Aptamers as a novel diagnostic and therapeutic tool and their potential use in parasitology.

Aptamers are single-stranded DNA or RNA sequences that adopt unique three-dimensional structures that allow them to recognize a specific target with high affinity. They can potentially be used for the diagnosis of diseases, as new therapeutic agents, for the detection of food risks, as biosensors, for the detection of toxins, and as drug carriers and nanoparticle markers, among other applications. To date, an aptamer called pegaptanib is the only aptamer approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for commercial use.

Nomogram to predict rectal toxicity following prostate cancer radiotherapy.

Background: To identify predictors of acute and late rectal toxicity following prostate cancer radiotherapy (RT), while integrating the potential impact of RT technique, dose escalation, and moderate hypofractionation, thus enabling us to generate a nomogram for individual prediction.

Methods: In total, 972 patients underwent RT for localized prostate cancer, to a total dose of 70 Gy or 80 Gy, using two different fractionations (2 Gy or 2.5 Gy/day), by means of several RT techniques (3D conformal RT [3DCRT], intensity-modulated RT [IMRT], or image-guided RT [IGRT]).

Detection of bladder metabolic artifacts in (18)F-FDG PET imaging.

Positron emission tomography using (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose ((18)F-FDG-PET) is a widely used imaging modality in oncology. It enables significant functional information to be included in analyses of anatomical data provided by other image modalities. Although PET offers high sensitivity in detecting suspected malignant metabolism, (18)F-FDG uptake is not tumor-specific and can also be fixed in surrounding healthy tissue, which may consequently be mistaken as cancerous.

Weighted quantification of ¹⁸F-FDG tumor metabolism activity using fuzzy-thresholding to predict post-treatment tumor recurrence.

Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancer to affect women worldwide. Despite the efficiency of radiotherapy treatment, some patients present post-treatment tumor recurrence which increases the risk of death. Early outcome prediction could help oncologists to adapt the treatment.

Random forests to predict tumor recurrence following cervical cancer therapy using pre- and per-treatment F-FDG PET parameters.

The ability to predict tumor recurrence after chemoradiotherapy of locally advanced cervical cancer is a crucial clinical issue to intensify the treatment of the most high-risk patients. The objective of this study was to investigate tumor metabolism characteristics extracted from pre- and per-treatment F-FDG PET images to predict 3-year overall recurrence (OR). A total of 53 locally advanced cervical cancer patients underwent pre- and per-treatment F-FDG PET (respectively PET1 and PET2).

Impact of head and neck cancer adaptive radiotherapy to spare the parotid glands and decrease the risk of xerostomia.

Background: Large anatomical variations occur during the course of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for locally advanced head and neck cancer (LAHNC). The risks are therefore a parotid glands (PG) overdose and a xerostomia increase. The purposes of the study were to estimate: - the PG overdose and the xerostomia risk increase during a "standard" IMRT (IMRTstd); - the benefits of an adaptive IMRT (ART) with weekly replanning to spare the PGs and limit the risk of xerostomia.

On feature extraction and classification in prostate cancer radiotherapy using tensor decompositions.

External beam radiotherapy is commonly prescribed for prostate cancer. Although new radiation techniques allow high doses to be delivered to the target, the surrounding healthy organs (rectum and bladder) may suffer from irradiation, which might produce undesirable side-effects. Hence, the understanding of the complex toxicity dose-volume effect relationships is crucial to adapt the treatment, thereby decreasing the risk of toxicity.

A tensor-based population value decomposition to explain rectal toxicity after prostate cancer radiotherapy.

In prostate cancer radiotherapy the association between the dose distribution and the occurrence of undesirable side-effects is yet to be revealed. In this work a method to perform population analysis by comparing the dose distributions is proposed. The method is a tensor-based approach that generalises an existing method for 2D images and allows for the highlighting of over irradiated zones correlated with rectal bleeding after prostate cancer radiotherapy.