Tumor Fusion Burden as a Hallmark of Immune Infiltration in Prostate Cancer.

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in men. Despite having a relatively lower tumor mutational burden than most tumor types, multiple gene fusions such as have been characterized and linked to more aggressive disease. Individual tumor samples have been found to contain multiple fusions, and it remains unknown whether these fusions increase tumor immunogenicity.

Application of pharmacogenomics and bioinformatics to exemplify the utility of human ex vivo organoculture models in the field of precision medicine.

Here we describe a collaboration between industry, the National Health Service (NHS) and academia that sought to demonstrate how early understanding of both pharmacology and genomics can improve strategies for the development of precision medicines. Diseased tissue ethically acquired from patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), was used to investigate inter-patient variability in drug efficacy using ex vivo organocultures of fresh lung tissue as the test system. The reduction in inflammatory cytokines in the presence of various test drugs was used as the measure of drug efficacy and the individual patient responses were then matched against genotype and microRNA profiles in an attempt to identify unique predictors of drug responsiveness.

A novel system for the investigation of microvascular dysfunction including vascular permeability and flow-mediated dilatation in pressurised human arteries.

Introduction: Adverse drug reactions may be manifested through changes in microvascular function (e.g. angioedema) or by subtle modification of the mechanisms controlling vascular tone, such as flow-mediated dilatation.