Molecular Tumor Board of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG-MTB): outcome of patients with rare or complex mutational profiles receiving MTB-advised targeted therapy.

Purpose: Molecular tumor boards (MTBs) are considered beneficial for treatment decision making for patients with cancer with uncommon, rare, or complex mutational profiles. The lack of international MTB guidelines results in significant variation in practices and recommendations. Therefore, periodic follow-up is necessary to assess and govern MTB functioning.

Cytochemical and morphometric analysis of autophagy in energy depleted rat hepatocytes.

The energy dependence of lysosomal enzyme acquisition by autophagosomes was studied in isolated rat hepatocytes by ultrastructural analysis for acid phosphatase activity. Reduction of the intracellular ATP content by addition of atractyloside or fructose decreased the flux through the autophagic proteolytic pathway to a similar extent (40-50%). Unexpectedly, in the presence of atractyloside the volume density of autophagosomes was reduced by 65%, whereas in the presence of fructose this reduction was only 20%.

Stimulation of glycogen synthesis in hepatocytes by added amino acids is related to the total intracellular content of amino acids.

Katz et al. [Katz, J., Golden, S.

Swelling of rat hepatocytes stimulates glycogen synthesis.

In hepatocytes from fasted rats, several amino acids are known to stimulate glycogen synthesis via activation of glycogen synthase. The hypothesis that an increase in cell volume resulting from amino acid uptake may be involved in the stimulation of glycogen synthesis is supported by the following observations. 1) The extent of stimulation of glycogen synthesis by both metabolizable and nonmetabolizable amino acids was directly proportional to their ability to increase cell volume, except for proline, which stimulated glycogen synthesis more than could be accounted for by the increase in cell volume.