Technical advances over the past two decades have enabled robust detection of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in biological samples. Yet, higher clinical sensitivity is required to realize the full potential of liquid biopsies. This opinion article argues that to overcome current limitations, the abundance of informative cfDNA molecules - such as circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) - collected in a sample needs to increase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To detect and classify features of stigmatizing and biased language in intensive care electronic health records (EHRs) using natural language processing techniques.
Materials And Methods: We first created a lexicon and regular expression lists from literature-driven stem words for linguistic features of stigmatizing patient labels, doubt markers, and scare quotes within EHRs. The lexicon was further extended using Word2Vec and GPT 3.
Saponin-based vaccine adjuvants are potent in preclinical animal models and humans, but their mechanisms of action remain poorly understood. Here, using a stabilized HIV envelope trimer immunogen, we carried out studies in nonhuman primates (NHPs) comparing the most common clinical adjuvant aluminum hydroxide (alum) with saponin/monophosphoryl lipid A nanoparticles (SMNP), an immune-stimulating complex-like adjuvant. SMNP elicited substantially stronger humoral immune responses than alum, including 7-fold higher peak antigen-specific germinal center B-cell responses, 18-fold higher autologous neutralizing antibody titers, and higher levels of antigen-specific plasma and memory B cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMacrophages hold tremendous promise as effectors of cancer immunotherapy, but the best strategies to provoke these cells to attack tumors remain unknown. Here, we evaluated the therapeutic potential of targeting two distinct macrophage immune checkpoints: CD47 and CD24. We found that antibodies targeting these antigens could elicit maximal levels of phagocytosis when combined together in vitro.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Childhood maltreatment has detrimental health consequences. Risk for economic marginalization in adulthood is less clear.
Objective: To assess prospective associations between sexual abuse, paternal rejection and maternal rejection in childhood and indicators of economic marginalization.