Publications by authors named "J Spicer"

Purpose: Neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade with nivolumab plus ipilimumab improves overall survival (OS) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); however, randomized data for resectable lung cancer are limited. We report results from the exploratory concurrently randomized nivolumab plus ipilimumab and chemotherapy arms of the international phase III CheckMate 816 trial.

Methods: Adults with stage IB-IIIA (American Joint Committee on Cancer seventh edition) resectable NSCLC received three cycles of nivolumab once every 2 weeks plus one cycle of ipilimumab or three cycles of chemotherapy (on day 1 or days 1 and 8 of each 3-week cycle) followed by surgery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Environmental drivers such as salinity can impact the timing, and duration of developmental events in aquatic early life stages of crustaceans, including terrestrial crabs of the family Gecarcinidae. Low salinity delays larval development in land crabs, but nothing is known about its influence on the crucial late-stage encapsulated embryonic, or immediate post-hatch development. Therefore, we exposed fertilised late-stage embryos of the Christmas Island red crab (Gecarcoidea natalis) to differing salinities (100, 75, 50, or 25 % sea water) for 24 h during their spawning period and measured some key developmental and physiological traits.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Feedback in decision-making often focuses on positive outcomes, leading to a bias in how people learn to differentiate between good and bad choices.
  • We explore two approaches to overcoming this bias: model-based methods that adjust their understanding based on available feedback and exemplar models that fill in gaps with hypothetical negative outcomes.
  • Our experiments reveal that people generally lean towards using exemplar models with imputation to address missing feedback, but a significant number also apply Bayesian models, indicating varied strategies influenced by uncertainty in the task.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study focused on the long-term effects of afatinib in patients with EGFR mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who also had other health issues, and assessed the usefulness of monitoring circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA).
  • Conducted in the UK, the TIMELY trial involved patients receiving afatinib daily until their disease progressed or they experienced significant side effects, with blood samples analyzed every 12 weeks.
  • Results showed that while the median progression-free survival was 7.9 months, some patients experienced long-term benefits, and ctDNA testing improved the detection of EGFR mutations and was linked to better outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF