Publications by authors named "Cristina Viaplana"

Background: Prognostic factors for ambulatory oncology patients have been described, including Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), tumor stage and malnutrition. However, there is no firm evidence on which variables best predict mortality in hospitalized patients receiving active systemic treatment. Our main goal was to develop a predictive model for 90-day mortality upon admission.

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  • The oxidation of histone H3 at lysine 4 (H3K4ox) is catalyzed by LOXL2 and is found in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells, where it maintains compacted chromatin.* -
  • LOXL2 interacts with key proteins (RUVBL1, RUVBL2, ACTL6A, DMAP1) that are essential for incorporating the histone variant H2A.Z, which plays a role in chromatin structure.* -
  • Without LOXL2 or RUVBL2, levels of important heterochromatin markers are reduced, impacting the oncogenic features of TNBC cells, suggesting that this molecular interplay is crucial for cancer
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  • The study introduces a deep learning (DL) method to predict PD-L1 status in cancer patients directly from raw immunohistochemistry (IHC) images, without needing traditional manual quantification methods.
  • The model was trained on a significant number of slides from non-small cell lung cancer patients and validated on a broader cancer cohort, showing strong performance in predicting PD-L1 expression.
  • Results indicate that this DL approach may enhance patient stratification for immunotherapy, effectively considering both PD-L1 staining intensity and morphological features in tissue slides.
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  • Breast cancer diagnosed during pregnancy (PrBC) and postpartum (PPBC) tends to be found at more advanced stages, leading to a poorer prognosis, especially with PPBC being very aggressive.
  • Researchers discovered that cell-free tumor DNA (ctDNA) can be detected in breast milk (BM) from breast cancer patients, showing higher detection rates compared to plasma samples.
  • This study suggests that using BM for ctDNA analysis could serve as a novel liquid biopsy method, allowing for earlier detection of breast cancer, even months before standard diagnosis techniques.
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Background: PD1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) have revolutionized cancer treatment. Although there is controversy about the accuracy of surrogate endpoints in the ICI setting to predict overall survival (OS), these endpoints are commonly used in confirmatory trials. Here we aimed to explore the validity of classical and novel surrogate endpoints in randomised controlled trials (RCT) that combine ICI plus chemotherapy (CT) in the first-line setting.

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CDK4/6 inhibitors combined with endocrine therapy have demonstrated higher antitumor activity than endocrine therapy alone for the treatment of advanced estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. Some of these tumors are de novo resistant to CDK4/6 inhibitors and others develop acquired resistance. Here, we show that p16 overexpression is associated with reduced antitumor activity of CDK4/6 inhibitors in patient-derived xenografts (n = 37) and estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer cell lines, as well as reduced response of early and advanced breast cancer patients to CDK4/6 inhibitors (n = 89).

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Unlabelled: PARP inhibitors (PARPi) are approved drugs for platinum-sensitive, high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) and for breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancers (PaC) harboring genetic alterations impairing homologous recombination repair (HRR). Detection of nuclear RAD51 foci in tumor cells is a marker of HRR functionality, and we previously established a test to detect RAD51 nuclear foci. Here, we aimed to validate the RAD51 score cut off and compare the performance of this test to other HRR deficiency (HRD) detection methods.

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Purpose: amplification (amp) is recurrent in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) and is associated with resistance to endocrine therapy and CDK4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6is). Multi-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (MTKIs) and selective pan-FGFR inhibitors (FGFRis) are being developed for amp breast cancer. High-level amplification and protein expression by IHC have identified breast cancer responders to FGFRis or MTKIs, respectively.

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Purpose: Patient selection in phase 1 clinical trials (Ph1t) continues to be a challenge. The aim of this study was to develop a user-friendly prognostic calculator for predicting overall survival (OS) outcomes in patients to be included in Ph1t with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) or targeted agents (TAs) based on clinical parameters assessed at baseline.

Methods: Using a training cohort with consecutive patients from the VHIO phase 1 unit, we constructed a prognostic model to predict median OS (mOS) as a primary endpoint and 3-month (3m) OS rate as a secondary endpoint.

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Background: Eribulin is a microtubule-targeting agent approved for the treatment of advanced or metastatic breast cancer (BC) previously treated with anthracycline- and taxane-based regimens. PIK3CA mutation is associated with worse response to chemotherapy in oestrogen receptor-positive (ER+)/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) metastatic BC. We aimed to evaluate the role of phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/AKT pathway mutations in eribulin resistance.

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Purpose: Cancer classification is foundational for patient care and oncology research. Systems such as International Classification of Diseases for Oncology (ICD-O), Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT), and National Cancer Institute Thesaurus (NCIt) provide large sets of cancer classification terminologies but they lack a dynamic modernized cancer classification platform that addresses the fast-evolving needs in clinical reporting of genomic sequencing results and associated oncology research.

Methods: To meet these needs, we have developed OncoTree, an open-source cancer classification system.

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Background Reliable predictive imaging markers of response to immune checkpoint inhibitors are needed. Purpose To develop and validate a pretreatment CT-based radiomics signature to predict response to immune checkpoint inhibitors in advanced solid tumors. Materials and Methods In this retrospective study, a radiomics signature was developed in patients with advanced solid tumors (including breast, cervix, gastrointestinal) treated with anti-programmed cell death-1 or programmed cell death ligand-1 monotherapy from August 2012 to May 2018 (cohort 1).

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Most academic precision oncology programs have been designed to facilitate enrollment of patients in early clinical trials with matched targeted agents. Over the last decade, major changes were seen both in the targetable molecular alteration landscape and in drug development trends. In this article, we describe how the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology molecular prescreening program adapted to a dynamic model of biomarker-drug codevelopment.

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Purpose: Most hyperprogression disease (HPD) definitions are based on tumor growth rate (TGR). However, there is still no consensus on how to evaluate this phenomenon.

Patients And Methods: We investigated two independent cohorts of patients with advanced solid tumors treated in phase I trials with (i) programmed cell death 1 (PD-1)/PD-L1 antibodies in monotherapy or combination and (ii) targeted agents (TA) in unapproved indications.

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  • PARP inhibitors (PARPi), like olaparib, help treat certain cancers that can’t fix their DNA properly, especially those related to BRCA1/2 genes.
  • Researchers tested how well these drugs worked in breast cancer samples and found a way to identify more tumors that might respond to PARPi treatment.
  • The RAD51 score was really good at predicting which breast cancers would be sensitive to these drugs, even helping to find cancers related to the PALB2 gene.
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Sequencing of tumors is now routine and guides personalized cancer therapy. Mutant allele fractions (MAFs, or the 'mutation dose') of a driver gene may reveal the genomic structure of tumors and influence response to targeted therapies. We performed a comprehensive analysis of MAFs of driver alterations in unpaired primary and metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) at our institution from 2010 to 2015 and studied their potential clinical relevance.

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