Publications by authors named "Melissa Abel"

Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is the most fatal form of lung cancer. Intratumoral heterogeneity, marked by neuroendocrine (NE) and non-neuroendocrine (non-NE) cell states, defines SCLC, but the cell-extrinsic drivers of SCLC plasticity are poorly understood. To map the landscape of SCLC tumor microenvironment (TME), we apply spatially resolved transcriptomics and quantitative mass spectrometry-based proteomics to metastatic SCLC tumors obtained via rapid autopsy.

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Article Synopsis
  • Patients with relapsed small cell lung cancer (SCLC), known for its poor prognosis, showed some improvement when the drug berzosertib was added to topotecan in a phase 2 study.
  • A randomized clinical trial conducted from December 2019 to December 2022 involved 60 patients who received either topotecan alone or in combination with berzosertib, assessing their outcomes based on progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS).
  • Results indicated that after a median follow-up of 21.3 months, there was no significant difference in PFS or OS between the two treatment groups, highlighting the challenge in treating relapsed SCLC.
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  • Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a very dangerous type of lung cancer that doesn't usually respond well to standard treatments.
  • A new drug called lurbinectedin was recently approved for patients whose cancer came back, but doctors think using it with other treatments might work better.
  • Researchers found that combining lurbinectedin with a special drug called berzosertib may help more patients by making cancer cells grow uncontrollably and die, and they are now testing this combination in a clinical trial.
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  • The study aimed to explore the combination of chemotherapy and DNA damage response (DDR) inhibitors, focusing on using tumor-targeted chemotherapy to minimize toxicities.
  • A phase I trial tested sacituzumab govitecan, an antibody-drug conjugate, with the ATR inhibitor berzosertib, involving twelve patients at increasing dose levels.
  • The treatment showed improved safety with no severe adverse effects, leading to favorable tumor regressions in some patients, suggesting a promising new approach for better delivering cancer therapies.
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Immuno-oncology (IO) and targeted therapies, such as small molecule inhibitors, have changed the landscape of cancer treatment and prognosis; however, durable responses have been difficult to achieve due to tumor heterogeneity, development of drug resistance, and adverse effects that limit dosing and prolonged drug use. To improve upon the current medicinal armamentarium, there is an urgent need for new ways to understand, reverse, and treat carcinogenesis. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-CRISPR-associated protein (Cas) 9 is a powerful and efficient tool for genome editing that has shown significant promise for developing new therapeutics.

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Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a cancer of myeloid-lineage cells with limited therapeutic options. We previously combined ex vivo drug sensitivity with genomic, transcriptomic, and clinical annotations for a large cohort of AML patients, which facilitated discovery of functional genomic correlates. Here, we present a dataset that has been harmonized with our initial report to yield a cumulative cohort of 805 patients (942 specimens).

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Minority and underresourced communities experience disproportionately high rates of fatal cancer and cardiovascular disease. The intersection of these disparities within the multidisciplinary field of cardio-oncology is in critical need of examination, given the risk of perpetuating health inequities in the growing vulnerable population of patients with cancer and cardiovascular disease. This review identifies 13 cohort studies and 2 meta-analyses investigating disparate outcomes in treatment-associated cardiotoxicity and situates these data within the context of oncologic disparities, preexisting cardiovascular disparities, and potential system-level inequities.

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Metastatic urothelial carcinoma (UC) carries a poor prognosis and a 5-year overall survival of less than 5%, despite standard of care therapy using cisplatin-based chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors. Thus, novel agents that improve survival and have an acceptable toxicity profile are urgently needed. Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) represent a promising new treatment option that utilizes the targeting ability of an antibody to deliver cytotoxic drugs directly to tumors.

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Article Synopsis
  • The Beat AML program analyzed tumor specimens from 562 AML patients to examine complex mutations and drug responses using whole-exome and RNA sequencing.* -
  • The study discovered previously undetected mutations and identified how certain drug responses are linked to specific combinations of these mutations.* -
  • Findings, including gene expression signatures related to drug responses, are available through the Beat AML data viewer, enabling further research on AML biology.*
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The protein tyrosine phosphatase PTPN11 is implicated in the pathogenesis of juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and other malignancies. Activating mutations in PTPN11 increase downstream proliferative signaling and cell survival. We investigated the signaling upstream of PTPN11 in JMML and AML cells and found that PTPN11 was activated by the nonreceptor tyrosine/serine/threonine kinase TNK2 and that PTPN11-mutant JMML and AML cells were sensitive to TNK2 inhibition.

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Adoptive transfer of T cells expressing chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) is an effective immunotherapy for B-cell malignancies but has failed in some solid tumors clinically. Intracerebral tumors may pose challenges that are even more significant. In order to devise a treatment strategy for patients with glioblastoma (GBM), we evaluated CARs as a monotherapy in a murine model of GBM.

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Resident microbes promote many aspects of host development, although the mechanisms by which microbiota influence host tissues remain unclear. We showed previously that the microbiota is required for allocation of appropriate numbers of secretory cells in the zebrafish intestinal epithelium. Because Notch signaling is crucial for secretory fate determination, we conducted epistasis experiments to establish whether the microbiota modulates host Notch signaling.

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Background: Cytoreductive surgery combined with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CRS/HIPEC) has become a common treatment approach for disseminated appendiceal neoplasms. Systemic absorption of intraperitoneal chemotherapeutics may lead to drug-induced toxicity, most commonly neutropenia. Mitomycin C has been the most commonly used chemotherapeutic in HIPEC for the past several decades.

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The amount of genomic information about leukemia cells currently far exceeds our overall understanding of the precise genetic events that ultimately drive disease development and progression. Effective implementation of personalized medicine will require tools to distinguish actionable genetic alterations within the complex genetic landscape of leukemia. In this study, we performed kinase inhibitor screens to predict functional gene targets in primary specimens from patients with acute myeloid leukemia and chronic myelomonocytic leukemia.

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Purpose: Colony-stimulating factor 3 receptor (CSF3R) mutations have been identified in the majority of chronic neutrophilic leukemia (CNL) and a smaller percentage of atypical chronic myeloid leukemia (aCML) cases. Although CSF3R point mutations (e.g.

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Many patients with pancreatic cancer have metastases to distant organs at the time of initial presentation. Recent studies examining the evolution of pancreatic cancer at the genetic level have shown that clonal complexity of metastatic pancreatic cancer is already initiated within primary tumors, and organ-specific metastases are derived from different subclones. However, we do not yet understand to what extent the evolution of pancreatic cancer contributes to proteomic and signaling alterations.

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Mutations in the CSF3 granulocyte colony-stimulating factor receptor CSF3R have recently been found in a large percentage of patients with chronic neutrophilic leukemia and, more rarely, in other types of leukemia. These CSF3R mutations fall into two distinct categories: membrane-proximal mutations and truncation mutations. Although both classes of mutation have exhibited the capacity for cellular transformation, several aspects of this transformation, including the kinetics, the requirement for ligand, and the dysregulation of downstream signaling pathways, have all been shown to be discrepant between the mutation types, suggesting distinct mechanisms of activation.

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We have recently identified targetable mutations in CSF3R (GCSFR) in 60% of chronic neutrophilic leukemia (CNL) and atypical (BCR-ABL-negative) chronic myeloid leukemia (aCML) patients. Here we demonstrate that the most prevalent, activating mutation, CSF3R T618I, is sufficient to drive a lethal myeloproliferative disorder in a murine bone marrow transplantation model. Mice transplanted with CSF3R T618I-expressing hematopoietic cells developed a myeloproliferative disorder characterized by overproduction of granulocytes and granulocytic infiltration of the spleen and liver, which was uniformly fatal.

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