Distant supervision for cancer pathway extraction from text.

Biological pathways are central to understanding complex diseases such as cancer. The majority of this knowledge is scattered in the vast and rapidly growing research literature. To automate knowledge extraction, machine learning approaches typically require annotated examples, which are expensive and time-consuming to acquire.

Literome: PubMed-scale genomic knowledge base in the cloud.

Motivation: Advances in sequencing technology have led to an exponential growth of genomics data, yet it remains a formidable challenge to interpret such data for identifying disease genes and drug targets. There has been increasing interest in adopting a systems approach that incorporates prior knowledge such as gene networks and genotype-phenotype associations. The majority of such knowledge resides in text such as journal publications, which has been undergoing its own exponential growth.

Two-year interim results from a 5-year study evaluating clinical recurrence of superficial basal cell carcinoma after treatment with imiquimod 5% cream daily for 6 weeks.

Imiquimod 5% cream is approved in the USA, Europe and Australia to treat superficial basal cell carcinoma, using a regimen of once daily, 5 times per week for 6 weeks. Vehicle-controlled, phase III clinical trials show that imiquimod is safe and effective for treating superficial basal cell carcinoma with dosing 5 or 7 times per week for 6 weeks. This phase III, open-label study evaluates the long-term (5 years) clinical efficacy and safety of dosing once daily, for which this manuscript reports the 2-year time point in the follow-up period.

Successful treatment of in-transit melanoma metastases using topical 2-4 dinitrochlorobenzene.

A 78-year-old woman presented with multiple histologically proven in-transit melanoma metastases involving the lower half of the left leg. Initial therapy with liquid nitrogen cryotherapy had some short-lived success but was not tolerated by the patient. As further lesions began to develop, daily topical application of 2% 2-4 dinitrochlorobenzene to the lesions was commenced.