Early clinical trial unit tumor board: a real-world experience in a national cancer network.

Purpose: Early clinical trials are the first step into clinical therapies for new drugs. Within the six Bavarian university-based hospitals (Augsburg, Erlangen, Regensburg, Munich (LMU and TU), Würzburg) we have enrolled a virtual network platform for patient discussion.

Methods: The virtual Early Clinical Trial Unit Tumor Board (ECTU Tumor Board) is a secured web-based meeting to evaluate early clinical trial options for patients, where representatives from local ECTUs participate.

Significance of molecular diagnostics for therapeutic decision-making in recurrent glioma.

Background: Targeted therapies have substantially improved survival in cancer patients with malignancies outside the brain. Whether in-depth analysis for molecular alterations may also offer therapeutic avenues in primary brain tumors remains unclear. We herein present our institutional experience for glioma patients discussed in our interdisciplinary (MTB) implemented at the Comprehensive Cancer Center Munich (LMU).

Cancer of unknown primary (CUP) through the lens of precision oncology: a single institution perspective.

Purpose: For patients with cancer of unknown primary (CUP), treatment options are limited. Precision oncology, the interplay of comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) and targeted therapies, aims to offer additional treatment options to patients with advanced and hard-to-treat cancers. We aimed to highlight the use of a molecular tumor board (MTB) in the therapeutic management of CUP patients.

Lessons learned: the first consecutive 1000 patients of the CCCMunich Molecular Tumor Board.

Purpose: In 2016, the University of Munich Molecular Tumor Board (MTB) was implemented to initiate a precision oncology program. This review of cases was conducted to assess clinical implications and functionality of the program, to identify current limitations and to inform future directions of these efforts.

Methods: Charts, molecular profiles, and tumor board decisions of the first 1000 consecutive cases (01/2016-03/2020) were reviewed.

Empirical assessment and comparison of neuro-evolutionary methods for the automatic off-line design of robot swarms.

Neuro-evolution is an appealing approach to generating collective behaviors for robot swarms. In its typical application, known as off-line automatic design, the neural networks controlling the robots are optimized in simulation. It is understood that the so-called reality gap, the unavoidable differences between simulation and reality, typically causes neural network to be less effective on real robots than what is predicted by simulation.

Modular automatic design of collective behaviors for robots endowed with local communication capabilities.

We investigate the automatic design of communication in swarm robotics through two studies. We first introduce Gianduja an automatic design method that generates collective behaviors for robot swarms in which individuals can locally exchange a message whose semantics is not a priori fixed. It is the automatic design process that, on a per-mission basis, defines the conditions under which the message is sent and the effect that it has on the receiving peers.

Phormica: Photochromic Pheromone Release and Detection System for Stigmergic Coordination in Robot Swarms.

Stigmergy is a form of indirect communication and coordination in which agents modify the environment to pass information to their peers. In nature, animals use stigmergy by, for example, releasing pheromone that conveys information to other members of their species. A few systems in swarm robotics research have replicated this process by introducing the concept of artificial pheromone.

Automatic Off-Line Design of Robot Swarms: A Manifesto.

Designing collective behaviors for robot swarms is a difficult endeavor due to their fully distributed, highly redundant, and ever-changing nature. To overcome the challenge, a few approaches have been proposed, which can be classified as manual, semi-automatic, or automatic design. This paper is intended to be the manifesto of the automatic off-line design for robot swarms.

Leishmaniasis in Eurasia and Africa: geographical distribution of vector species and pathogens.

Leishmaniasis is a vector-borne disease with a broad global occurrence and an increasing number of recorded cases; however, it is still one of the world's most neglected diseases. We here provide climatic suitability maps generated by means of an ecological niche modelling approach for 32 vector species with proven or suspected vector competence for five pathogens occurring in Eurasia and Africa. A GIS-based spatial overlay analysis was then used to compare the distributional patterns of vectors and pathogens to help evaluate the vector species-pathogen relationship currently found in the literature.

The genetic network controlling the Arabidopsis transcriptional response to Pseudomonas syringae pv. maculicola: roles of major regulators and the phytotoxin coronatine.

Expression profiling of wild-type plants and mutants with defects in key components of the defense signaling network was used to model the Arabidopsis network 24 h after infection by Pseudomonas syringae pv. maculicola ES4326. Results using the Affymetrix ATH1 array revealed that expression levels of most pathogen-responsive genes were affected by mutations in coi1, ein2, npr1, pad4, or sid2.

A method for computing the fraction of attributable risk related to climate damages.

The recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on the regulation of CO2 emissions from new motor vehicles shows the need for a robust methodology to evaluate the fraction of attributable risk from such emissions.

Gene therapy for HIV infection: what does it need to make it work?

The efficacy of antiviral drug therapy for HIV infection is limited by toxicity and viral resistance. Thus, alternative therapies need to be explored. Several gene therapeutic strategies for HIV infection have been developed, but in clinical testing therapeutically effective levels of the transgene product were not achieved.

Impact of gene-modified T cells on HIV infection dynamics.

Previous clinical trials in HIV-infected patients involving infusion of T cells protected by an antiviral gene have failed to show any therapeutic benefit. The value of such a treatment approach is thus still highly controversial. In this study, the anticipated effects of gene-modified cells on virus and T-cell kinetics are analysed by mathematical modeling.

The challenge of long-term climate change.

Climate policy needs to address the multidecadal to centennial time scale of climate change. Although the realization of short-term targets is an important first step, to be effective climate policies need to be conceived as long-term programs that will achieve a gradual transition to an essentially emission-free economy on the time scale of a century. This requires a considerably broader spectrum of policy measures than the primarily market-based instruments invoked for shorter term mitigation policies.