Immunomodulation of NK, NKT and B/T cell subtypes in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma patients treated with pomalidomide along with velcade and dexamethasone and its association with improved progression-free survival.

Background: Multiple Myeloma (MM) patients exhibit dysregulated immune system, which is further weakened by chemotherapeutic agents. While cereblon-modulating agents, such as pomalidomide and lenalidomide, have been found to improve the immune profile, the efficacy of their impact in combination with other treatments is yet unknown.

Methods: We conducted an immune-profiling of a longitudinal cohort of 366 peripheral blood samples from the CC4047-MM-007 (OPTIMISMM, NCT01734928) study.

Tumoral CD105 promotes immunosuppression, metastasis, and angiogenesis in renal cell carcinoma.

CD105 (endoglin) is a transmembrane protein that functions as a TGF-beta coreceptor and is highly expressed on endothelial cells. Unsurprisingly, preclinical and clinical evidence strongly suggests that CD105 is an important contributor to tumor angiogenesis and tumor progression. Emerging evidence suggests that CD105 is also expressed by tumor cells themselves in certain cancers such as renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Reliability of ultrasound duplex for detection of hemodynamically significant stenosis in hemodialysis access.

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the accuracy of AVF and AVG duplex ultrasound (US) compared to angiographic findings in patients with suspected failing dialysis access.

Materials And Methods: From July 2008 to December 2010, US was performed on 35 hemodialysis patients with 51 vascular accesses having clinical feature or dialysis parameter suspicious of access problem. Peak systolic velocity ratio of ≥2 was the criteria for diagnosing stenosis ≥50%.