Publications by authors named "Gagne A"

Introduction: Thoracic SMARCA4-deficient undifferentiated tumors (SMARCA4-UTs) are a recently defined group of aggressive cancers in which the effectiveness of standard treatments for lung cancer is unknown.

Methods: We collected clinical, pathologic, and demographic variables from five institutions for patients whose tumors met criteria for SMARCA4-UTs (undifferentiated phenotype and loss of SMARCA4 (BRG1) by immunohistochemistry).

Results: We identified 92 patients with SMARCA4-UTs; 58 (63%) had stage IV disease at diagnosis and 16 (17%) developed recurrent or metastatic disease after initial diagnosis.

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Intraoperative frozen section (FS) examination of oncologic surgical specimens is frequently performed to ensure complete surgical resection. Data on the gross evaluation of surgical margins are limited. We recently published a study suggesting the use of a macroscopic 2.

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  • The tumor microenvironment (TME) significantly impacts the progression of colorectal cancer (CRC), particularly affecting the differences between mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) and proficient (pMMR) tumors.
  • This study utilizes a spatially enhanced version of cBioPortal to analyze the TME and discovers that around 20% of pMMR tumors have T cell infiltration levels similar to dMMR, leading to better survival outcomes.
  • The findings suggest that these T cell-infiltrated pMMR tumors could also benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy, highlighting that factors beyond mutational burden influence immune activity in CRC.
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Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is a highly lethal cancer of the upper gastrointestinal tract with rising incidence in western populations. To decipher EAC disease progression and therapeutic response, we performed multiomic analyses of a cohort of primary and metastatic EAC tumors, incorporating single-nuclei transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility sequencing, along with spatial profiling. We identified tumor microenvironmental features previously described to associate with therapy response.

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  • - Tropomyosin 1 (TPM1) is linked to variations in human blood traits and influences actin-related cell processes, but its role in blood cell formation (hematopoiesis) is not fully understood.
  • - Research using gene-edited stem cells showed that knocking out TPM1 promoted the development of specific blood-forming cells and activated important signaling pathways.
  • - Further studies with a mouse model indicated that lacking TPM1 increased the formation of endothelial cells during early development, highlighting its significant role in regulating blood cell development.
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Pulmonary thrombotic arteriopathy (PTA) can be an incidental finding in lung resections performed for various indications. Historic studies largely examined PTA in autopsies. Thus, the prevalence in surgical samples, particularly in the modern era of lung cancer screening, is poorly defined.

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Trisomy 21 (T21), or Down syndrome (DS), is associated with baseline macrocytic erythrocytosis, thrombocytopenia, and neutrophilia, as well as transient abnormal myelopoiesis (TAM) and myeloid leukemia of DS (ML-DS). TAM and ML-DS blasts both arise from an aberrant megakaryocyte-erythroid progenitor and exclusively express GATA1s, the truncated isoform of , while germline mutations in a non-T21 context lead to congenital cytopenia(s) without a leukemic predisposition. This suggests that T21 and GATA1s both perturb hematopoiesis in multipotent progenitors, but studying their individual effects is challenging due to limited access to relevant human progenitor populations.

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Pulmonary adenocarcinoma (ADC) is a very diverse disease, both genetically and histologically, which displays extensive intratumor heterogeneity with numerous acquired mutations. ADC is the most common type of lung cancer and is believed to arise from adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) which then progresses to minimally invasive adenocarcinoma (MIA). In patients of European ethnicity, we analyzed genetic mutations in AIS ( = 10) and MIA ( = 18) and compared the number of genetic mutations with advanced ADC ( = 2419).

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Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) treatment, but only 20-30% of patients benefit from these treatments. Currently, PD-L1 expression in tumor cells is the only clinically approved predictor of ICI response in lung cancer, but concerns arise due to its low negative and positive predictive value. Recent studies suggest that CXCL13+ T cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME) may be a good predictor of response.

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Increased (but not definitively solid) attenuation within pure ground-glass nodules (pGGNs) may indicate invasive adenocarcinoma and the need for resection rather than surveillance. The purpose of this study was to compare the clinical outcomes among resected pGGNs, heterogeneous ground-glass nodules (GGNs), and part-solid nodules (PSNs). This retrospective study included 469 patients (335 female patients and 134 male patients; median age, 68 years [IQR, 62.

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Methylation is a well-established means of enhancing the thermal stability, improving the compatibility in polymer blends, and lowering the glass-transition temperature of lignins. This process normally involves reagents that are costly, associated with poor atom economy and/or highly toxic. Herein, we report the methylation of softwood and hardwood kraft lignins using chloromethane in alkaline aqueous media.

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Mutations in Adenosine deaminase acting on RNA 1 (ADAR1) gene encoding RNA editing enzyme ADAR1 results in the neuroinflammatory leukodystrophy Aicardi Goutières Syndrome (AGS). AGS is an early onset leukoencephalopathy with an exacerbated interferon response leading to neurological regression with intellectual disability, spasticity, and motor deficits. We have generated three induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of individuals with ADAR1 mutation.

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Article Synopsis
  • Multiple sulfatase deficiency (MSD) is a super rare disease caused by a problem in a gene that affects the body's ability to break down certain substances.
  • People with MSD can have serious health issues like learning difficulties, hearing loss, and problems with their organs and skin.
  • Scientists created special cells from MSD patients to study the disease better, which could help them find new ways to treat it.
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  • The study focuses on creating excitatory cortical neurons from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) to help understand neurodevelopmental disorders and develop new treatments.
  • A new directed differentiation protocol is presented, which efficiently generates 2D cultures of hPSC-derived excitatory cortical neurons without needing embryoid body formation, and has been validated across multiple labs with different hPSC lines.
  • The protocol includes detailed guidance on checking differentiation progress and troubleshooting tips to ensure successful neuron generation.
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Purpose: rearrangements and activating point mutations represent targetable genomic alterations in advanced solid tumors. However, the frequency and clinicopathologic characteristics of wild-type amplification in cancer and its potential role as a targetable oncogenic driver are not well-characterized.

Methods: In two institutional cohorts of patients with solid cancers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) whose tumors underwent next-generation sequencing (NGS), the frequency and clinicopathologic features of wild-type amplification in the absence of rearrangements or activating mutations was assessed.

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Nonmuscle cell contractility is an essential feature underlying diverse cellular processes such as motility, morphogenesis, division and genome replication, intracellular transport, and secretion. Blood clot contraction is a well-studied process driven by contracting platelets. Megakaryocytes (MKs), which are the precursors to platelets, can be found in bone marrow and lungs.

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Oropharyngeal dysphagia is common in moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) patients and can have serious consequences. Delaying feeding in these patients can also be detrimental. Nonetheless, the psychometric properties of screening tools that can promptly identify dysphagia have never been tested in these neurotrauma populations.

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Tropomyosins coat actin filaments and impact actin-related signaling and cell morphogenesis. Genome-wide association studies have linked () with human blood trait variation. Prior work suggested that regulated blood cell formation in vitro, but it was unclear how or when affected hematopoiesis.

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Transient myeloproliferative disorder (TMD) is a pre-leukemic condition that occurs only in neonates with Trisomy 21 (T21), and is attributed to a genetic interaction between the third copy of chromosome 21 (HSA21) and a mutation in the transcription factor GATA1 that results in a truncated protein (GATA1s). We generated a euploid iPSC line with a GATA1s mutation that is isogenic to a previously published pair of T21 lines with and without a GATA1 mutation. The line was characterized for pluripotency, differentiation potential, and genomic stability.

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Dysfunction of visceral smooth muscle ("visceral myopathy") impairs bowel, bladder, and uterine function. Symptoms of this life-threatening condition include massive intestinal distension with slow transit, vomiting, feeding intolerance, growth failure, poor bladder emptying, and difficult vaginal delivery. The most common genetic cause of visceral myopathy is a heterozygous point mutation (R257C) in gamma smooth muscle actin (ACTG2).

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Visceral myopathies are debilitating conditions characterized by dysfunction of smooth muscle in visceral organs (bowel, bladder, and uterus). Individuals affected by visceral myopathy experience feeding difficulties, growth failure, life-threatening abdominal distension, and may depend on intravenous nutrition for survival. Unfortunately, our limited understanding of the pathophysiology of visceral myopathies means that current therapies remain supportive, with no mechanism-based treatments.

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Background: Recent developments in artificial intelligence suggest that radiomics may represent a promising non-invasive biomarker to predict response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). Nevertheless, validation of radiomics algorithms in independent cohorts remains a challenge due to variations in image acquisition and reconstruction. Using radiomics, we investigated the importance of scan normalization as part of a broader machine learning framework to enable model external generalizability to predict ICI response in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients across different centers.

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The KOLF2.1J iPSC line was recently proposed as a reference iPSC to promote the standardization of research studies in the stem cell field. Due to overall good performance differentiating to neural cell lineages, high gene editing efficiency, and absence of genetic variants associated to neurological disorders KOLF2.

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