Publications by authors named "Livingstone E"

Background: Up to now, the optimal duration of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) has not been evaluated in prospective studies. However, current clinical practice requires decisions to be made regarding the duration of ICI in complete responders.

Material And Methods: A survey was sent to 80 DeCOG skin cancer centers to assess how decisions are made on treatment duration of ICI in melanoma after having reached complete response, and staging intervals after ICI discontinuation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Cancer immunotherapy has revolutionized melanoma treatment, but the high number of non-responders still emphasizes the need for improvement of therapy. One potential avenue for enhancing anti-tumor treatment is through the modulation of coagulation and platelet activity. Both have been found to play an important role in the tumor microenvironment, tumor growth and metastasis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The introduction of immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has greatly improved treatment outcomes for advanced melanoma, but many patients still become resistant to it due to unclear reasons.
  • Although combining different ICB therapies has been shown to enhance response rates, it also comes with increased toxicity for patients.
  • An analysis of tumor samples from ICB-naïve patients revealed that high genomic heterogeneity and low ploidy can identify those who are intrinsically resistant to aPD-1, leading to a predictive model that may help tailor treatment strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The growth of biomedical literature presents challenges in extracting and structuring knowledge. Knowledge Graphs (KGs) offer a solution by representing relationships between biomedical entities. However, manual construction of KGs is labor-intensive and time-consuming, highlighting the need for automated methods.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Congo calling.

Science

October 2024

A dearth of local scientists is holding back research on the world's second largest rainforest.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Interferon-alpha is crucial for treating cutaneous T-cell lymphomas (CTCL), but the approved version (IFN-α2a) has been unavailable since January 2020, prompting the use of pegylated interferon-α2a (pegIFN-α2a), which is not officially approved for this condition.
  • A study involving 70 CTCL patients from twelve German skin centers found a 55.2% overall response rate to pegIFN-α2a, with common adverse effects leading to a 50% discontinuation rate within about 63 weeks.
  • The findings suggest that pegIFN-α2a therapy may have similar efficacy and side effects as the discontinued IF
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied patients with advanced skin cancer (melanoma) to see how well they responded to a special treatment called immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI).
  • They found that only about 8% of patients responded quickly to the treatment, while others had slower responses or did not respond at all.
  • Despite the quick responders showing some improvement, they didn’t live longer or have better outcomes than those who responded later to the treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Mycosis fungoides (MF) is a common type of skin cancer that makes it hard to tell harmful T cells from normal ones.
  • Researchers used single-cell RNA and T-cell receptor sequencing on skin samples from 12 MF patients, analyzing 18,630 T cells from 9 of them to distinguish between malignant and reactive cells.
  • The study found unique gene signatures in malignant T cells that could help differentiate them from reactive T cells, revealing significant variations in cell characteristics among patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

For time-sensitive treatment of a patient with malignant melanoma, physicians must obtain a rapid overview of the patient's status. This study aimed to analyze context-specific features and processes at the point of care to derive requirements for a dashboard granting more straightforward access to information. The Think-Aloud method, contextual inquiries, and interviews were performed with physicians from the Department of Dermatology at the University Hospital Essen in Germany.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Existing literature highlights notable health and social inequalities for people aging with a lifelong disability and the need for research to better understand how we can support this group to age well. This scoping review mapped existing literature related to "aging well" in people with lifelong disabilities.

Research Design And Methods: Five scientific databases and gray literature sources were searched for studies related to "aging well" and "lifelong disability" (defined as a disability that a person had lived with since birth or early childhood).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Primary cutaneous diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, leg type (PCDLBCL, LT) is a subtype of cutaneous B-cell lymphoma with unfavorable prognosis usually requiring aggressive polychemotherapy for disease control. Only single cases of spontaneous regression of PCDLBCL, LT are reported in the literature, peaking 3 months post-biopsy following a clinical history of no longer than 1 year. Here, we report the first case of a spontaneously relapsing and remitting PCDLBCL, LT with complete regression after a clinical history of more than 9 years and thus an atypically indolent clinical course.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Melanomas lacking mutations in BRAF, NRAS and NF1 are frequently referred to as "triple wild-type" (tWT) melanomas. They constitute 5-10 % of all melanomas and remain poorly characterized regarding clinical characteristics and response to therapy. This study investigates the largest multicenter collection of tWT-melanomas to date.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Skin cancer is the most common cancer worldwide and comprises various non-melanoma skin cancer (NMCS) diagnoses and malignant melanoma (MM). It places a psychological burden on patients and their spouses. The present study aims to investigate psychological distress, temporal changes of psychosocial resources (PR), as well as dyadic dynamics of psychological distress and PR in patients with NMSC or MM and their spouses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Screening for gene mutations in melanoma has become standard practice, with identified mutations impacting prognosis in metastatic uveal melanoma, while their significance in non-uveal melanoma is still unclear.
  • A study analyzing 2,650 melanoma cases found mutations in 129 samples, highlighting differences in the prevalence and types of mutations between uveal and non-uveal melanomas.
  • Unlike uveal melanomas, where mutations are linked to worse outcomes, mutations in non-uveal melanomas are mostly seen as "passenger mutations" with little impact on prognosis or treatment effectiveness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

: To support clinical decision-making at the point of care, the "best next step" based on Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and actual accurate patient data must be provided. To do this, textual SOPs have to be transformed into operable clinical algorithms and linked to the data of the patient being treated. For this linkage, we need to know exactly which data are needed by clinicians at a certain decision point and whether these data are available.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Melanoma causes the majority of skin cancer-related deaths. Despite novel therapy options, metastatic melanoma still has a poor prognosis. Immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) therapy has been shown to prolong overall survival in patients with advanced melanoma, but mucosal melanomas respond less favorably compared to melanomas of cutaneous origin.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Oncological therapies can cause a variety of mucocutaneous adverse events. Exanthematous adverse events can be challenging in the context of the urgent need for cancer treatment due to their spread, sometimes rapid progression, and mucous membrane or organ involvement.

Materials And Methods: This article provides an overview of the most important exanthematic dermatoses as side effects of modern drug-based tumor therapies with diagnostic and therapeutic information for clinicians, taking into account the current literature and guidelines.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Adjuvant treatments like immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) and targeted therapy (TT) significantly improve disease-free survival for high-risk melanoma patients, but treatment decisions are heavily influenced by potential side effects and toxicity risk.
  • A study involving 108 dermatooncologists from Germany and Switzerland surveyed their attitudes towards these treatments, revealing that physicians have a different perspective on the severity of side effects compared to patients.
  • Physicians were found to be less concerned about treatment-related side effects and required lower expectations for improvements in survival rates to accept the risks, highlighting a notable difference in treatment decision-making between doctors and patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Effective treatment options are limited for patients with advanced melanoma who have progressed on immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) and targeted therapies (TT). Preclinical models support the combination of ICI with TT; however, clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of triplet combinations in first-line setting showed limited advantage compared to TT only.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective, multicenter study, that included patients with advanced melanoma who were treated with BRAF/MEK inhibitors in combination with an anti-PD-(L)1 antibody (triplet therapy) after failure of at least one anti-PD-(L)1-based therapy and one TT in seven major melanoma centers between February 2016 and July 2022.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Recent evidence suggests additional immunomodulatory properties of RANKL inhibition possibly boosting the clinical efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI).

Methods: We conducted a prospective, multicentre clinical trial in unresectable stage IV melanoma patients with bone metastases who received denosumab in parallel with dual ICI (BONEMET) and performed comprehensive immune monitoring at baseline and 4, 12, and 24 weeks after initiation of therapy. Secondary endpoints included tolerability and efficacy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * It analyzed data from 578 treatment-naïve melanoma patients receiving anti-PD-1 therapy, distinguishing between those who took antibiotics before or during treatment.
  • * Results indicate that antibiotic use within 60 days before starting ICB is linked to poorer progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS), while antibiotics taken after treatment initiation do not significantly impact these outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Primary cutaneous B-cell lymphomas (CBCL) are a group of rare malignant skin diseases that represent approximately 20%-30% of all primary cutaneous lymphomas (PCL). Previous studies revealed impaired health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients diagnosed with primary cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL). Currently, only small-sized studies investigated HRQoL in CBCL patients and lacked detailed analysis of respective subtypes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Due to an insufficient amount of image annotation, artificial intelligence in computational histopathology usually relies on fine-tuning pre-trained neural networks. While vanilla fine-tuning has shown to be effective, research on computer vision has recently proposed improved algorithms, promising better accuracy. While initial studies have demonstrated the benefits of these algorithms for medical AI, in particular for radiology, there is no empirical evidence for improved accuracy in histopathology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Munc18-interacting proteins (Mints) are multidomain adaptors that regulate neuronal membrane trafficking, signaling, and neurotransmission. Mint1 and Mint2 are highly expressed in the brain with overlapping roles in the regulation of synaptic vesicle fusion required for neurotransmitter release by interacting with the essential synaptic protein Munc18-1. Here, we have used AlphaFold2 to identify and then validate the mechanisms that underpin both the specific interactions of neuronal Mint proteins with Munc18-1 as well as their wider interactome.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Health worker retention in remote and hard-to-reach areas remains a threat in most low- and middle-income countries, and this negatively impacts health service delivery. The health workforce inequity is catastrophic for countries like Uganda that still has a low health worker to patient ratio, and remote areas like Lira District that is still recovering from a long-term civil war. This study explores factors associated with retention of health workers in remote public health centers in Lira district in Northern Uganda.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF