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This study demonstrates a good correlation between the degree of inhibition of EGFR in skin and in breast tumors. The lack of significant clinical activity of gefitinib in our study population is not due to lack of receptor inhibition in these tumors but rather to lack of EGFR dependence in the tested population.

Human dental pulp contains precursor cells termed dental pulp stem cells (DPSC) that show self-renewal and multilineage differentiation and also secrete multiple proangiogenic and antiapoptotic factors. To examine whether these cells could have therapeutic potential in the repair of myocardial infarction (MI), DPSC were infected with a retrovirus encoding the green fluorescent protein (GFP) and expanded ex vivo. Seven days after induction of myocardial infarction by coronary artery ligation, 1.5 ؋ 10 6 GFP-DPSC were injected intramyocardially in nude rats. At 4 weeks, cell-treated animals showed an improvement in cardiac function, observed by percentage changes in anterior wall thickening left ventricular fractional area change, in parallel with a reduction in infarct size. No histologic evidence was seen of GFP ؉ endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, or cardiac muscle cells within the infarct. However, angiogenesis was increased relative to control-treated animals. Taken together, these data suggest that DPSC could provide a novel alternative cell population for cardiac repair, at least in the setting of acute MI. STEM CELLS 2008;26:638 -645 Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is found at the end of this article.

Background:Although there are solid findings regarding the detrimental effect of alcohol consumption, the existing evidence on the effect of other dietary factors on breast cancer (BC) risk is inconclusive. This study aimed to evaluate the association between dietary patterns and risk of BC in Spanish women, stratifying by menopausal status and tumour subtype, and to compare the results with those of Alternate Healthy Index (AHEI) and Alternate Mediterranean Diet Score (aMED).Methods:We recruited 1017 incident BC cases and 1017 matched healthy controls of similar age (±5 years) without a history of BC. The association between ‘a priori' and ‘a posteriori' developed dietary patterns and BC in general and according to menopausal status and intrinsic tumour subtypes (ER+/PR+ and HER2− HER2+ and ER−/PR− and HER2−) was evaluated using logistic and multinomial regression models.Results:Adherence to the Western dietary pattern was related to higher risk of BC (OR for the top vs the bottom quartile 1.46 (95% CI 1.06–2.01)), especially in premenopausal women (OR=1.75; 95% CI 1.14–2.67). In contrast, the Mediterranean pattern was related to a lower risk (OR for the top quartile vs the bottom quartile 0.56 (95% CI 0.40–0.79)). Although the deleterious effect of the Western pattern was similarly observed in all tumour subtypes, the protective effect of our Mediterranean pattern was stronger for triple-negative tumours (OR=0.32; 95% CI 0.15–0.66 and Pheterogeneity=0.04). No association was found between adherence to the Prudent pattern and BC risk. The associations between ‘a priori' indices and BC risk were less marked (OR for the top vs the bottom quartile of AHEI=0.69; 95% CI 0.51–0.94 and aMED=0.74; 95% CI 0.46–1.18)).Conclusions:Our results confirm the harmful effect of a Western diet on BC risk, and add new evidence on the benefits of a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, oily fish and vegetable oils for preventing all BC subtypes, and particularly triple-negative tumours.

Several retrospective analyses of our in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and oocyte donation programmes have been carried out in an attempt to gain clinical knowledge of the factors implied in the aetiology of endometriosis-associated infertility. In a first approach, a comparison was made of the IVF outcome between 96 cycles in 78 patients with tubal infertility and 96 more cycles in 59 women with endometriosis. The results indicate that endometriosis patients had a poor IVF outcome in terms of a reduced pregnancy rate per cycle (P < 0.0004), a reduced pregnancy rate per transfer (P < 0.002) and a reduced implantation rate per embryo replaced (P < 0.003). In a second study, we addressed the analysis of patients undergoing oocyte donation. The results showed that patients with this disease have the same chances of implantation and embryo development in vivo as other recipients when the oocytes come from donors without known endometriosis. However, when the results of oocyte donation were classified according to the nature of the oocytes donated, patients who received embryos derived from endometriotic ovaries showed a significantly (P < 0.05) reduced ability to implant compared with the remaining groups. In a third approach, we evaluated embryo development in vitro when women with and without endometriosis underwent IVF and embryo replacement 72 h after oocyte retrieval. We observed a significantly (P < 0.04) reduced number of blastomeres in embryos from endometriosis patients compared with controls, as well as an increased (P < 0.05) incidence of arrested embryos in vitro. Taken together, these observations suggest that infertility in endometriosis patients may be related to alterations within the oocyte which, in turn, result in embryos of lower quality, as demonstrated in our IVF programme, and a lower ability to implant, as shown in the oocyte donation model.

As compared with adjuvant FAC, adjuvant TAC improved the rate of disease-free survival among women with high-risk, node-negative breast cancer. (Funded by GEICAM and Sanofi-Aventis; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00121992.).

The addition of PPG significantly reduces the incidence of neutropenic fever associated with TAC chemotherapy as well as that of some TAC-induced haematological and extrahaematological side-effects. The HRQoL of patients treated with TAC is worse than that of those treated with FAC but improves with the addition of PPG, particularly in the final part of chemotherapy treatment.

Among patients with operable breast cancer, FEC-P treatment statistically significantly reduced the risk of relapse compared with FEC as adjuvant therapy.