Publications by authors named "K J Mertz"
Tumour content plays a pivotal role in directing the bioinformatic analysis of molecular profiles such as copy number variation (CNV). In clinical application, tumour purity estimation (TPE) is achieved either through visual pathological review [conventional pathology (CP)] or the deconvolution of molecular data. While CP provides a direct measurement, it demonstrates modest reproducibility and lacks standardisation.
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- The study investigates how cancer cells influence the fitness of surrounding tumor microenvironment (TME) cells through a mechanism involving a long non-coding RNA called Tu-Stroma, which alters the expression of Flower isoforms, impacting their growth advantage.
- The expression of Flower Win isoforms in cancer cells enhances their dominance over TME cells that express Flower Lose isoforms, leading to reduced fitness in the TME.
- Targeting Flower proteins with a humanized monoclonal antibody in mice has shown promising results, significantly reducing cancer growth and metastasis while improving survival rates and protecting organs from potential lesions.
Article Synopsis
- T cell-based immunotherapies are effective against cancer but are limited by cancer cells' ability to escape immune detection; recent research is shifting focus to natural killer (NK) cells, which can target tumors directly.
- Newly developed methods have been used to screen for compounds that improve NK cell functionality, particularly in dysfunctional cells found in the tumor microenvironment.
- A promising compound, a C
In the last two decades, next-generation sequencing (NGS) has facilitated enormous progress in cancer medicine, in both diagnosis and treatment. However, the usefulness of NGS in older cancer patients is unclear. To determine the role of NGS in older cancer patients, we retrospectively assessed demographic, clinicopathologic, and disease-specific data from 100 randomly selected cancer patients (any subtype/stage) who underwent NGS testing in 2020 at our institution and compared the treatment outcomes (progression-free survival [PFS] and overall survival [OS]) in the younger and older patient cohorts (A [n = 34] and B [n = 66]: age < 70 and ≥70 years, respectively).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSomatic variant testing through next-generation sequencing (NGS) is well integrated into Swiss molecular pathology laboratories and has become a standard diagnostic method for numerous indications in cancer patient care. Currently, there is a wide variation in reporting practices within our country, and as patients move between different hospitals, it is increasingly necessary to standardize NGS reports to ease their reinterpretation. Additionally, as many different stakeholders-oncologists, hematologists, geneticists, pathologists, and patients-have access to the NGS report, it needs to contain comprehensive and detailed information in order to answer the questions of experts and avoid misinterpretation by non-experts.
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