Publications by authors named "M G Wiggans"
Background: The flatworm planarian, Schmidtea mediterranea, has a large population of adult stem cells (ASCs) that replace any cell type during tissue turnover or regeneration. How planarian ASCs (called neoblasts) manage self-renewal with the ability to produce daughter cells of different cell lineages (multipotency) is not well understood. Chromatin remodeling complexes ultimately control access to DNA regions of chromosomes and together with specific transcription factors determine whether a gene is transcribed in a given cell type.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcross the animal kingdom, adult tissue homeostasis is regulated by adult stem cell activity, which is commonly dysregulated in human cancers. However, identifying key regulators of stem cells in the milieu of thousands of genes dysregulated in a given cancer is challenging. Here, using a comparative genomics approach between planarian adult stem cells and patient-derived glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs), we identify and demonstrate the role of DEAD-box helicase DDX56 in regulating aspects of stemness in four stem cell systems: planarians, mouse neural stem cells, human GSCs, and a fly model of glioblastoma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Many animals possess stem cells throughout their lives, indicating that stem cells might be an ancestral trait shared by all animals.
- Identifying and analyzing stemness gene signatures across different species poses challenges, requiring experimentation, genomic methods, and mapping gene similarities across evolutionary distances.
- By comparing stem cell-specific gene signatures, researchers hope to uncover ancestral stemness programs and understand how their dysregulation can lead to cancer stem cell characteristics.
Comparison of risk-scoring systems in the prediction of outcome after liver resection.
Perioper Med (Lond)
November 2017
Background: Risk prediction techniques commonly used in liver surgery include the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) grading, Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) and cardiopulmonary exercise tests (CPET). This study compares the utility of these techniques along with the number of segments resected as predictive tools in liver surgery.
Methods: A review of a unit database of patients undergoing liver resection between February 2008 and January 2015 was undertaken.
Background: A period of recovery is commonly allowed between completion of chemotherapy for colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) and resection, during which tumour progression may occur. The study-aim is to assess the growth of CRLM in this interval and association with outcome.
Method: Data on 146 patients were analysed.