[Should we switch from saline to lactated Ringer's solution? Limited benefits, medication warning system required].

In recent years, there has been a growing advocacy to implement the use of balanced solutions like lactated Ringer's solution instead of normal saline as fluid therapy in non-critically ill patients. Currently, evidence shows that there might be a limited benefit of the use of Lactated Ringer's solution over saline in both in critically ill and non-critically ill patients. Lactated Ringer's solution is, in contrast to saline, incompatible with blood products and various frequently used intravenously administered drugs.

Assessing the role of tumour-associated macrophage subsets in breast cancer subtypes using digital image analysis.

Purpose: The number of M1-like and M2-like tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) and their ratio can play a role in breast cancer development and progression. Early clinical trials using macrophage targeting compounds are currently ongoing. However, the most optimal detection method of M1-like and M2-like macrophage subsets and their clinical relevance in breast cancer is still unclear.

Cyclin E expression is associated with high levels of replication stress in triple-negative breast cancer.

Replication stress entails the improper progression of DNA replication. In cancer cells, including breast cancer cells, an important cause of replication stress is oncogene activation. Importantly, tumors with high levels of replication stress may have different clinical behavior, and high levels of replication stress appear to be a vulnerability of cancer cells, which may be therapeutically targeted by novel molecularly targeted agents.

Transcriptional effects of copy number alterations in a large set of human cancers.

Copy number alterations (CNAs) can promote tumor progression by altering gene expression levels. Due to transcriptional adaptive mechanisms, however, CNAs do not always translate proportionally into altered expression levels. By reanalyzing >34,000 gene expression profiles, we reveal the degree of transcriptional adaptation to CNAs in a genome-wide fashion, which strongly associate with distinct biological processes.

Consideration of breast cancer subtype in targeting the androgen receptor.

The androgen receptor (AR) is a drug target in breast cancer, and AR-targeted therapies have induced tumor responses in breast cancer patients. In this review, we summarized the role of AR in breast cancer based on preclinical and clinical data. Response to AR-targeted therapies in unselected breast cancer populations is relatively low.

Considering the biology of late recurrences in selecting patients for extended endocrine therapy in breast cancer.

Extended endocrine therapy can reduce recurrences occurring more than 5 years after diagnosis (late recurrences) in estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer. Given the side effects of endocrine therapy, optimal patient selection for extended treatment is crucial. Enhanced understanding of late recurrence biology could optimize patient selection in this setting.

Relevance of Tumor-Infiltrating Immune Cell Composition and Functionality for Disease Outcome in Breast Cancer.

Background: Not all breast cancer patients benefit from neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapy, resulting in considerable undertreatment or overtreatment. New insights into the role of tumor-infiltrating immune cells suggest that their composition, as well as their functionality, might serve as a biomarker to enable optimal patient selection for current systemic therapies and upcoming treatment options such as immunotherapy.

Methods: We performed several complementary unbiased in silico analyses on gene expression profiles of 7270 unrelated tumor samples of nonmetastatic breast cancer patients with known clinical follow-up.

Functional genomic mRNA profiling of a large cancer data base demonstrates mesothelin overexpression in a broad range of tumor types.

The membrane bound glycoprotein mesothelin (MSLN) is a highly specific tumor marker, which is currently exploited as target for drugs. There are only limited data available on MSLN expression by human tumors. Therefore we determined overexpression of MSLN across different tumor types with Functional Genomic mRNA (FGM) profiling of a large cancer database.

Duct-to-duct reconstruction in liver transplantation for primary sclerosing cholangitis is associated with fewer biliary complications in comparison with hepaticojejunostomy.

There is no consensus on the preferred type of biliary reconstruction for patients undergoing orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) for primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). The aim of this study was to compare long-term outcomes after OLT for PSC using either duct-to-duct anastomosis or Roux-en-Y hepaticojejunostomy for biliary reconstruction. In a consecutive series of 98 adult patients undergoing OLT for PSC, 45 underwent duct-to-duct reconstruction, and 53 underwent Roux-en-Y biliary reconstruction.