Publications by authors named "F M Howard"

Background: Cyclin-dependent kinase 4 and 6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i) have improved the efficacy of endocrine therapy in hormone receptor-positive (HR+)/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) breast cancer (BC) and are now used in both early-stage and metastatic disease. Recent case reports suggest that pseudo-serum creatinine (Scr) elevations are likely a class effect of CDK4/6i.

Methods: This single-center retrospective analysis included patients aged ≥18 years who received at least one dose of palbociclib, ribociclib, or abemaciclib for the treatment of HR+/HER2- BC in the early or advanced setting.

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Artificial intelligence models have been increasingly used in the analysis of tumor histology to perform tasks ranging from routine classification to identification of molecular features. These approaches distill cancer histologic images into high-level features, which are used in predictions, but understanding the biologic meaning of such features remains challenging. We present and validate a custom generative adversarial network-HistoXGAN-capable of reconstructing representative histology using feature vectors produced by common feature extractors.

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Background: For patients with breast cancer undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT), most of the existing prediction models of pathologic complete response (pCR) using clinicopathological features were based on standard statistical models like logistic regression, while models based on machine learning mostly utilized imaging data and/or gene expression data. This study aims to develop a robust and accessible machine learning model to predict pCR using clinicopathological features alone, which can be used to facilitate clinical decision-making in diverse settings.

Methods: The model was developed and validated within the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB, 2018-2020) and an external cohort at the University of Chicago (2010-2020).

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Article Synopsis
  • The CREATE-X trial showed that adjuvant capecitabine can improve survival for high-risk triple-negative breast cancer patients, but the standard dose is often hard to tolerate for many in the US.
  • A retrospective study at the University of Chicago Medicine evaluated the safety and tolerability of capecitabine in 67 TNBC patients, looking specifically at their relative dose intensity (RDI) and side effects over eight treatment cycles.
  • Results indicated that the average RDI was significantly lower than in the CREATE-X trial, with hand-foot syndrome, diarrhea, and fatigue being the most common side effects; the study found no major differences in tolerability based on age, race, BMI, or initial dosage.
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In this era of precision medicine, incorporating quantitative measures of estrogen receptor (ER)/progesterone receptor (PR)/Ki-67 expressions and genomic assays could more precisely identify neoadjuvant systemic therapy with the highest likelihood of response and tumor downstaging. In our recent study, we quantified the likelihood of achieving breast-conserving surgery (BCS vs. mastectomy) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy or endocrine therapy as a function of demographics, quantitative ER/PR/Ki-67 expressions, 21-gene recurrence scores, or 70-gene risk scores in early-stage, hormone receptor (HR)-positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative breast cancer.

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