Publications by authors named "Bernard K B Lee"

Despite being the world's largest single-flower, Rafflesia's biology and life history are still poorly understood due to its cryptic growth strategy on Tetrastigma vines. Previous studies have been mostly short-term, contrary to Rafflesia's long development period before blooming. Bud development and flower phenology of R.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMD) are precursors of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), and the presence of oral epithelial dysplasia (OED) in OPMD confers an increased risk of malignant transformation. Emerging evidence has indicated a role for the immune system in OPMD disease progression; however, the underlying immune mechanisms remain elusive. In this study, we used immune signatures established from cancer to delineate the immune profiles of moderate and severe OED, which are considered high-risk OPMD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The research focuses on oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), highlighting the need for better treatments, especially for advanced cases, and identifies CDK4/6 inhibitors like palbociclib as promising options due to their effects on cell cycle abnormalities.
  • - Palbociclib showed effectiveness in 80% of tested OSCC cell lines and in tumor growth control in mice; however, some resistant cells exhibited specific mutations that reduced palbociclib's efficacy.
  • - The study suggests that combining palbociclib with a PI3K/mTOR inhibitor could enhance treatment effectiveness, supporting further clinical testing of these combination therapies for OSCC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a challenging disease to treat. Up to 50% of OSCC patients with advanced disease develop recurrences. Elucidation of key molecular mechanisms underlying OSCC development may provide opportunities to target specific genes and, thus, to improve patient survival.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Given that aberrant activation of epidermal growth factor receptor family receptors (ErbB) is a common event in oral squamous cell carcinoma, and that high expression of these receptor proteins is often associated with poor prognosis, this rationalizes the approach of targeting ErbB signaling pathways to improve the survival of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma. However, monotherapy with the ErbB blocker afatinib has shown limited survival benefits.

Objectives: This study was performed to identify mechanisms of afatinib resistance and to explore potential afatinib-based combination treatments with other targeted inhibitors in oral squamous cell carcinoma.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The use of EGFR inhibitors on oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) as monotherapy yielded modest clinical outcomes and therefore would benefit from biomarkers that could predict which patient subsets are likely to respond. Here, we determined the efficacy of erlotinib in OSCC cell lines, and by comparing sensitive and resistant lines to identify potential biomarkers. We focused on the 4717C > G polymorphism in periplakin (PPL) where the CC genotype was associated with erlotinib resistance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Extremely low temperatures present various challenges to life that include ice formation and effects on metabolic capacity. Psyhcrophilic microorganisms typically have an array of mechanisms to enable survival in cold temperatures. In this study, we sequenced and analysed the genome of a psychrophilic yeast isolated in the Antarctic region, Glaciozyma antarctica.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The drug discovery and development pipeline is a long and arduous process that inevitably hampers rapid drug development. Therefore, strategies to improve the efficiency of drug development are urgently needed to enable effective drugs to enter the clinic. Precision medicine has demonstrated that genetic features of cancer cells can be used for predicting drug response, and emerging evidence suggest that gene-drug connections could be predicted more accurately by exploring the cumulative effects of many genes simultaneously.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF