New approach to control ischemic severity ex vivo.

Background: It is advantageous to be able to both control and define a metric for ischemia severity in ex vivo models to enable more precise comparisons to in vivo models and to facilitate more sophisticated mechanistic studies. Currently, the primary method to induce and study ischemia ex vivo is to completely deplete oxygen and glucose in the culture media; however, in vivo ischemia often involves varying degrees of severities.

New Method: In this work, we have successfully developed an approach to both control and characterize three different ischemic severities ex vivo and we define these standard condition metrics via an oxygen sensor: normoxia (control), mild ischemia (partial oxygen-glucose deprivation), and severe ischemia (complete oxygen-glucose deprivation).

Implementing palliative care in hepatocellular carcinoma ambulatory clinics-study protocol for Accelerated translational research in PRImary liver CAncer (APRICA) randomised controlled palliative care trial.

Background: Integration of symptom and palliative care for people with advanced cancer is established in many tumour types, but its role in people with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has not been clearly defined. This study aims to evaluate the clinical and cost effectiveness of an intervention involving a suite of strategies designed to assess and treat palliative care symptoms and needs in adult outpatients with HCC attending four New South Wales (NSW) metropolitan tertiary hospitals.

Methods: This trial will use a pragmatic cluster-based randomised-controlled design, with ambulatory HCC services as the clusters.

Promoting Surgical Resident Well-being Through Therapist-Facilitated Discussion Groups: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis.

Objective: To improve the well-being and sense of community of surgical trainees.

Design: Residents were invited to participate in confidential discussion groups during protected education time to have a safe space to support each other through common struggles. The groups were facilitated by licensed mental health professionals with experience working with medical trainees.

Identifying transgene insertions in genomes with Oxford Nanopore sequencing.

Genetically modified organisms are commonly used in disease research and agriculture but the precise genomic alterations underlying transgenic mutations are often unknown. The position and characteristics of transgenes, including the number of independent insertions, influences the expression of both transgenic and wild-type sequences. We used long-read, Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) to sequence and assemble two transgenic strains of commonly used in the research of neurodegenerative diseases: BY250 (pPdat-1::GFP) and UA44 (GFP and human -synuclein), a model for Parkinson's research.

Effect of chronic delivery of the NOP/MOR partial agonist AT-201 and NOP antagonist J-113397 on heroin relapse in a rat model of opioid maintenance.

Rationale: The opioid crisis persists despite availability of effective opioid agonist maintenance treatments (methadone and buprenorphine). Thus, there is a need to advance novel medications for the treatment of opioid use and relapse.

Objectives: We recently modeled maintenance treatment in rats and found that chronic delivery of buprenorphine and the mu opioid receptor (MOR) partial agonist TRV130 decreases relapse to oxycodone seeking and taking.