Radiotherapy combined with nivolumab or temozolomide for newly diagnosed glioblastoma with unmethylated MGMT promoter: An international randomized phase III trial.

Background: Addition of temozolomide (TMZ) to radiotherapy (RT) improves overall survival (OS) in patients with glioblastoma (GBM), but previous studies suggest that patients with tumors harboring an unmethylated MGMT promoter derive minimal benefit. The aim of this open-label, phase III CheckMate 498 study was to evaluate the efficacy of nivolumab (NIVO) + RT compared with TMZ + RT in newly diagnosed GBM with unmethylated MGMT promoter.

Methods: Patients were randomized 1:1 to standard RT (60 Gy) + NIVO (240 mg every 2 weeks for eight cycles, then 480 mg every 4 weeks) or RT + TMZ (75 mg/m2 daily during RT and 150-200 mg/m2/day 5/28 days during maintenance).

Effect of Nivolumab vs Bevacizumab in Patients With Recurrent Glioblastoma: The CheckMate 143 Phase 3 Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Clinical outcomes for glioblastoma remain poor. Treatment with immune checkpoint blockade has shown benefits in many cancer types. To our knowledge, data from a randomized phase 3 clinical trial evaluating a programmed death-1 (PD-1) inhibitor therapy for glioblastoma have not been reported.

Predictive probability methods for interim monitoring in clinical trials with longitudinal outcomes.

In clinical research and development, interim monitoring is critical for better decision-making and minimizing the risk of exposing patients to possible ineffective therapies. For interim futility or efficacy monitoring, predictive probability methods are widely adopted in practice. Those methods have been well studied for univariate variables.

Potential candidate genomic biomarkers of drug induced vascular injury in the rat.

Drug-induced vascular injury is frequently observed in rats but the relevance and translation to humans present a hurdle for drug development. Numerous structurally diverse pharmacologic agents have been shown to induce mesenteric arterial medial necrosis in rats, but no consistent biomarkers have been identified. To address this need, a novel strategy was developed in rats to identify genes associated with the development of drug-induced mesenteric arterial medial necrosis.

Diagnostic performance of traditional hepatobiliary biomarkers of drug-induced liver injury in the rat.

Nonclinical studies provide the opportunity to anchor biochemical with morphologic findings; however, liver injury is often complex and heterogeneous, confounding the ability to relate biochemical changes with specific patterns of injury. The aim of the current study was to compare diagnostic performance of hepatobiliary markers for specific manifestations of drug-induced liver injury in rat using data collected in a recent hepatic toxicogenomics initiative in which rats (n = 3205) were given 182 different treatments for 4 or 14 days. Diagnostic accuracy of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), total bilirubin (Tbili), serum bile acids (SBA), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), gamma glutamyl transferase (GGT), total cholesterol (Chol), and triglycerides (Trig) was evaluated for specific types of liver histopathology by Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis.

Multi-platform investigation of the metabolome in a leptin receptor defective murine model of type 2 diabetes.

We describe a multi-platform ((1)H NMR, LC-MS, microarray) investigation of metabolic disturbances associated with the leptin receptor defective (db/db) mouse model of type 2 diabetes using novel assignment methodologies. For the first time, several urinary metabolites were found to be associated with diabetes and/or diabetes progression and confirmed in both NMR and LC-MS datasets. The confirmed metabolites were trimethylamine-n-oxide (TMAO), creatine, carnitine, and phenylalanine.

Interlaboratory evaluation of genomic signatures for predicting carcinogenicity in the rat.

The Critical Path Institute recently established the Predictive Safety Testing Consortium, a collaboration between several companies and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, aimed at evaluating and qualifying biomarkers for a variety of toxicological endpoints.

Weighted least-squares deconvolution method for discovery of group differences between complex biofluid 1H NMR spectra.

Biomarker discovery through analysis of high-throughput NMR data is a challenging, time-consuming process due to the requirement of sophisticated, dataset specific preprocessing techniques and the inherent complexity of the data. Here, we demonstrate the use of weighted, constrained least-squares for fitting a linear mixture of reference standard data to complex urine NMR spectra as an automated way of utilizing current assignment knowledge and the ability to deconvolve confounded spectral regions. Following the least-squares fit, univariate statistics were used to identify metabolites associated with group differences.

Histone acetylation and transcriptional regulation in the genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Motivation: In eukaryotic genomes, histone acetylation and thereafter departure from the chromatin are essential for gene transcription initiation. Because gene transcription is tightly regulated by transcription factors, there are some speculations on the cooperation of histone acetylation and transcription factor binding. However, systematic statistical analyses of this relationship on a genomic scale have not been reported.