BACKGROUND: Although chemotherapy and radiation therapy currently are recommended in limited‐stage small cell lung cancer (L‐SCLC), several small series have reported favorable survival outcomes in patients who underwent surgical resection. The authors of this report used a US population‐based database to determine survival outcomes of patients who underwent surgery. METHODS: The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry was used to identify patients who were diagnosed with L‐SCLC between 1988 and 2002 coded by SEER as localized disease (T1‐T2Nx‐N0) or regional disease (T3‐T4Nx‐N0). Kaplan‐Meier and Cox regression analyses were used to compare overall survival (OS) for all patients. RESULTS: In total, 14,179 patients were identified, including 863 patients who underwent surgical resection. Surgery was associated more commonly with T1/T2 disease (P < .001). Surgery was associated with improved survival for both localized disease and regional disease with improvements in median survival from 15 months to 42 months (P < .001) and from 12 months to 22 months (P < .001), respectively. Lobectomy was associated with the best outcome (P < .001). Patients with localized disease who underwent lobectomy with had a median survival of 65 months and a 5‐year OS rate of 52.6%; whereas patients who had regional disease had a median survival of 25 months and a 5‐year OS rate of 31.8%. On multivariate analysis, the benefit of surgery varied in a time‐dependant fashion. However, the benefit of lobectomy remained across all time intervals (P = .002). CONCLUSIONS: The use of surgery, and particularly lobectomy, in selected patients with L‐SCLC was associated with improved survival outcomes. Future prospective studies should consider the role of surgery as part of the multimodality management of this disease. Cancer 2010. © 2010 American Cancer Society.

For in vivo applications of magnetically labeled stem cells, biological effects of the labeling procedure have to be precluded. This study evaluates the effect of different Ferucarbotran cell labeling protocols on chondrogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) as well as their implications for MR imaging. hMSC were labeled with Ferucarbotran using various protocols: Cells were labeled with 100μg Fe/ml for 4h and 18h and additional samples were cultured for 6 or 12 days after the 18-hour labeling. Supplementary samples were labeled by transfection with protamine sulfate. Iron uptake was quantified by ICP-spectrometry and labeled cells were investigated by transmission electron microscopy and by immunostaining for ferucarbotran. The differentiation potential of labeled cells was compared to unlabeled controls by staining with alcian blue and hematoxylin & eosin, then quantified by measurements of glucosaminoglycans (GAG). Contrast agent effect at 3T was investigated on day 1 and day 14 of chondrogenic differentiation by measuring signal-to-noise ratios on T2-SE and T2*-GE-sequences. Iron uptake was significant for all labeling protocols (p< 0.05). The uptake was highest after transfection with protamine sulfate (25.65 ± 3.96 pg/cell) and lowest at an incubation time of 4h without transfection (3.21 ± 0.21 pg/cell). While chondrogenic differentiation was decreased using all labeling protocols, the decrease in GAG synthesis was not significant after labeling for 4h without transfection. After labeling by simple incubation, chondrogenesis was found to be dose-dependent. MR imaging showed markedly lower SNR values of all labeled cells compared to the unlabeled controls. This contrast agent effect persisted for 14 days and the duration of differentiation. Magnetic labeling of hMSC with ferucarbotran inhibits chondrogenesis in a dose-dependent manner when using simple incubation techniques. When decreasing the incubation time to 4h, inhibition of chondrogenesis was not significant.

PurposeThis study aims to determine the effect of human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) labeling with the fluorescent dye DiD and the iron oxide nanoparticle ferucarbotran on chondrogenesis.ProcedureshMSCs were labeled with DiD alone or with DiD and ferucarbotran (DiD/ferucarbotran). hMSCs underwent confocal microscopy, optical imaging (OI), and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Chondrogenesis was induced by transforming growth factor-b and confirmed by histopathology and glycosaminoglycan (GAG) production. Data of labeled and unlabeled hMSCs were compared with a t test.ResultsCellular uptake of DiD and ferucarbotran was confirmed with confocal microscopy. DiD labeling caused a significant fluorescence on OI, and ferucarbotran labeling caused a significant T2* effect on MR images. Compared to nonlabeled controls, progenies of labeled MSCs exhibited similar chondrocyte morphology after chondrogenic differentiation, but the labeled cells demonstrated significantly reduced GAG production (p < 0.05).ConclusionDiD and DiD/ferucarbotran labeling of hMSC does not interfere with cell viability or morphologic differentiation into chondrocytes, but labeled cells exhibit significantly less GAG production compared to unlabeled cells.

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This study indicates that the 4th-generation ARCHITECT HIV assay yields fewer false-positive and false-negative results than the 3rd-generation HIV assays we tested.

A simple, low molecular weight camptothecin-lysine conjugate is reported to self-assemble into nanotubes with diameters of 70-100nm and a drug loading level of 60.5%. The nanotubes exhibited promising in vitro cytotoxicity against cancer cell lines A549, NCI-H460 and NCI-H23. The release of active camptothecin was highly dependent on conjugate concentration, temperature and pH of the solution.

Patient summarization is essential for clinicians to provide coordinated care and practice effective communication. Automated summarization has the potential to save time, standardize notes, aid clinical decision making, and reduce medical errors. Here we provide an upper bound on extractive summarization of discharge notes and develop an LSTM model to sequentially label topics of history of present illness notes. We achieve an F1 score of 0.876, which indicates that this model can be employed to create a dataset for evaluation of extractive summarization methods.