Publications by authors named "Albert Thomas"

Background: Pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNET) are among the most common intracranial tumors. Despite a frequent benign course, aggressive behavior can occur. Tumor behavior is known to be under the influence of the tumor microenvironment (TME).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Multi-tissue foot injuries are common in kids, and microsurgery plays a crucial role in their treatment, illustrated by a case of a 4-year-old boy who suffered severe injuries from a lawnmower accident, including the loss of his big toe.
  • - The surgical team performed a unique combined free flap repair using muscle-sparing latissimus dorsi and serratus anterior, aiming to restore both function and appearance.
  • - Follow-up evaluations at 3 months and 1 year showed excellent recovery, with good scores in aesthetic and functional assessments, indicating that this surgical approach is effective for treating complex foot injuries in children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Peripheral T-cell lymphoma, not otherwise specified (PTCL-NOS) is a diverse and challenging type of cancer that often has poor outcomes, especially in younger patients lacking the SMARCB1 protein.
  • Research indicated that human and mouse PTCL-NOS exhibit similar DNA changes, including the hypermethylation of T-cell genes and the hypomethylation of myeloid development genes, contributing to a complicated tumor ecosystem.
  • A study found that histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi), like SAHA, can effectively treat PTCL-NOS by modifying the tumor's microenvironment and improving immune function, paving the way for potential combination therapies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Vincristine sulphate, a microtubule inhibitor, is used extensively in veterinary oncology for treating lymphoma. Neutropenia during multiagent protocols is a common reason for treatment delay and reduced dose intensity. This study evaluated toxicities associated with treating systemically well neutropenic lymphoma patients with vincristine.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The present study examined neurocognitive differences between Perinatally HIV (PHIV)-infected-youth and age and gender matched healthy controls. Despite early, long-term anti-viral treatment (ART), significant neurocognitive deficiencies remain for PHIV-infected-youth reaching adulthood compared to controls.

Methods: Participants were assessed with a comprehensive neuropsychological battery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates the long-term outcomes of a surgical technique called Malingue plasty for treating Dupuytren's disease, focusing on functional, aesthetic, and recurrence metrics over a minimum of 5 years post-operation.
  • - Out of 107 patients, 55 were studied, with successful correction of joint deformities and no major complications reported; however, the mean extension deficit was 18.1° and a recurrence rate was observed in 50% of patients based on one set of criteria.
  • - Although Malingue plasty shows good functional scores and no immediate complications, it does not significantly reduce recurrence rates compared to other surgical methods, highlighting the ongoing challenges in treatment effectiveness for Dupuytren's disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Demonstrate the feasibility and evaluate the performance of single-shot diffusion trace-weighted radial echo planar spectroscopic imaging (Trace DW-REPSI) for quantifying the trace ADC in phantom and in vivo using a 3T clinical scanner.

Theory And Methods: Trace DW-REPSI datasets were acquired in 10 phantom and 10 healthy volunteers, with a maximum b-value of 1601 s/mm and diffusion time of 10.75 ms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Phosphorus-31 magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (P-MRSI) provides valuable non-invasive information on tissue metabolism but is burdened by poor sensitivity and prolonged scan duration. Ultra-short echo time (UTE) acquisitions minimize signal loss when probing signals with relatively short spin-spin relaxation time (T), while also preventing first-order dephasing. Here, a three-dimensional (3D) UTE sequence with a rosette k-space trajectory is applied to P-MRSI at 3T.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study demonstrates the feasibility and performance of the point-resolved spectroscopy (PRESS)-based, single-shot diffusion trace-weighted sequence in quantifying the trace apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in phantom and in vivo using a 3-T MRI/MRS scanner. The single-shot diffusion trace-weighted PRESS sequence was implemented and compared with conventional diffusion-weighted (DW)-PRESS variants using bipolar and unipolar diffusion-sensitizing gradients. Nine phantom datasets were acquired using each sequence, and seven volunteers were scanned in three different brain regions to determine the range and variability of trace ADC values, and to allow a comparison of trace ADCs among the sequences.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pediatric high-grade gliomas of the subclass MYCN (HGG-MYCN) are highly aggressive tumors frequently carrying MYCN amplifications, TP53 mutations, or both alterations. Due to their rarity, such tumors have only recently been identified as a distinct entity, and biological as well as clinical characteristics have not been addressed specifically. To gain insights into tumorigenesis and molecular profiles of these tumors, and to ultimately suggest alternative treatment options, we generated a genetically engineered mouse model by breeding hGFAP-cre::Trp53::lsl-MYCN mice.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Acquisition of in vivo correlated spectroscopy (COSY) can take longer due to many t increments needed for good spectral resolution, but using Covariance Transformation (CT) offers a better alternative, increasing resolution without long acquisition times.
  • - In a study with both malignant and healthy participants, five-dimensional echo-planar correlated spectroscopic imaging data was reconstructed using compressed sensing, allowing for improved processing of the COSY spectrum through FFT, CT, and Inner Product (IP) methods.
  • - CT and IP methods enhanced spectral resolution significantly (up to ~8.5 times better) compared to traditional FFT, leading to reliable biomarkers for malignant breast cancer while avoiding common artifacts associated with FFT.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The main objective of this work was to evaluate the application of individual and ensemble machine learning models to classify malignant and benign breast masses using features from two-dimensional (2D) correlated spectroscopy spectra extracted from five-dimensional echo-planar correlated spectroscopic imaging (5D EP-COSI) and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). Twenty-four different metabolite and lipid ratios with respect to diagonal fat peaks (1.4 ppm, 5.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pediatric low-grade gliomas (pLGG) show heterogeneous responses to MAPK inhibitors (MAPKi) in clinical trials. Thus, more complex stratification biomarkers are needed to identify patients likely to benefit from MAPKi therapy. Here, we identify MAPK-related genes enriched in MAPKi-sensitive cell lines using the GDSC dataset and apply them to calculate class-specific MAPKi sensitivity scores (MSSs) via single-sample gene set enrichment analysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Researchers found that two important genes, CREBBP and MYCN, are often changed in brain tumors like glioma and medulloblastoma, which may work together to cause these tumors.
  • They created special mice that lost CREBBP and had extra MYCN in their brain cells, and these mice developed aggressive brain tumors within eight months.
  • The scientists discovered that the tumors likely started from a specific type of brain stem cell, showing that the messed-up versions of these genes can help make tumors grow faster.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Cancer metabolism influences multiple aspects of tumorigenesis and causes diversity across malignancies. Although comprehensive research has extended our knowledge of molecular subgroups in medulloblastoma (MB), discrete analysis of metabolic heterogeneity is currently lacking. This study seeks to improve our understanding of metabolic phenotypes in MB and their impact on patients' outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The BAF (BRG1/BRM-associated factor) chromatin remodelling complex is essential for the regulation of DNA accessibility and gene expression during neuronal differentiation. Mutations of its core subunit SMARCB1 result in a broad spectrum of pathologies, including aggressive rhabdoid tumours or neurodevelopmental disorders. Other mouse models have addressed the influence of a homo- or heterozygous loss of Smarcb1, yet the impact of specific non-truncating mutations remains poorly understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: The main objective of this work was to detect novel biomarkers in breast cancer by spreading the MR spectra over two dimensions in multiple spatial locations using an accelerated 5D EP-COSI technology.

Methods: The 5D EP-COSI data were non-uniformly undersampled with an acceleration factor of 8 and reconstructed using group sparsity-based compressed sensing reconstruction. Different metabolite and lipid ratios were then quantified and statistically analyzed for significance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Brain structural changes in HIV identified by voxel-based morphometry (VBM) alone could arise from a variety of causes that are difficult to distinguish without further information, such as cortical thickness (CT), gyrification index (GI) or sulcal depth (SD). Hence, our goal was to assess these additional metrics in HIV using high-resolution 3D T-weighted images and investigate if surface-based morphometric (SBM) analysis would reveal significant changes in the gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) volumes combined with alterations in cortical thickness (CT), gyrification index (GI), sulcal depth (SD). T1-w magnetization-prepared-rapid-acquisition gradient-echo (MP-RAGE) scans were acquired in 27 HIV-infected individuals on antiretroviral therapy (ART) and 15 HIV-uninfected healthy controls using a 3T MRI scanner equipped with a 16-channel head "receive" and a quadrature body "transmit" coil.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: This study aimed at developing dictionary learning (DL) based compressed sensing (CS) reconstruction for randomly undersampled five-dimensional (5D) MR Spectroscopic Imaging (3D spatial + 2D spectral) data acquired in prostate cancer patients and healthy controls, and test its feasibility at 8x and 12x undersampling factors.

Materials And Methods: Prospectively undersampled 5D echo-planar J-resolved spectroscopic imaging (EP-JRESI) data were acquired in nine prostate cancer (PCa) patients and three healthy males. The 5D EP-JRESI data were reconstructed using DL and compared with gradient sparsity-based Total Variation (TV) and Perona-Malik (PM) methods.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A reliable and practical renal-lipid quantification and imaging method is needed. Here, the feasibility of an accelerated MRSI method to map renal fat fractions (FF) at 3T and its repeatability were investigated. A 2D density-weighted concentric-ring-trajectory MRSI was used for accelerating the acquisition of 48 × 48 voxels (each of 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The murine esBAF complex is really important for controlling how genes work when stem cells grow and change into different types of cells.
  • Smarcb1 is a key part of this complex, and if it’s missing, it can lead to brain problems and certain types of tumors.
  • Our research shows that Smarcb1 helps connect different genes in mouse stem cells, affecting how they develop into nerve cells and perform basic jobs in the body.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rhabdoid tumors (RT) are rare and highly aggressive pediatric neoplasms. Their epigenetically-driven intertumoral heterogeneity is well described; however, the cellular origin of RT remains an enigma. Here, we establish and characterize different genetically engineered mouse models driven under the control of distinct promoters and being active in early progenitor cell types with diverse embryonic onsets.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To implement a novel, accelerated, 2D radial echo-planar spectroscopic imaging (REPSI) sequence using undersampled radial k-space trajectories and compressed-sensing reconstruction, and to compare results with those from an undersampled Cartesian spectroscopic sequence.

Methods: The REPSI sequence was implemented using golden-angle view-ordering on a 3T MRI scanner. Radial and Cartesian echo-planar spectroscopic imaging (EPSI) data were acquired at six acceleration factors, each with time-equivalent scan durations, and reconstructed using compressed sensing with total variation regularization.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In perinatally HIV-infected (PHIV) children, neurodevelopment occurs in the presence of HIV-infection, and even with combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) the brain can be a reservoir for latent HIV. Consequently, patients often demonstrate long-term cognitive deficits and developmental delay, which may be reflected in altered functional brain activity. Our objective was to examine brain function in PHIV on cART by quantifying the amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFF) and regional homogeneity (ReHo).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF