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.
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 PDFComput Struct Biotechnol J
December 2024
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 PDFA dearth of local scientists is holding back research on the world's second largest rainforest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor 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 PDFBackground 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).
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 PDFBackground: 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 PDFBackground: 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: 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 PDFMelanoma 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 PDFDermatologie (Heidelb)
June 2024
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.
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.
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.
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 PDFBioengineering (Basel)
December 2023
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 PDFMunc18-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 PDFBackground: 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.
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