Medical student coping and performance in simulated disasters.

Objectives: Coping with the stress of real and simulated disasters is thought to be integral to the performance of emergency medicine providers. Yet, little is known about which coping strategies are employed in these scenarios and whether differential use of strategies predicts actual clinical and interpersonal performance.

Methods: Thirty-four medical students were evaluated by trained simulated patients and physician observers across 111 clinical encounters during a simulated disaster.

An intergranular strain concept for material models formulated as rate equations.

The intergranular strain concept was originally developed to capture the small-strain behaviour of the soil with hypoplastic models. A change of the deformation direction leads to an increase of the material stiffness. To obtain elastic behaviour for smallstrains, only the elastic part of the material stiffness matrix is used.

Determination of an optimal dosing schedule for combining Irinophore C™ and temozolomide in an orthotopic model of glioblastoma.

Our laboratory reported that Irinophore C™ (IrC™; a lipid-based nanoparticulate formulation of irinotecan) is effective against an orthotopic model of glioblastoma (GBM) and that treatment with IrC™ was associated with vascular normalization within the tumor. Here, the therapeutic effects of IrC™ when used in combination with temozolomide (TMZ) in concurrent and sequential treatment schedules were tested. It was anticipated that IrC™ engendered vascular normalization would increase the delivery of TMZ to the tumor and that this would be reflected by improved treatment outcomes.

Irinophore C™, a lipid nanoparticle formulation of irinotecan, abrogates the gastrointestinal effects of irinotecan in a rat model of clinical toxicities.

Irinotecan is a water-soluble camptothecin derivative with clinical activity against colorectal and small cell lung cancers and is currently a standard of care therapeutic in the treatment of colorectal cancer in combination with 5-fluorouracil. One of the major clinical issues limiting the use of irinotecan is gastrointestinal toxicity manifested as life-threatening diarrhea which is reported in up to 45% of treated patients. The studies summarized here tested, in a rat model of irinotecan-associated gastro-intestinal toxicity, whether a lipid nanoparticle formulation of irinotecan, Irinophore C™, mitigated early-onset or late-onset diarrhea when given at doses equivalent to unformulated irinotecan that engenders both early- and late-onset diarrhea.

Combined RNAi-mediated suppression of Rictor and EGFR resulted in complete tumor regression in an orthotopic glioblastoma tumor model.

The PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway is commonly over activated in glioblastoma (GBM), and Rictor was shown to be an important regulator downstream of this pathway. EGFR overexpression is also frequently found in GBM tumors, and both EGFR and Rictor are associated with increased proliferation, invasion, metastasis and poor prognosis. This research evaluated in vitro and in vivo whether the combined silencing of EGFR and Rictor would result in therapeutic benefits.