The Potential for Immunospecific Therapy in Multiple Sclerosis Based on Identification of Driver Clones of the Disease.

The autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS) is driven by T cells that are reactive to self-antigens of the brain and spinal cord. Many drugs have been developed to treat MS, but we believe that immune-specific targeting of pathogenic T cells may be a better approach for treatment. This type of therapy identifies specific components of the self-reactive T-cell repertoire that would undergo similar natural selection criteria as those found in driver genes in cancer genesis.

Dual-targeting triplebody 33-16-123 (SPM-2) mediates effective redirected lysis of primary blasts from patients with a broad range of AML subtypes in combination with natural killer cells.

A number of agents designed for immunotherapy of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) are in preclinical and early clinical development. Most of them target a single antigen on the surface of AML cells. Here we describe the development and key biological properties of a tri-specific agent, the dual-targeting triplebody SPM-2, with binding sites for target antigens CD33 and CD123, and for CD16 to engage NK cells as cytolytic effectors.

MicroRNA-192-5p is a predictive biomarker of survival for Stage IIIB colon cancer patients.

Background: The poor clinical prognosis of Stage IIIB colon cancer patients is due in part to the current lack of an effective diagnostic method being available and highlights a need for the identification of novel biomarkers like microRNA (miRNA).

Patients And Methods: We used microarray analysis to compare the miRNA expression profiles of eight Stage IIIB colon cancer patients with worse clinical outcome (those who developed liver metastases between 8 and 18 months after surgery) against eight 'cured' Stage IIIB colon cancer patients (those who remained disease free following surgery during the same monitoring period). In addition, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis was performed examining miRNAs in tumor tissue of 98 patients with Stage IIIB colon cancer.

Evidence for an Association of ERCC1 Expression and Mismatch Repair Status with Overall Survival in Colorectal Cancer Patients.

Background: The aim in this study was to determine if an association of excision repair cross-complementing group 1 (ERCC1) gene and mismatch repair (MMR) status with overall survival (OS) could be found from our analysis of a large cohort of Chinese colorectal cancer patients (CRC).

Methods: In total, 2,233 tissue samples isolated from individual CRC tumors were assessed by immunohistochemistry for the expression of ERCC1 and 4 MMR genes.

Results: The rates of proficient MMR (pMMR) and ERCC1 expression were 89.

Systematic immunohistochemical screening for mismatch repair and ERCC1 gene expression from colorectal cancers in China: Clinicopathological characteristics and effects on survival.

Background: We performed a systematic screening of colorectal cancer (CRC) tissues to investigate whether mismatch repair (MMR) status and ERCC1 protein expression could be predictive of clinical outcomes for these patients following the recommendation of The Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Practice of Prevention (EGAPP).

Methods: The expression of four MMR genes and ERCC1 were assessed by immunohistochemistry (IHC) from cancer tissue samples of 2233 consecutive CRC patients.

Results: We observed that most CRC patients with a proficient MMR (pMMR) status tended to have simultaneous ERCC1 protein expression (P< 0.