May 13, 2013 ? A study has identified microRNA-155 as a new independent prognostic marker and treatment target in patients with acute myeloid leukemia that has normal-looking chromosomes under the microscope (that is, cytogenetically normal acute myeloid leukemia, or CN-AML).
The study was led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center -- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC -- James). The researchers found that when microRNA-155 (miR-155) is present at abnormally high levels in CN-AML cells, patients are less likely to have a complete remission, and they experience a shorter disease-free period and shorter overall survival. The effect is independent of other known prognostic gene mutations present in the cells.
Published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology with an accompanying editorial and an "Understanding the Pathway" article, the findings suggest that miR-155 plays a pivotal role in CN-AML development, and that it could be a valuable target for the emerging class of drugs designed to inhibit microRNAs, says first author Dr. Guido Marcucci, professor of hematology, a leukemia specialist and associate director for Translational Research at the OSUCCC -- James.
"MiR-155 would be relatively easy to measure at the time of diagnosis," Marcucci says. "We believe it will prove to be a good marker for stratifying patients according to recurrence risk and a good target for emerging compounds designed to inhibit microRNAs."
Principal investigator Dr. Clara D. Bloomfield, Distinguished University Professor and Ohio State University Cancer Scholar and Senior Advisor and William Greenville Pace III Endowed Chair in Cancer Research notes that, "Overall, our findings indicate that miR-155 expression is a strong and independent prognostic marker in CN-AML, and they provide clinical validation of data from preclinical models that support a crucial role of miR-155 in leukemia."
The researchers also note that because a molecule called NF-kB is believed to regulate miR-155, treatments that inhibit that molecule might also help patients with high miR-155 levels.
Cells use microRNA molecules to help regulate the kinds and amount of proteins they make. Abnormal levels of certain microRNAs are likely to play a key role in cancer development. Abnormally high expression of miR-155 is associated with lymphoma, aggressive chronic leukemias and certain solid tumors, and microRNA levels have been associated with patient survival.
For this study, Marcucci, Bloomfield and their colleagues analyzed bone-marrow or blood specimens from 363 CN-AML patients, 153 of whom were under age 60 and 210 were age 60 and over. All were treated on Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) clinical trials.
The researchers evaluated the association of abnormal miR-155 expression levels with clinical and molecular characteristics and with disease-free survival and overall survival.
The study's key technical findings include:
Overall, patients with high miR-155 expression were about 50 percent less likely to achieve complete remission, and to have a 60 percent increase in the risk of death compared to patients with low miR-155 expression.
High miR-155 expression was associated with pro-survival, proliferation and inflammatory gene activity, suggesting a pivotal role in leukemia development.
In patients under age 60, higher miR-155 expression was associated with a lower complete response rate, and shorter disease-free survival and overall survival; in older patients, higher miR-155 expression was associated only with a lower complete response rate and shorter overall survival.
The difference between older and younger patients may be related to differences in the intensity of consolidation therapy administered to younger versus older patients, as well as to biological differences.
Funding from the NIH/National Cancer Institute (grants CA101140, CA114725, CA31946, CA33601, CA16058, CA77658, CA129657 and CA140158), The Coleman Leukemia Research Foundation, the Deutsche Krebshilfe-Dr Mildred Scheel Cancer Foundation, the Pelotonia Fellowship Program and the Conquer Cancer Foundation supported this research.
Other researchers involved in this study were Klaus H. Metzeler, Stefano Volinia, Yue-Zhong Wu, Krzysztof Mr?zek, Susan P. Whitman, Jason H. Mendler, Sebastian Schwind, Heiko Becker, Ann-Kathrin Eisfeld, Ramiro Garzon and Michael A. Caligiuri of The Ohio State University; Kati Maharry, Deedra Nicolet and Jessica Kohlschimdt of Ohio State and of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology Statistics and Data Center; Andrew J. Carroll of University of Alabama at Birmingham; Bayard L. Powell of Wake Forest University; Jonathan E. Kolitz of Monter Cancer Center; and Richard M. Stone of Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
PETROLIA, Calif. (AP) ? More than 70 law enforcement officers were part of the ongoing hunt Sunday for a Northern California man wanted in the killing of his wife and two young daughters.
The Humboldt County Sheriff's Department said SWAT teams from three counties, federal officials and local police continued to search through the rugged terrain of California's remote North Coast for Shane Franklin Miller.
On Saturday two helicopters and an armored vehicle joined the effort.
Miller, 45, is suspected of slaying his family Tuesday night in the rural community of Shingletown, then fleeing to Humboldt County, where low fog and dense brush offer plenty of cover.
Miller ? who is considered armed and extremely dangerous ? grew up in the area and knows the thick forests of the region very well, officials said.
Authorities were searching for Miller through a wilderness area, much of it federal land, with poor roads and limited access.
Area residents were being asked to report any break-ins or other unusual activities. They were also being asked to stay inside once night falls and to keep their doors locked.
Investigators have recovered Miller's pickup truck after it was found abandoned Wednesday night near Petrolia, about 200 miles west of the home that Miller shared with his wife, Sandy, 34, and daughters, Shelby, 8, and Shasta, 5.
There have been no sightings of Miller since the truck was found, officials said.
The May 13 ShopAndroid.com Deal of the Day is the LLOYD Flex Case for Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Made from shock absorbent and scratch resistant TPU, the LLOYD Flex Case provides great protection for the Note 2 from day to day use and drops. The back of each case features Android Central's Lloyd with precise cutouts for all features. Comes in black, clear, smoke and green.
Dan and Alan also talk about the finales of 'The Americans,' 'Parks and Recreation' and 'Happy Endings'
Better late and long than never??Outside concerns delayed this week's Firewall &?Iceberg Podcast until today, but we're pretty sure it's it's one of the longest we've ever done, and previews what should be a two-podcast week next week. We review HBO's "Family Tree,"?preview the network upfronts, break down some recent finales and do our usual "Mad Men"?analysis. WARNING:?Dan drops a cuss word in the middle of the "Mad Men"?segment, while we're discussing good ol' Bob Benson.
The lineup:
"Family Tree" (00:01:00 - 00:14:35)
Upfronts Preview (00:14:35 - 00:47:00)
"Parks and Recreation" (00:47:00 - 01:02:20)
"Happy Endings" (01:02:25 - 01:10:45)
"The Americans" (01:10:50 - 01:26:00)
"Mad Men" (01:26:25 - 01:48:30)
As always, you can subscribe to The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast over at the iTunes Store, where you can also rate us and comment on us. Or you can always follow our RSS Feed, download the MP3 file or stream it on Dan's blog.
And as always, feel free to e-mail us questions for the podcast.
Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
After the breakup in a digital world: Purging Facebook of painful memoriesPublic release date: 9-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Guy Lasnier lasnier@ucsc.edu 831-459-2955 University of California - Santa Cruz
The era is long gone when a romantic breakup meant ripped-up photos and burned love letters. Today, digital photos and emails can be quickly deleted but the proliferation of social media has made forgetting a bigger chore.
What about the ubiquitous digital records of a once beloved that lurk on Facebook, tumblr, and flicker?
"People are keeping huge collections of digital possessions," says Steve Whittaker, a psychology professor at UC Santa Cruz who specializes in human-computer interaction. "There has been little exploration of the negative role of digital possessions when people want to forget aspects of their lives."
In a paper, "Design for Forgetting: Disposing of Digital Possessions after a Breakup," Whittaker and co-author Corina Sas, of Lancaster University, examine the challenges of digital possessions and their disposal after a romantic breakup. Sas worked on the research as a visiting professor at UCSC.
Pervasive collections
Digital possessions include photos, messages, music, and video stored across multiple devices such as computers, tablets, phones, and cameras. Their pervasiveness "creates problems during a breakup, as people 'inhabit' their digital space where photos and music constantly remind them about their prior relationship."
In interviews with 24 young people between the ages of 19 and 34, Whittaker and Sas found that digital possessions after a breakup are often evocative and upsetting, leading to distinct disposal strategies. Twelve of the subjects were deleters; eight were keepers, and four others were selective disposers.
They presented their findings last week in Paris at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference on human-computer interaction, with more than 3,300 attendees. The paper will be published in the conference proceedings.
Some of the heartbroken may want to forget but are "extremely resistant to actual deletion," Whittaker and Sas found, most often the "dumpees." Others later regret disposing of everything.
Disposal is made more difficult today because "digital possessions are in vast collections spread across multiple devices, applications, web-services, and platforms," they write. "When the relationship is good, this promotes a rich digital life. But when it sours people have to systematically cull collections across multiple digital spaces."
Untagged but not deleted
Facebook photos can be untagged but not deleted if posted by someone else. "It's time consuming and emotionally taxing because people tend to re-engage with possessions, especially photos," they note.
Some of the initial tactics encountered: changing one's relationship status to "single," immediately unfriending or blocking ex-partner's access to ones' profile.
Whittaker and Sas propose that software solutions might help scrub cyberspace of painful memories, for instance automatic "harvesting" using facial recognition, machine learning or entity extraction. Or a holding pattern until a cooler head prevails.
"A lack of disposal tools meant most participants either kept, or disposed of everything," they said. "Keepers took longer to heal, disposers often regretted their impulsiveness."
'Pandora's Box'
The authors propose a "Pandora's Box" that could automatically scoop up all the digital artifacts of a relationship, put them in a single place for later strategic deleting or retention. Or a trusted friend could be put in the position as a gatekeeper.
Or there could be new tools for active selection from collections of digital possessions to create a "treasure chest" of valuable items that may retained for later happy memories.
Whittaker joined UCSC in 2011. He was previously a professor in information retrieval at the information studies department at the University of Sheffield. He has also been a research scientist at HP Labs, Lotus, AT&T Labs, and IBM. His research was supported by a grant from Google.
Selected comments:
"Deleting everything was a kind of symbolic gesture of starting fresh as well as not having to look at it again."
"I kept everything, including pictures, videos and messages about her. I do not look at them very often; sometimes I feel sorrow but sometimes I feel happy when I see that beautiful time."
"Having photos on my phone and computer did cause me to feel sad, but I immediately removed them after the breakup, in order to more on. I got rid of all the things that were common between the two of us."
[What hindered moving on?] Occasionally finding things that I had missed throwing out or deleting: the odd email stored in Outlook on the computer I didn't often use or messages I missed on a social networking site I didn't use much."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
After the breakup in a digital world: Purging Facebook of painful memoriesPublic release date: 9-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Guy Lasnier lasnier@ucsc.edu 831-459-2955 University of California - Santa Cruz
The era is long gone when a romantic breakup meant ripped-up photos and burned love letters. Today, digital photos and emails can be quickly deleted but the proliferation of social media has made forgetting a bigger chore.
What about the ubiquitous digital records of a once beloved that lurk on Facebook, tumblr, and flicker?
"People are keeping huge collections of digital possessions," says Steve Whittaker, a psychology professor at UC Santa Cruz who specializes in human-computer interaction. "There has been little exploration of the negative role of digital possessions when people want to forget aspects of their lives."
In a paper, "Design for Forgetting: Disposing of Digital Possessions after a Breakup," Whittaker and co-author Corina Sas, of Lancaster University, examine the challenges of digital possessions and their disposal after a romantic breakup. Sas worked on the research as a visiting professor at UCSC.
Pervasive collections
Digital possessions include photos, messages, music, and video stored across multiple devices such as computers, tablets, phones, and cameras. Their pervasiveness "creates problems during a breakup, as people 'inhabit' their digital space where photos and music constantly remind them about their prior relationship."
In interviews with 24 young people between the ages of 19 and 34, Whittaker and Sas found that digital possessions after a breakup are often evocative and upsetting, leading to distinct disposal strategies. Twelve of the subjects were deleters; eight were keepers, and four others were selective disposers.
They presented their findings last week in Paris at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference on human-computer interaction, with more than 3,300 attendees. The paper will be published in the conference proceedings.
Some of the heartbroken may want to forget but are "extremely resistant to actual deletion," Whittaker and Sas found, most often the "dumpees." Others later regret disposing of everything.
Disposal is made more difficult today because "digital possessions are in vast collections spread across multiple devices, applications, web-services, and platforms," they write. "When the relationship is good, this promotes a rich digital life. But when it sours people have to systematically cull collections across multiple digital spaces."
Untagged but not deleted
Facebook photos can be untagged but not deleted if posted by someone else. "It's time consuming and emotionally taxing because people tend to re-engage with possessions, especially photos," they note.
Some of the initial tactics encountered: changing one's relationship status to "single," immediately unfriending or blocking ex-partner's access to ones' profile.
Whittaker and Sas propose that software solutions might help scrub cyberspace of painful memories, for instance automatic "harvesting" using facial recognition, machine learning or entity extraction. Or a holding pattern until a cooler head prevails.
"A lack of disposal tools meant most participants either kept, or disposed of everything," they said. "Keepers took longer to heal, disposers often regretted their impulsiveness."
'Pandora's Box'
The authors propose a "Pandora's Box" that could automatically scoop up all the digital artifacts of a relationship, put them in a single place for later strategic deleting or retention. Or a trusted friend could be put in the position as a gatekeeper.
Or there could be new tools for active selection from collections of digital possessions to create a "treasure chest" of valuable items that may retained for later happy memories.
Whittaker joined UCSC in 2011. He was previously a professor in information retrieval at the information studies department at the University of Sheffield. He has also been a research scientist at HP Labs, Lotus, AT&T Labs, and IBM. His research was supported by a grant from Google.
Selected comments:
"Deleting everything was a kind of symbolic gesture of starting fresh as well as not having to look at it again."
"I kept everything, including pictures, videos and messages about her. I do not look at them very often; sometimes I feel sorrow but sometimes I feel happy when I see that beautiful time."
"Having photos on my phone and computer did cause me to feel sad, but I immediately removed them after the breakup, in order to more on. I got rid of all the things that were common between the two of us."
[What hindered moving on?] Occasionally finding things that I had missed throwing out or deleting: the odd email stored in Outlook on the computer I didn't often use or messages I missed on a social networking site I didn't use much."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Premium portable from German manufacturer Loewe to go on sale in June priced at £269
Anyone familiar with high-end home entertainment equipment will no doubts be aware of Loewe. Their products come with a price, but are always targeted towards the higher end of the market. They have dabbled in mobile compatible devices before, recently with the iOS AirPlay enabled AirSpeaker. Now though, they have pulled the wraps off their debut portable, Bluetooth and NFC enabled speaker -- the Speaker 2go.
On sale in the UK from June, the Speaker 2go is priced at £269. Despite being a portable, it houses two full speakers, a woofer and a 'specially folded' bass reflex tube with a total of 40 Watts of music power. The on-board batteries provide enough juice for a claimed 8 hours use between charges.
Beyond music, the Speaker 2go also has an on-board microphone with echo cancellation, meaning that you can turn the Speaker 2go into an ad-hoc speakerphone system where you are.
The NFC capabilities mean that pairing your NFC enabled Android device to the Speaker 2go is a doddle, with the Bluetooth connection being enabled upon contact. 5 devices can be remembered for automatic connection, and the wireless range is up to 10 metres, handy for using it outside, perhaps.
Speaker 2go will come in 2 colors -- black and silver -- and for more click on past the break for the full press release.
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Public release date: 9-May-2013
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