[Opportunities and challenges of active patient involvement in clinical research in Germany - from the perspectives of a patient representative, a clinical researcher and two staff members of research funding management].

Background: Active involvement of patients in clinical research is increasingly demanded in Germany. It has great potential to increase the quality and relevance of research and to contribute to patient empowerment. However, patients, researchers and research funders have experienced that the implementation of patient involvement is accompanied by cultural, practical and personal challenges.

Hepatic FTO is dispensable for the regulation of metabolism but counteracts HCC development in vivo.

Objective: Single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the FTO gene encoding an mAm and an mA demethylase are associated with obesity. Moreover, recent studies have linked a dysregulation of mA modifications and its machinery, including FTO, to the development of several forms of cancers. However, the functional role of hepatic FTO in metabolism and the development and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a proteotypic obesity-associated cancer, remains unclear.

Impaired neonatal survival of pro-opiomelanocortin null mutants.

Intercrosses of heterozygous pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) mice result in homozygous null progeny at lower frequencies than expected. Genotyping offspring at pre-, peri-, and postnatal stages revealed that over half of homozygous null mutants die in the early postnatal stages. To investigate the reasons for this early postnatal lethality, we analyzed in detail different parameters in the initial hours after birth.