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At least 307 records · Page 17

In vitro and in vivo studies on antitumor effects of gossypol on human stomach adenocarcinoma (AGS) cell line and MNNG induced experimental gastric cancer

Highlights: {yields} Gossypol is a well known polyphenolic compound used for anticancer studies but we are the first to report that gossypol has antitumor effect on MNNG induced gastric cancer in experimental animal models. {yields} Our study shows that gossypol inhibits the proliferation of AGS (human gastric adenocarcinoma) cell line. {yields} In animal models, gossypol extends the survival of cancer bearing animals and also protects the cells from carcinogenic effect. {yields} So we suggest that gossypol would be a potential chemotherapeutic and chemopreventive agent for gastric cancer. -- Abstract: The present study has evaluated the chemopreventive effects of gossypol on N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (MNNG)-induced gastric carcinogenesis and on human gastric adenocarcinoma (AGS) cell line. Gossypol, C{sub 30}H{sub 30}O{sub 8}, is a polyphenolic compound that has anti proliferative effect and induces apoptosis in various cancer cells. The aim of this work was to delineate in vivo and in vitro anti-initiating mechanisms of orally administered gossypol in target (stomach) tissues and in human gastric adenocarcinoma (AGS) cell line. In vitro results prove that gossypol has potent cytotoxic effect and inhibit the proliferation of adenocarcinoma (AGS) cell line. In vivo results prove gossypol to be successful in prolonging the survival of MNNG induced cancer bearing animals and in delaying the onset of tumor in animals administrated with gossypol and MNNG simultaneously. Examination of the target (stomach) tissues in sacrificed experimental animals shows that administration of gossypol significantly reduces the level of tumor marker enzyme (carcino embryonic antigen) and pepsin. The level of Nucleic acid contents (DNA and RNA) significantly reduces, and the membrane damage of glycoprotein subsides, in the target tissues of cancer bearing animals, with the administration of gossypol. These data suggest that gossypol may create a beneficial effect in patients with gastric cancer.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Therapeutic efficacy of boron neutron capture therapy mediated by boron-rich liposomes for oral cancer in the hamster cheek pouch model

Unilamellar liposomes formulated with an equimolar mixture of cholesterol and 1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, incorporating K[nido-7-CH 3 (CH 2 )15-7,8-C 2 B 9 H 11 ] in the lipid bilayer, and encapsulating Na 3 [1-(2’-B 10 -H 9 )-2-NH 3 B 10 H 8 ] were prepared by probe sonication and investigated in vivo. Microwave assisted digestion followed by inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy was utilized to determine the biodistribution of boron in various tissues following either a single tail vein injection or two identical injections (separated by 24 hours) of the liposomal suspension in BALB/c mice bearing EMT6 mammary adenocarcinomas in their right flank. Double-injection protocols resulted in a boron content in the tumor exceeding 50 µg of boron per gram of tissue for 48 to 72 hours subsequent to the initial injection while tumor:blood boron ratios were more ideal from 54 hours (1.9:1) to 96 hours (5.7:1) subsequent to the initial injection. Tumor bearing mice were given a double-injection of liposomes containing the 10 B-enriched analogs of the aforementioned agents and subjected to a 30 minute irradiation by thermal neutrons with a flux of 8.8 x 10 8 (±7%) neutrons/cm 2 s integrated over the energy range of 0.0 – 0.414 eV. Significant tumor response for a single BNCT treatment was demonstrated by growth curves versus a control group. Vastly diminished tumor growth was witnessed at 14 days (186% increase versus 1551% in controls) in mice that were given a second injection/radiation treatment 7 days after the first. Mice given a one hour neutron irradiation following the double-injection of liposomes had a similar response (169% increase at 14 days) suggesting that neutron fluence is the limiting factor towards BNCT efficacy in this study.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Short-Course Treatment With Gefitinib Enhances Curative Potential of Radiation Therapy in a Mouse Model of Human Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Purpose: To evaluate the combination of radiation and an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) in preclinical models of human non-small cell lung cancer. Methods and Materials: Sensitivity to an EGFR TKI (gefitinib) or radiation was assessed using proliferation assays and clonogenic survival assays. Effects on receptor signal transduction pathways (pEGFR, pAKT, pMAPK) and apoptosis (percentage of cleaved PARP Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP)) were assessed by Western blotting. Radiation-induced DNA damage was assessed by γH2AX immunofluorescence. Established (≥100 mm{sup 3}) EGFR-mutated (HCC287) or EGFR wild-type (A549) subcutaneous xenografts were treated with radiation (10 Gy, day 1) or gefitinib (50 mg/kg, orally, on days 1-3) or both. Results: In non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines with activating EGFR mutations (PC9 or HCC827), gefitinib treatment markedly reduced pEGFR, pAKT, and pMAPK levels and was associated with an increase in cleaved PARP but not in γH2AX foci. Radiation treatment increased the mean number of γH2AX foci per cell but did not significantly affect EGFR signaling. In contrast, NSCLC cell lines with EGFR T790M (H1975) or wild-type EGFR (A549) were insensitive to gefitinib treatment. The combination of gefitinib and radiation treatment in cell culture produced additive cell killing with no evidence of synergy. In xenograft models, a short course of gefitinib (3 days) did not significantly increase the activity of radiation treatment in wild-type EGFR (A549) tumors (P=.27), whereas this combination markedly increased the activity of radiation (P<.001) or gefitinib alone (P=.002) in EGFR-mutated HCC827 tumors, producing sustained tumor regressions. Conclusions: Gefitinib treatment increases clonogenic cell killing by radiation but only in cell lines sensitive to gefitinib alone. Our data suggest additive rather than synergistic interactions between gefitinib and radiation and that a combination of short-course gefitinib and high-dose/-fraction radiation may have the greatest potential against the subsets of lung cancers harboring activating mutations in the EGFR gene.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Adult weight change and premenopausal breast cancer risk: A prospective pooled analysis of data from 628,463 women

Early-adulthood body size is strongly inversely associated with risk of premenopausal breast cancer. It is unclear whether subsequent changes in weight affect risk. We pooled individual-level data from 17 prospective studies to investigate the association of weight change with premenopausal breast cancer risk, considering strata of initial weight, timing of weight change, other breast cancer risk factors and breast cancer subtype. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were obtained using Cox regression. Among 628,463 women, 10,886 were diagnosed with breast cancer before menopause. Models adjusted for initial weight at ages 18–24 years and other breast cancer risk factors showed that weight gain from ages 18–24 to 35–44 or to 45–54 years was inversely associated with breast cancer overall (e.g., HR per 5 kg to ages 45–54: 0.96, 95% CI: 0.95–0.98) and with oestrogen-receptor(ER)-positive breast cancer (HR per 5 kg to ages 45–54: 0.96, 95% CI: 0.94–0.98). Weight gain from ages 25–34 was inversely associated with ER-positive breast cancer only and weight gain from ages 35–44 was not associated with risk. None of these weight gains were associated with ER-negative breast cancer. Weight loss was not consistently associated with overall or ER-specific risk after adjusting for initial weight. Weight increase from early-adulthood to ages 45–54 years is associated with a reduced premenopausal breast cancer risk independently of early-adulthood weight. Biological explanations are needed to account for these two separate factors.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Targeting mitochondrial respiration as a therapeutic strategy for cervical cancer

Highlights: • Cervical cancer cell lines have varying levels of mitochondrial biogenesis. • Atovaquone acts on cervical cancer cells via inhibiting mitochondrial respiration. • Atovaquone inhibits mitochondrial respiration via suppressing complex III. • Atovaquone effectively targets cervical cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Targeting mitochondrial respiration has been documented as an effective therapeutic strategy in cancer. However, the impact of mitochondrial respiration inhibition on cervical cancer cells are not well elucidated. Using a panel of cervical cancer cell lines, we show that an existing drug atovaquone is active against the cervical cancer cells with high profiling of mitochondrial biogenesis. Atovaquone inhibited proliferation and induced apoptosis with varying efficacy among cervical cancer cell lines regardless of HPV infection, cellular origin and their sensitivity to paclitaxel. We further demonstrated that atovaquone acts on cervical cancer cells via inhibiting mitochondrial respiration. In particular, atovaquone specifically inhibited mitochondrial complex III but not I, II or IV activity, leading to respiration inhibition and energy crisis. Importantly, we found that the different sensitivity of cervical cancer cell lines to atovaquone were due to their differential level of mitochondrial biogenesis and dependency to mitochondrial respiration. In addition, we demonstrated that the in vitro observations were translatable to in vivo cervical cancer xenograft mouse model. Our findings suggest that the mitochondrial biogenesis varies among patients with cervical cancer. Our work also suggests that atovaquone is a useful addition to cervical cancer treatment, particularly to those with high dependency on mitochondrial respiration.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

The expression of keratin 6 is regulated by the activation of the ERK1/2 pathway in arsenite transformed human urothelial cells

Urothelial cancers have an environmental etiological component, and previous studies from our laboratory have shown that arsenite (As{sup +3}) can cause the malignant transformation of the immortalized urothelial cells (UROtsa), leading to the expression of keratin 6 (KRT6). The expression of KRT6 in the parent UROtsa cells can be induced by the addition of epidermal growth factor (EGF). Tumors formed by these transformed cells have focal areas of squamous differentiation that express KRT6. The goal of this study was to investigate the mechanism involved in the upregulation of KRT6 in urothelial cancers and to validate that the As{sup +3}-transformed UROtsa cells are a model of urothelial cancer. The results obtained showed that the parent and the As{sup +3}-transformed UROtsa cells express EGFR which is phosphorylated with the addition of epidermal growth factor (EGF) resulting in an increased expression of KRT6. Inhibition of the extracellular-signal regulated kinases (ERK1/2) pathway by the addition of the mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 1 (MEK1) and MEK2 kinase inhibitor U0126 resulted in a decrease in the phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and a reduced expression of KRT6. Immuno-histochemical analysis of the tumors generated by the As{sup +3}-transformed isolates expressed EGFR and tumors formed by two of the transformed isolates expressed the phosphorylated form of EGFR. These results show that the expression of KRT6 is regulated at least in part by the ERK1/2 pathway and that the As{sup +3}-transformed human urothelial cells have the potential to serve as a valid model to study urothelial carcinomas. - Highlights: • Keratin 6 is induced in As{sup +3}-transformed transformed UROtsa cells by EGF. • The ERK1/2 signaling pathway regulates the expression of KRT6. • As{sup +3}-transformed human urothelial cells can serve as a model to study urothelial carcinomas.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

SU-E-J-196: New Visualization Methods for Longitudinal MRI Registrations and Segmentations

Purpose: To develop visualization techniques to facilitate easy assessment of (a) registration and (b) tracking volumetric changes in structures during radiation therapy from MRI. Method: The frequently used method for visualizing registrations between scans is a multi-color overlay technique or deformation vector fields. However, the overlay technique is unintuitive and does not help to appreciate the quality of registration particularly when the registration mismatches are not very large. Similarly, the deformation fields give an indication of extent of deformation but do not help to assess the differences in registration. We present a mirroring and edge-augmented mirroring technique that places the fixed and moving image next to each other and allows the user to quickly assess the small differences in registration. Next, we present a volumetric intersection based 3D model to visualize the changes in diseased lymph node volumes in head and neck cancer. 3D model-based visualization provides more information about the location-specific changes in volume rather than the simplistic one dimensional information obtained from 2D plot of nodal volume changes. Result: We show results comparing our approach with the standard colorbased overlay method for comparing registrations of intra-patient registrations using T2-MRI. Upon comparing the mirroring technique with the color-overlay, one can more easily appreciate the differences in registration. Adding edge-based mirroring seems to further assist in evaluating the registration. Our approach for viewing registrations seems to be more intuitive and easy to use in order to help assess the quality of registration compared to color-based overlays. Similarly, the change volumetric model together with a 2D plot reveals more information including the locations undergoing changes and responding to treatment. Conclusions: Better approaches are necessary for assessing the quality of registrations and changes in diseased structures over time. Our approach presents some novel visualization solutions for registration and segmentation.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Ensemble Methodologies for Astronaut Cancer Risk Assessment in the face of Large Uncertainties

A new approach to NASA space radiation risk modeling has successfully extended the current NASA probabilistic cancer risk model to an ensemble framework able to consider sub-model parameter uncertainty (e.g. uncertainty in a radiation quality parameter) as well as model-form uncertainty associated with differing theoretical or empirical formalisms (e.g. combined dose-rate and radiation quality effects). Ensemble methodologies are already widely used in weather prediction, modeling of infectious disease outbreaks, and certain terrestrial radiation protection applications to better understand how uncertainty may influence risk decision-making. Applying ensemble methodologies to space radiation risk projections offers the potential to efficiently incorporate emerging research results, allow for the incorporation of future (including international) models, improve uncertainty quantification for underlying sub-models developed against sparse experimental data, and reduce the impact of subjective bias on risk projections. Moreover, risk forecasting across an ensemble of multiple predictive models can provide stakeholders additional information on risk acceptance if current health/medical standards cannot be met or the level of knowledge doesn’t permit a specific risk or exposure limit to be developed for future space exploration missions. In this work, ensemble risk projections implementing multiple sub-models of radiation quality, dose and dose-rate effectiveness factors, excess risk, and latency as ensemble members are presented. Initial consensus methods for ensemble model weights and correlations to account for individual model bias are discussed. In these analyses, the ensemble forecast compares well to results from NASA's current operational cancer risk projection model used to assess permissible exposure limits and permissible mission durations for astronauts. However, a large range of projected risk values are obtained at the upper 95th confidence level where models must extrapolate beyond available biological data sets; closer agreement is seen at the median + one sigma due to the inherent similarities in available models. Future work, including the addition of new models and methods for statistical correlation between predictive members are discussed to define alternate ways of thinking about risk and ‘acceptable’ uncertainty with respect to NASA’s current permissible exposure limits.

space radiation↗

WE-D-BRE-02: BEST IN PHYSICS (THERAPY) - Radiogenomic Modeling of Normal Tissue Toxicities in Prostate Cancer Patients Receiving Hypofractionated Radiotherapy

Purpose: It has been realized that inter-patient radiation sensitivity variability is a multifactorial process involving dosimetric, clinical, and genetic factors. Therefore, we explore a new framework to integrate physical, clinical, and biological data denoted as radiogenomic modeling. In demonstrating the feasibility of this work, we investigate the association of genetic variants (copy number variations [CNVs] and single nucleotide polymorphisms [SNPs]) with radiation induced rectal bleeding (RB) and erectile dysfunction (ED) while taking into account dosimetric and clinical variables in prostate cancer patients treated with curative irradiation. Methods: A cohort of 62 prostate cancer patients who underwent hypofractionated radiotherapy (66 Gy in 22 fractions) was retrospectively genotyped for CNV and SNP rs25489 in the xrcc1 DNA repair gene. Dosevolume metrics were extracted from treatment plans of 54 patients who had complete dosimetric profiles. Treatment outcomes were considered to be a Result of functional mapping of radiogenomic input variables according to a logit transformation. Model orders were estimated using resampling by leave-one out cross-validation (LOO-CV). Radiogenomic model performance was evaluated using area under the ROC curve (AUC) and LOO-CV. For continuous univariate dosimetric and clinical variables, Spearmans rank coefficients were calculated and p-values reported accordingly. In the case of binary variables, Chi-squared statistics and contingency table calculations were used. Results: Ten patients were found to have three copies of xrcc1 CNV (RB: χ2=14.6 [p<0.001] and ED: χ2=4.88[p=0.0272]) and twelve had heterozygous rs25489 SNP (RB: χ2=0.278[p=0.599] and ED: χ2=0.112[p=0.732]). LOO-CV identified penile bulb D60 as the only significant QUANTEC predictor (rs=0.312 [p=0.0145]) for ED. Radiogenomic modeling yielded statistically significant, cross-validated NTCP models for RB (rs=0.243[p=0.0443], AUC=0.665) and ED (rs=0.276[p=0.0217], AUC=0.754). Conclusion: The radiogenomic modeling approach presented herein has been shown to identify NTCP models which have increased predictive power. Furthermore, CNVs appears to be useful genetic variants when added to dosimetric NTCP models. This work was partially supported by CIHR grant MOP-114910.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Iron addiction: a novel therapeutic target in ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer is a lethal malignancy that has not seen a major therapeutic advance in over 30 years. We demonstrate that ovarian cancer exhibits a targetable alteration in iron metabolism. Ferroportin (FPN), the iron efflux pump, is decreased, and transferrin receptor (TFR1), the iron importer, is increased in tumor tissue from patients with high grade but not low grade serous ovarian cancer. A similar profile of decreased FPN and increased TFR1 is observed in a genetic model of ovarian cancer tumor-initiating cells (TICs). The net result of these changes is an accumulation of excess intracellular iron and an augmented dependence on iron for proliferation. A forced reduction in intracellular iron reduces the proliferation of ovarian cancer TICs in vitro, and inhibits both tumor growth and intraperitoneal dissemination of tumor cells in vivo. Some mechanistic studies demonstrate that iron increases metastatic spread by facilitating invasion through expression of matrix metalloproteases and synthesis of interleukin 6 (IL-6). Here, we show that the iron dependence of ovarian cancer TICs renders them exquisitely sensitive in vivo to agents that induce iron-dependent cell death (ferroptosis) as well as iron chelators, and thus creates a metabolic vulnerability that can be exploited therapeutically.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

TH-CD-207A-03: A Surface Deformation Driven Respiratory Model for Organ Motion Tracking in Lung Cancer Radiotherapy

Purpose: To propose and validate a novel real-time surface-mesh-based internal organ-external surface motion and deformation tracking method for lung cancer radiotherapy. Methods: Deformation vector fields (DVFs) which characterizes the internal and external motion are obtained by registering the internal organ and tumor contours and external surface meshes to a reference phase in the 4D CT images using a recent developed local topology preserved non-rigid point matching algorithm (TOP). A composite matrix is constructed by combing the estimated internal and external DVFs. Principle component analysis (PCA) is then applied on the composite matrix to extract principal motion characteristics and finally yield the respiratory motion model parameters which correlates the internal and external motion and deformation. The accuracy of the respiratory motion model is evaluated using a 4D NURBS-based cardiac-torso (NCAT) synthetic phantom and three lung cancer cases. The center of mass (COM) difference is used to measure the tumor motion tracking accuracy, and the Dice’s coefficient (DC), percent error (PE) and Housdourf’s distance (HD) are used to measure the agreement between the predicted and ground truth tumor shape. Results: The mean COM is 0.84±0.49mm and 0.50±0.47mm for the phantom and patient data respectively. The mean DC, PE and HD are 0.93±0.01, 0.13±0.03 and 1.24±0.34 voxels for the phantom, and 0.91±0.04, 0.17±0.07 and 3.93±2.12 voxels for the three lung cancer patients, respectively. Conclusions: We have proposed and validate a real-time surface-mesh-based organ motion and deformation tracking method with an internal-external motion modeling. The preliminary results conducted on a synthetic 4D NCAT phantom and 4D CT images from three lung cancer cases show that the proposed method is reliable and accurate in tracking both the tumor motion trajectory and deformation, which can serve as a potential tool for real-time organ motion and deformation monitoring in lung cancer radiotherapy. This work is supported in part by grant from VARIAN MEDICAL SYSTEMS INC, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no 81428019 and no 81301940), the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (2015A030313302)and the 2015 Pearl River S&T Nova Program of Guangzhou (201506010096).

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Biomarker identification for statin sensitivity of cancer cell lines

Highlights: • Graphical modeling is used to find a biomarker signature for statin sensitivity. • Predictions from the model were experimentally validated in four human cell lines. • Enrichment analysis and predicted combination therapies show relevance of signature. Statins are potent cholesterol reducing drugs that have been shown to reduce tumor cell proliferation in vitro and tumor growth in animal models. Moreover, retrospective human cohort studies demonstrated decreased cancer-specific mortality in patients taking statins. We previously implicated membrane E-cadherin expression as both a marker and mechanism for resistance to atorvastatin-mediated growth suppression of cancer cells; however, a transcriptome-profile-based biomarker signature for statin sensitivity has not yet been reported. Here, we utilized transcriptome data from fourteen NCI-60 cancer cell lines and their statin dose-response data to produce gene expression signatures that identify statin sensitive and resistant cell lines. We experimentally confirmed the validity of the identified biomarker signature in an independent set of cell lines and extended this signature to generate a proposed statin-sensitive subset of tumors listed in the TCGA database. Finally, we predicted drugs that would synergize with statins and found several predicted combination therapies to be experimentally confirmed. The combined bioinformatics-experimental approach described here can be used to generate an initial biomarker signature for anticancer drug therapy.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Resonant Spectra of Malignant Breast Cancer Tumors Using the Three-Dimensional Electromagnetic Fast Multipole Model

An intensive numerical study for the resonance scattering of malignant breast cancer tumors is presented. The rigorous three-dimensional electromagnetic model, based on the equivalence theorem, is used to obtain the induced electric and magnetic currents on the breast and tumor surfaces. The results show that a non-spherical malignant tumor can be characterized based its spectra regardless of its orientation, the incident polarization, or the incident or scattered directions. The tumor's spectra depend solely on its physical characteristics (i.e., the shape and the electrical properties), however, their locations are not functions of its burial depth. This work provides a useful guidance to select the appropriate frequency range for the tumor's size.

El-Shenawee, Magda↗

Statistical Modeling of CTV Motion and Deformation for IMRT of Early-Stage Rectal Cancer

Purpose: To derive and validate a statistical model of motion and deformation for the clinical target volume (CTV) of early-stage rectal cancer patients. Methods and Materials: For 16 patients, 4 to 5 magnetic resonance images (MRI) were acquired before each fraction was administered. The CTV was delineated on each MRI. Using a leave-one-out methodology, we constructed a population-based principal component analysis (PCA) model of the CTV motion and deformation of 15 patients, and we tested the model on the left-out patient. The modeling error was calculated as the amount of the CTV motion-deformation of the left-out-patient that could not be explained by the PCA model. Next, the PCA model was used to construct a PCA target volume (PCA-TV) by accumulating motion-deformations simulated by the model. A PCA planning target volume (PTV) was generated by expanding the PCA-TV by uniform margins. The PCA-PTV was compared with uniform and nonuniform CTV-to-PTV margins. To allow comparison, geometric margins were determined to ensure adequate coverage, and the volume difference between the PTV and the daily CTV (CTV-to-PTV volume) was calculated. Results: The modeling error ranged from 0.9 ± 0.5 to 2.9 ± 2.1 mm, corresponding to a reduction of the CTV motion-deformation between 6% and 60% (average, 23% ± 11%). The reduction correlated with the magnitude of the CTV motion-deformation (P<.001, R=0.66). The PCA-TV and the CTV required 2-mm and 7-mm uniform margins, respectively. The nonuniform CTV-to-PTV margins were 4 mm in the left, right, inferior, superior, and posterior directions and 8 mm in the anterior direction. Compared to uniform and nonuniform CTV-to-PTV margins, the PCA-based PTV significantly decreased (P<.001) the average CTV-to-PTV volume by 128 ± 20 mL (49% ± 4%) and by 35 ± 6 mL (20% ± 3.5%), respectively. Conclusions: The CTV motion-deformation of a new patient can be explained by a population-based PCA model. A PCA model-generated PTV significantly improved sparing of organs at risk compared to uniform and nonuniform CTV-to-PTV margins.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗