Accelerated Phase Chronic Myeloid Leukemia and Treatment Free Remission Maintained After Five Years of Nilotinib: A Case Report.

The present article reports the case of a patient presenting with chronic myeloid leukemia, diagnosed during the accelerated phase (>20% blasts in peripheral blood samples and megakaryocyte agglomerates in the bone marrow). The subject was treated with first-line therapy with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor nilotinib and reached complete clinical and molecular remission (according to the European Leukemia Net-ELN-criteria), which persisted over five years of treatment. Five years after discontinuation of nilotinib (ten years from diagnosis), the patient is in good clinical condition, with no traces of BCL-ABL1 at molecular evaluation (molecular response, MR).

Assessment of the interlaboratory variability and robustness of JAK2V617F mutation assays: A study involving a consortium of 19 Italian laboratories.

To date, a plenty of techniques for the detection of JAK2V617F is used over different laboratories, with substantial differences in specificity and sensitivity. Therefore, to provide reliable and comparable results, the standardization of molecular techniques is mandatory.A network of 19 centers was established to 1) evaluate the inter- and intra-laboratory variability in JAK2V617F quantification, 2) identify the most robust assay for the standardization of the molecular test and 3) allow consistent interpretation of individual patient analysis results.

Circulating plasma DNA as diagnostic biomarker in non-small cell lung cancer.

Objectives: The presence of circulating DNA in plasma of patients with malignant neoplasm has been a known fact for over 30 years. Since then, the concentration of free circulating plasma DNA has been studied as well as the genetic alterations and epigenetic alterations of tumour DNA of patients that suffer from various types of tumours. The analysis of circulating plasma DNA may be a useful marker to get an early diagnosis on malignant neoplasms.

Growth properties and growth factor responsiveness in skin fibroblasts from centenarians.

Human fibroblast cultures, which have a finite replicative lifespan in vitro, are the most widely used model for the study of senescence at the cellular level. An inverse relationship between replicative capability and donor age has been reported in human fibroblast strains. We studied the growth capacity of fibroblast primary cultures derived from people whose lifespan was as closer as possible to the expected maximum human lifespan, i.

c-fos/c-jun expression and AP-1 activation in skin fibroblasts from centenarians.

In vitro replicative senescence is characterized by an irreversible growth arrest due to the inability of the cell to induce some key regulators of cell cycle progression, such as c-fos and AP-1, in response to mitogenic stimuli. In vitro replicative senescence and in vivo aging have been assumed to be two related phenomena, likely controlled by overlapping or interacting genes. As a corollary, fibroblasts from centenarians, which have undergone a long process of senescence in vivo should have very limited proliferative capability.