The clinical and genetic features of HNSCC are distinct between groups defined by tobacco use. Tumors of nonsmokers contain a lower frequency of common genetic alterations, suggesting that the underlying changes in these tumors may remain undiscovered.

An estimated 500,000 laboratory workers in the United States are at risk of exposure to infectious agents that cause disease ranging from inapparent to life-threatening infections, but the precise risk to a given worker unknown. The emergence of human immunodeficiency virus and hantavirus, the continuing problem of hepatitis B virus, and the reemergence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis have renewed interest in biosafety for the employees of laboratories and health care facilities. This review examines the history, the causes, and the methods for prevention of laboratory-associated infections. The initial step in a biosafety program is the assessment of risk to the employee. Risk assessment guidelines include the pathogenicity of the infectious agent, the method of transmission, worker-related risk factors, the source and route of infection, and the design of the laboratory facility. Strategies for the prevention and management of laboratory-associated infections are based on the containment of the infectious agent by physical separation from the laboratory worker and the environment, employee education about the occupational risks, and availability of an employee health program. Adherence to the biosafety guidelines mandated or proposed by various governmental and accrediting agencies reduces the risk of an occupational exposure to infectious agents handled in the workplace.

Doo-Sabin and Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces are based on the notion of repeated knot insertion of uniform tensor product B-spline surfaces. This paper develops rules for non-uniform Doo-Sabin and Catmull-Clark surfaces that generalize non-uniform tensor product Bspline surfaces to arbitrary topologies. This added flexibility allows, among other things, the natural introduction of features such as cusps, creases, and darts, while elsewhere maintaining the same order of continuity as their uniform counterparts.

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Genome-wide aCGH can be used to detect and map CNAs in OSCC tissue specimens with high resolution. These data implicate several candidate genes and gene pathways in the tumorigenesis of sporadic OSCC.

Thirty years after angiogenesis was shown to play an enabling role in cancer, modern medicine is still trying to develop novel compounds and therapeutics to target the tumor vasculature. However, most therapeutics require multiple rounds of administration and can have toxic side effects. In this study, we use anti-angiogenesis immunotherapy to target cells actively involved in forming new blood vessels that support the growth and spread of breast cancer. Targeting a central cell type involved in angiogenesis, endothelial cells, we immunized against host vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 to fight the growth of Her-2/ neu ؉ breast tumors. Using the bacterial vector, Listeria monocytogenes (Lm), we fused polypeptides from the mouse vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 molecule (fetal liver kinase-1) to the microbial adjuvant, listeriolysin-O, and used Lm to deliver the Ags and elicit potent antitumor CTL responses. Lm-listeriolysin-O-fetal liver kinase-1 was able to eradicate some established breast tumors, reduce microvascular density in the remaining tumors, protect against tumor rechallenge and experimental metastases, and induce epitope spreading to various regions of the tumor-associated Ag Her-2/neu. Tumor eradication was found to be dependent on epitope spreading to HER-2/neu and was not solely due to the reduction of tumor vasculature. However, vaccine efficacy did not affect normal wound healing nor have toxic side effects on pregnancy. We show that an anti-angiogenesis vaccine can overcome tolerance to the host vasculature driving epitope spreading to an endogenous tumor protein and drive active tumor regression.

Previous work in our laboratory has established that the fusion of tumor-associated antigens to a truncated form of the Listeria monocytogenes virulence factor listeriolysin O (LLO) enhances the immunogenicity and antitumor efficacy of the tumor antigen when delivered by Listeria or by vaccinia. LLO contains a PEST sequence at the NH 2 terminus. These sequences, which are found in eukaryotic proteins with a short cellular half-life, target proteins for degradation in the ubiquitin-proteosome pathway. To investigate whether the enhanced immunogenicity conferred by LLO is due to the PEST sequence, we constructed new Listeria recombinants that expressed the HPV-16 E7 antigen fused to LLO, which either contained or had been deleted of this sequence. We then compared the antitumor efficacy of this set of vectors and found that Listeria expressing the fusion protein LLO-E7 or PEST-E7 were effective at regressing established macroscopic HPV-16 immortalized tumors in syngeneic mice. In contrast, Listeria recombinants expressing E7 alone or E7 fused to LLO from which the PEST sequence had been genetically removed could only slow tumor growth. Because CD8 ؉ T cell epitopes are generated in the ubiquitin-proteosome pathway, we also investigated the ability of the vaccines to induce E7-specific CD8 ؉ T cells in the spleen and to generate E7-specific tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. A strong correlation was observed between CD8 ؉ T-cell induction and tumor homing and the antitumor efficacy of the Listeria-E7 vaccines. These findings suggest a strategy for the augmentation of tumor antigen-based immunotherapeutic strategies that may be broadly applicable.