Benchmarking academic plastic surgery services in the United States.

Rising health care costs and increasingly demanding patients are only some of the challenges faced by academic plastic surgery services in their pursuit of excellence in education, research, and patient care. Benchmarking, when correctly applied, is a powerful tool that can help services learn from each other's experiences. This study aimed at creating the first benchmarking report summarizing performance indicators and management practices of some of the most complete academic plastic surgery units in the United States.

Discovery and optimization of thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidines as B-Raf inhibitors.

The serine/threonine specific protein kinase B-Raf is part of the MAPK pathway and is an interesting oncology target. We have identified thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidines as a core scaffold of small molecule B-Raf inhibitors. The SAR of analogs in this series will be described.

Immunomodulatory drugs Revlimid (lenalidomide) and CC-4047 induce apoptosis of both hematological and solid tumor cells through NK cell activation.

Revlimid (Lenalidomide, CC-5013) and CC-4047 are IMiDs immunomodulatory drugs that have been described as having immunomodulatory properties and anti-tumor activity. Here we report proapoptotic effects of CC-5013 and CC-4047 on tumor cells in a co-culture model of PBMC and tumor cells. CC-5013 and CC-4047 enhanced PBMC activity leading to tumor cell apoptosis in K562/PBMC co-culture model.