Background:Glyoxalase I (GI) is a cellular defence enzyme involved in the detoxification of methylglyoxal (MG), a cytotoxic byproduct of glycolysis, and MG-derived advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Argpyrimidine (AP), one of the major AGEs coming from MG modifications of proteins arginines, is a pro-apoptotic agent. Radiotherapy is an important modality widely used in cancer treatment. Exposure of cells to ionising radiation (IR) results in a number of complex biological responses, including apoptosis. The present study was aimed at investigating whether, and through which mechanism, GI was involved in IR-induced apoptosis.Methods:Apoptosis, by TUNEL assay, transcript and protein levels or enzymatic activity, by RT–PCR, western blot and spectrophotometric methods, respectively, were evaluated in irradiated MCF-7 breast cancer cells, also in experiments with appropriate inhibitors or using small interfering RNA.Results:Ionising radiation induced a dramatic reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated inhibition of GI, leading to AP-modified Hsp27 protein accumulation that, in a mechanism involving p53 and NF-κB, triggered an apoptotic mitochondrial pathway. Inhibition of GI occurred at both functional and transcriptional levels, the latter occurring via ERK1/2 MAPK and ERα modulation.Conclusions:Glyoxalase I is involved in the IR-induced MCF-7 cell mitochondrial apoptotic pathway via a novel mechanism involving Hsp27, p53 and NF-κB.

In this paper, we investigate the role of shape and texture features from 18F-FDG PET/CT to discriminate between benign and malignant solitary pulmonary nodules. To this end, we retrospectively evaluated cross-sectional data from 111 patients (64 males, 47 females, age = 67.5 ± 11.0) all with histologically confirmed benign (n=39) or malignant (n=72) solitary pulmonary nodules. Eighteen three-dimensional imaging features, including conventional, texture, and shape features from PET and CT were tested for significant differences (Wilcoxon-Mann-Withney) between the benign and malignant groups. Prediction models based on different feature sets and three classification strategies (Classification Tree, k-Nearest Neighbours, and Naïve Bayes) were also evaluated to assess the potential benefit of shape and texture features compared with conventional imaging features alone. Eight features from CT and 15 from PET were significantly different between the benign and malignant groups. Adding shape and texture features increased the performance of both the CT-based and PET-based prediction models with overall accuracy gain being 3.4–11.2 pp and 2.2–10.2 pp, respectively. In conclusion, we found that shape and texture features from 18F-FDG PET/CT can lead to a better discrimination between benign and malignant lung nodules by increasing the accuracy of the prediction models by an appreciable margin.

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Preoperative radiotherapy and curative surgery for the management of localised rectal carcinoma (Review)

Quantitative extraction of imaging features from medical scans ('radiomics') has attracted a lot of research attention in the last few years. The literature has consistently emphasized the potential use of radiomics for computer-assisted diagnosis, as well as for predicting survival and response to treatment. Radiomics is appealing in that it enables full-field analysis of the lesion, provides nearly real-time results, and is non-invasive. Still, a lot of studies suffer from a series of drawbacks such as lack of standardization and repeatability. Such limitations, along with the unmet demand for large enough image datasets for training the algorithms, are major hurdles that still limit the application of radiomics on a large scale. In this paper, we review the current developments, potential applications, limitations, and perspectives of PET/CT radiomics with specific focus on the management of patients with lung cancer.

The study will provide information on patients' quality of life and its variations over time in relation to the treatments received for the prostate cancer.

SPECT/CT hybrid system is able to provide information not obtained by SPECT alone. It allows the anatomical localisation of lymphoma and physiological radiopharmaceutical uptake, facilitates the diagnosis of tumours located in the abdomen (subdiaphragmatic lesions) and provides information that may cause a change in therapeutic strategy.