Mathematical modeling of cardio-oncology: Modeling the systemic effects of cancer therapeutics on the cardiovascular system.

Cardiotoxicity is a common side-effect of many cancer therapeutics; however, to-date there has been very little push to understand the mechanisms underlying this group of pathologies. This has led to the emergence of cardio-oncology, a field of medicine focused on understanding the effects of cancer and its treatment on the human heart. Here, we describe how mechanistic modeling approaches have been applied to study open questions in the cardiovascular system and how these approaches are being increasingly applied to advance knowledge of the underlying effects of cancer treatments on the human heart.

Therapeutic Potential of Combinative shRNA-Encoded Lentivirus-Mediated Gene Silencing to Accelerate Somatosensory Recovery After Spinal Cord Trauma.

Neuropathic pain following spinal cord injury (SCI) remains a difficult problem that affects more than 80% of SCI patients. Growing evidence indicates that neuroinflammatory responses play a key role in neuropathic pain after SCI. Short hairpin RNA (shRNA) interference is an efficient tool for the knockdown of disease-related specific gene expression after SCI, yet insufficient data is available to establish guidelines.