Publications by authors named "Faridi Qaium"

Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) that is resistant to androgen receptor signaling inhibitors, which is often lethal, and aims to investigate liquid biopsy biomarkers related to this disease.
  • Researchers analyzed cell-free DNA and methylation from 126 mCRPC patients and developed a "stem-like" signature through RNA sequencing from both single cells and bulk samples.
  • Findings indicated that specific alterations in cell-free DNA correlated with poorer patient outcomes, and an increase in stemness-associated traits in lethal mCRPC patients suggests a reprogramming mechanism that contributes to the aggressiveness of the cancer.
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Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on early detection of peripheral nerve sheath tumors (PNST) associated with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) using a cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragmentomic approach, which can improve clinical decision-making and treatment outcomes.
  • Researchers isolated cfDNA from plasma samples of 101 NF1 patients and 21 healthy controls, employing whole-genome sequencing and analyzing various fragmentomic signatures to differentiate between benign, premalignant, and malignant tumors.
  • Results showed that fragmentomic methods successfully distinguished atypical neurofibromas (premalignant) from benign forms and malignant PNST, offering potential for non-invasive diagnostics and better management of NF1-related tumors.*
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Article Synopsis
  • Early detection of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) associated tumors can improve clinical decision-making and potentially reduce severe outcomes.
  • A new study employed a cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragmentomic method, successfully differentiating between benign, pre-malignant, and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (PNST) in NF1 patients.
  • This innovative approach allows non-invasive diagnosis and could significantly enhance the management of NF1-associated tumors, helping to differentiate conditions like atypical neurofibromas from more severe malignancies.
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Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) resistant to androgen receptor (AR)-targeted agents is often lethal. Unfortunately, biomarkers for this deadly disease remain under investigation, and underpinning mechanisms are ill-understood. Here, we applied deep sequencing to ∼100 mCRPC patients prior to the initiation of first-line AR-targeted therapy, which detected /enhancer alterations in over a third of patients, which correlated with lethality.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers identified 25 different cell states, focusing on those linked to aggressive disease and poor prognosis, including specific immune cells and cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs).
  • The findings highlight the relationship between the composition of the TME, stemness in malignant cells and CAFs, and patient survival, suggesting potential for improved risk assessment and personalized treatment strategies.
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Article Synopsis
  • Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is not very effective for detecting molecular residual disease (MRD) in bladder cancer, so researchers turned to analyzing urine samples instead.
  • They used advanced sequencing techniques on urine tumor DNA from 74 patients, finding that urine-derived DNA markers were much better at predicting MRD than blood ctDNA.
  • Their model showed 87% sensitivity for predicting residual disease and highlighted that patients identified with MRD had significantly worse outcomes in both progression-free and overall survival.
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Background: The leading cause of mortality for patients with the neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) cancer predisposition syndrome is the development of malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST), an aggressive soft tissue sarcoma. In the setting of NF1, this cancer type frequently arises from within its common and benign precursor, plexiform neurofibroma (PN). Transformation from PN to MPNST is challenging to diagnose due to difficulties in distinguishing cross-sectional imaging results and intralesional heterogeneity resulting in biopsy sampling errors.

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Background: The standard of care treatment for muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) is radical cystectomy, which is typically preceded by neoadjuvant chemotherapy. However, the inability to assess minimal residual disease (MRD) noninvasively limits our ability to offer bladder-sparing treatment. Here, we sought to develop a liquid biopsy solution via urine tumor DNA (utDNA) analysis.

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Unlabelled: We hypothesized that circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) molecular residual disease (MRD) analysis without prior mutational knowledge could be performed after neoadjuvant chemotherapy to assess oligometastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) treated surgically with curative intent. We also investigated urine as an alternative analyte for ctDNA MRD detection in this nongenitourinary setting.

Patients And Methods: We applied AVENIO targeted next-generation sequencing to plasma, tumor, and urine samples acquired on the day of curative-intent surgery from 24 prospectively enrolled patients with oligometastatic CRC.

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Purpose: Cell-free DNA (cfDNA) and circulating tumor cell (CTC) based liquid biopsies have emerged as potential tools to predict responses to androgen receptor (AR)-directed therapy in metastatic prostate cancer. However, due to complex mechanisms and incomplete understanding of genomic events involved in metastatic prostate cancer resistance, current assays (e.g.

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