Categorical meta-analysis of Osteopontin as a clinical cancer marker.

Although extensive literature exists on cancer biomarkers few have found entry into clinical use. In particular, the cancer metastasis gene Osteopontin has been investigated extensively but it has not yet been applied to routine diagnostics. Here, we conduct a meta-analysis of data from the published literature and from RNA microarrays deposited in Oncomine. Osteopontin has been associated with 34 cancers. It is a marker for breast, cervical, colorectal, head and neck, liver, lung, ovarian and prostate cancers, as well as for sarcoma. Osteopontin is overexpressed in the metastases of colorectal cancers, lung cancers and melanomas, but not in ovarian cancer. Further, Osteopontin is indicative of the underlying mechanism of transformation only in certain virally induced tumors, where its function as a TH1 cytokine likely plays important roles. These results refine the value of Osteopontin as a cancer biomarker.

Preclinical cardiac safety assessment of pharmaceutical compounds using an integrated systems-based computer model of the heart.

Blockade of the delayed rectifier potassium channel current, I(Kr), has been associated with drug-induced QT prolongation in the electrocardiogram and life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias. However, it is increasingly clear that compound-induced interactions with multiple cardiac ion channels may significantly affect QT prolongation that would result from inhibition of only I(Kr) [Redfern, W.S., Carlsson, L., et al., 2003. Relationships between preclinical cardiac electrophysiology, clinical QT interval prolongation and torsade de pointes for a broad range of drugs: evidence for a provisional safety margin in drug development. Cardiovasc. Res. 58(1), 32-45]. Such an assessment may not be feasible in vitro, due to multi-factorial processes that are also time-dependent and highly non-linear. Limited preclinical data, I(Kr) hERG assay and canine Purkinje fiber (PF) action potentials (APs) [Gintant, G.A., Limberis, J.T., McDermott, J.S., Wegner, C.D., Cox, B.F., 2001. The canine Purkinje fiber: an in vitro model system for acquired long QT syndrome and drug-induced arrhythmogenesis. J. Cardiovasc. Pharmacol. 37(5), 607-618], were used for two test compounds in a systems-based modeling platform of cardiac electrophysiology [Muzikant, A.L., Penland, R.C., 2002. Models for profiling the potential QT prolongation risk of drugs. Curr. Opin. Drug. Discov. Dev. 5(1), 127-35] to: (i) convert a canine myocyte model to a PF model by training functional current parameters to the AP data; (ii) reverse engineer the compounds' effects on five channel currents other than I(Kr), predicting significant IC(50) values for I(Na+), sustained and I(Ca2+), L-type , which were subsequently experimentally validated; (iii) use the predicted (I(Na+), sustained and I(Ca2+), L-type) and measured (I(Kr)) IC(50) values to simulate dose-dependent effects of the compounds on APs in endocardial, mid-myocardial, and epicardiac ventricular cells; and (iv) integrate the three types of cellular responses into a tissue-level spatial model, which quantifiably predicted no potential for the test compounds to induce either QT prolongation or increased transmural dispersion of repolarization in a dose-dependent and reverse rate-dependent fashion, despite their inhibition of I(Kr) in vitro.