Evaluation of an oral health education session for Early Head Start home visitors.

Objectives: Home visiting programs promote the education and health of Early Head Start (EHS) children and pregnant women. However, EHS's oral health component is unevenly implemented. We conducted an educational intervention to improve oral health knowledge and motivational interviewing techniques among Wisconsin EHS home visitors.

Factors Associated With Increased Reading Frequency in Children Exposed to Reach Out and Read.

Objective: A 2014 American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement on Literacy Promotion recommends providers endorse daily caregiver-child reading during health supervision visits. Reach Out and Read (ROR) is a widely used model of office-based early literacy promotion. We hypothesized that exposure to ROR and other variables such as reading as part of a bedtime routine positively correlate with caregiver-child reading frequency.

The tumor suppressor Cdc73 functionally associates with CPSF and CstF 3' mRNA processing factors.

The CDC73 tumor suppressor gene is mutationally inactivated in hereditary and sporadic parathyroid tumors. Its product, the Cdc73 protein, is a component of the RNA polymerase II and chromatin-associated human Paf1 complex (Paf1C). Here, we show that Cdc73 physically associates with the cleavage and polyadenylation specificity factor (CPSF) and cleavage stimulation factor (CstF) complexes that are required for the maturation of mRNA 3' ends in the cell nucleus.

Allele-dependent variation in the relative cellular potency of distinct EGFR inhibitors.

Targeted cancer therapies impede cancer cell growth by inhibiting the function of activated oncogene products. Patients with non-small cell lung cancer and somatic mutations of EGFR can have a dramatic response to treatment with erlotinib and gefitinib; different somatic mutations are associated with different times to progression and survival. In this study, the relative and absolute potencies of two distinct EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors, erlotinib and an investigational irreversible inhibitor, HKI-272, were found to vary significantly in a panel of Ba/F3 cells transformed by representative EGFR somatic mutations.

The major lung cancer-derived mutants of ERBB2 are oncogenic and are associated with sensitivity to the irreversible EGFR/ERBB2 inhibitor HKI-272.

Mutations in the ERBB2 gene were recently found in approximately 2% of primary non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) specimens; however, little is known about the functional consequences and the relevance to responsiveness to targeted drugs for most of these mutations. Here, we show that the major lung cancer-derived ERBB2 mutants, including the most frequent mutation, A775insYVMA, lead to oncogenic transformation in a cellular assay. Murine cells transformed with these mutants were relatively resistant to the reversible epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor erlotinib, resembling the resistant phenotype found in cells carrying the homologous mutations in exon 20 of EGFR.