution in time. AA-derived microvascular density and DCE-US perfusion exhibited good agreement, confirmed by their spatial distributions. No vascular feature was correlated with dispersion. Yet, dispersion provided better cancer classification than perfusion. We therefore hypothesize that dispersion characterizes vessels that are smaller than those visible with AA.