Medicaid Expansion Increases Treatment for Patients with Colon Cancer.

Introduction: Medicaid expansion (ME) has positively impacted colon cancer screening. ME's effect on colon cancer treatment is less clear. This study analyses the effect of ME on patterns of colon cancer treatment.

Cryo-EM analysis of complement C3 reveals a reversible major opening of the macroglobulin ring.

The C3 protein is the central molecule within the complement system and undergoes proteolytic activation to C3b in the presence of pathogens. Pattern-independent activation of C3 also occurs via hydrolysis, resulting in C3(HO), but the structural details of C3 hydrolysis remain elusive. Here we show that the conformation of the C3(HO) analog, C3MA, is indistinguishable from C3b.

Disparities in Access to Care in the Multimodal Treatment of Primary Nonmetastatic Liver Cancers and Their Impact on Patient Outcomes.

Background: Liver cancer incidence and mortality have been shown to differ by race, ethnicity, and geography. This study aims to analyze disparities in the multimodal treatment of liver cancers in Louisiana.

Methods: Cases of nonmetastatic liver cancer in Louisiana from 2010 to 2020 were obtained from the Louisiana Tumor Registry.

Variants and vaccines impact nasal immunity over three waves of SARS-CoV-2.

Viral variant and host vaccination status impact infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), yet how these factors shift cellular responses in the human nasal mucosa remains uncharacterized. We performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) on nasopharyngeal swabs from vaccinated and unvaccinated adults with acute Delta and Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infections and integrated with data from acute infections with ancestral SARS-CoV-2. Patients with Delta and Omicron exhibited greater similarity in nasal cell composition driven by myeloid, T cell and SARS-CoV-2 cell subsets, which was distinct from that of ancestral cases.

The tumor immune microenvironment in primary cutaneous melanoma.

Melanoma is an immunogenic tumor. The melanoma tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) is made up of a heterogenous mix of both immune and non-immune cells as well as a multitude of signaling molecules. The interactions between tumor cells, immune cells and signaling molecules affect tumor progression and therapeutic responses.