Publications by authors named "K Berman"

Dysfunction of dopamine systems has long been considered a hallmark of schizophrenia, and nearly all current first-line medication treatments block dopamine D receptors. However, approximately a quarter of patients will not adequately respond to these agents and are considered treatment-resistant. Whereas abnormally high striatal presynaptic dopamine synthesis capacity has been observed in people with schizophrenia, studies of treatment-resistant patients have not shown this pattern and have even found the opposite - i.

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In the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the collection of dried blood spots (DBS) enabled public health laboratories to undertake population-scale seroprevalence studies used to estimate rates of SARS-CoV-2 exposure. With SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity levels now estimated to exceed 94% in the United States, attention has turned to using DBS to assess neutralizing antibodies within cohorts of interest. With this goal in mind, we generated contrived DBS (cDBS) and whole blood-derived DBS from convalescent and vaccinated individuals and subjected DBS eluates to a battery of assays, including a SARS-CoV-2 multiplexed microsphere immunoassay (MIA), a receptor binding domain (RBD)-human ACE2 inhibition assay (iACE2), a cell-based pseudovirus neutralization assay, and real-time PCR-based surrogate neutralization assay (NAB-Sure).

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Article Synopsis
  • The clinical development of farnesyltransferase inhibitors (FTIs) for HRAS-mutant tumors shows varied responses due to co-occurring mutations and their impact on sensitivity to FTIs.
  • Targeted sequencing revealed that HRAS-mutant cancers frequently exhibit mutations in the MAPK, PI3K, or RTK pathways, more so than KRAS and NRAS mutants, with specific alterations like BRAF, NF1, PTEN, and PIK3CA being prevalent.
  • Research indicated that while certain comutations confer resistance to FTIs, combining FTIs with MEK inhibitors may enhance sensitivity in HRAS-mutant tumors, presenting a potential treatment strategy.
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RBM10 modulates transcriptome-wide cassette exon splicing. Loss-of-function mutations are enriched in thyroid cancers with distant metastases. Analysis of transcriptomes and genes mis-spliced by RBM10 loss showed pro-migratory and RHO/RAC signaling signatures.

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