Tobacco and COPD: presenting the World Health Organization (WHO) Tobacco Knowledge Summary.

The WHO recently published a Tobacco Knowledge Summary (TKS) synthesizing current evidence on tobacco and COPD, aiming to raise awareness among a broad audience of health care professionals. Furthermore, it can be used as an advocacy tool in the fight for tobacco control and prevention of tobacco-related disease. This article builds on the evidence presented in the TKS, with a greater level of detail intended for a lung-specialist audience.

Surgical Debulking Modifies Notch Signaling and May Improve Vismodegib Effectiveness for Locally Advanced Basal Cell Carcinoma.

Smoothened inhibitors, such as vismodegib, exhibit remarkable success in treating patients with locally advanced basal cell carcinoma (LaBCC). Yet, vismodegib efficacy is hindered by notable side effects, which often lead to treatment discontinuation and subsequent relapse in patients with LaBCC. Prolonged remission was previously reported in patients with LaBCCs who underwent surgical debulking before starting vismodegib.

In vivo deuterium magnetic resonance imaging of xenografted tumors following systemic administration of deuterated water.

In vivo deuterated water (HO) labeling leads to deuterium (H) incorporation into biomolecules of proliferating cells and provides the basis for its use in cell kinetics research. We hypothesized that rapidly proliferating cancer cells would become preferentially labeled with H and, therefore, could be visualized by deuterium magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) following a brief period of in vivo systemic HO administration. We initiated systemic HO administration in two xenograft mouse models harboring either human colorectal, HT-29, or pancreatic, MiaPaCa-2, tumors and HO level of ~ 8% in total body water (TBW).