Eculizumab for Shiga-toxin-induced hemolytic uremic syndrome in adults with neurological involvement.

The role of eculizumab in treating Shiga-toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) patients with neurological involvement remains unclear. We describe two distinctly different STEC-HUS patients with neurologic involvement successfully managed with eculizumab, and perform a literature review of all published cases. Both patients had complete resolution of neurological symptoms after initiation of eculizumab. Eighty patients with STEC-HUS treated with eculizumab were identified in the literature, 68.7% had complete resolution of neurological symptoms. Based on our experience and literature review, three prevailing themes were noted: 1) Early eculizumab administration optimized neurological outcomes, 2) Symptom resolution may not be immediate, neurological symptoms may initially worsen before improvement, and 3) Plasma exchange yielded no benefit. Early administration of eculizumab may reverse neurotoxicity in patients with STEC-HUS.

Response to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Treatment in Advanced Cervical Cancer and Biomarker Study.

Background: Checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy or immuno-oncology (IO) treatment in refractory cervical cancer yielded an objective response rate (ORR) of 12% in tumors expressing the programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) in the KEYNOTE-158 phase II study. We hypothesized that the positive response might be associated with the level of PD-L1 expression and/or the tumor mutation burden (TMB). We also aimed to analyze if responses could be associated with platinum sensitivity. Methods: This is a retrospective study of all consecutive patients with cervical cancer who received pembrolizumab or nivolumab. Results: Ten patients were identified. Median age was 64.5 years old (range 48-80). The response rate was 70% and the median duration of response was 21.0 months (range 1.8-26.7) after 20.7 months of follow-up (range 2.0-31.0). The response rate was 80% in patients with PD-L1 combined positive score (CPS) ≥ 10, and 75% in patients with tumor mutation burden (TMB) ≥ 10 mut/Mb. The mean progression-free survival (PFS) for the entire cohort was 20.2 months (95% CI 12.0-28.5). Seven patients had treatment for >12 months (range 14.6-31.0). Five patients were platinum-sensitive and 5 patients were platinum-resistant at the time of immunotherapy, and the response rate was similar regardless of platinum sensitivity. Conclusions: The positive response to IO treatment in advanced cervical cancer in this study was higher than published, and a possible association with the level of PD-L1 expression and the TMB level was suggested. A PD-L1 CPS score ≥ 10 or TMB ≥ 10 may be biomarkers to correlate with response, which should be explored in large studies.

AptCompare: optimized de novo motif discovery of RNA aptamers via HTS-SELEX.

SUMMARY: High-throughput sequencing can enhance the analysis of aptamer libraries generated by the Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment. Robust analysis of the resulting sequenced rounds is best implemented by determining a ranked consensus of reads following the processing by multiple aptamer detection algorithms. While several such approaches have been developed to this end, their installation and implementation is problematic. We developed AptCompare, a cross-platform program that combines six of the most widely used analytical approaches for the identification of RNA aptamer motifs and uses a simple weighted ranking to order the candidate aptamers, all driven within the same GUI-enabled environment. We demonstrate AptCompare's performance by identifying the top-ranked candidate aptamers from a previously published selection experiment in our laboratory, with follow-up bench assays demonstrating good correspondence between the sequences' rankings and their binding affinities. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The source code and pre-built virtual machine images are freely available at https://bitbucket.org/shiehk/aptcompare. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

A New Transferrin Receptor Aptamer Inhibits New World Hemorrhagic Fever Mammarenavirus Entry.

Pathogenic New World hemorrhagic fever mammarenaviruses (NWM) utilize Glycoprotein 1 (GP1) to target the apical domain of the human transferrin receptor (hTfR) for facilitating cell entry. However, the conservation between their GP1s is low. Considering this and the slow evolutionary progression of mammals compared to viruses, therapeutic targeting of hTfR provides an attractive avenue for cross-strain inhibition and diminishing the likelihood of escape mutants. Aptamers present unique advantages for the development of inhibitors to vial entry, including ease of synthesis, lack of immunogenicity, and potentially cold-chain breaking solutions to diseases endemic to South America. Here, recognizing that in vivo competition with the natural ligand, transferrin (Tf), likely drove the evolution of GP1 to recognize the apical domain, we performed competitive in vitro selections against hTfR-expressing cells with supplemented Tf. The resultant minimized aptamer, Waz, binds the apical domain of the receptor and inhibits infection of human cells by recombinant NWM in culture (EC50 ~400 nmol/l). Aptamer multimerization further enhanced inhibition >10-fold (EC50 ~30 nmol/l). Together, our results highlight the ability to use a competitor to bias the outcome of a selection and demonstrate how avidity effects can be leveraged to enhance both aptamer binding and the potency of viral inhibition.

toxoMine: an integrated omics data warehouse for Toxoplasma gondii systems biology research.

Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) is an obligate intracellular parasite that must monitor for changes in the host environment and respond accordingly; however, it is still not fully known which genetic or epigenetic factors are involved in regulating virulence traits of T. gondii. There are on-going efforts to elucidate the mechanisms regulating the stage transition process via the application of high-throughput epigenomics, genomics and proteomics techniques. Given the range of experimental conditions and the typical yield from such high-throughput techniques, a new challenge arises: how to effectively collect, organize and disseminate the generated data for subsequent data analysis. Here, we describe toxoMine, which provides a powerful interface to support sophisticated integrative exploration of high-throughput experimental data and metadata, providing researchers with a more tractable means toward understanding how genetic and/or epigenetic factors play a coordinated role in determining pathogenicity of T. gondii. As a data warehouse, toxoMine allows integration of high-throughput data sets with public T. gondii data. toxoMine is also able to execute complex queries involving multiple data sets with straightforward user interaction. Furthermore, toxoMine allows users to define their own parameters during the search process that gives users near-limitless search and query capabilities. The interoperability feature also allows users to query and examine data available in other InterMine systems, which would effectively augment the search scope beyond what is available to toxoMine. toxoMine complements the major community database ToxoDB by providing a data warehouse that enables more extensive integrative studies for T. gondii. Given all these factors, we believe it will become an indispensable resource to the greater infectious disease research community.

Bupivacaine injection of the lateral rectus muscle to treat esotropia.

PURPOSE: We report results of a pilot trial of bupivacaine injection into extraocular muscles as a method of enlarging and strengthening the muscles to treat strabismus. METHODS: Bupivacaine, in volumes from 1.0 to 4.5 mL and concentrations from 0.75% to 3.0%, was injected into 1 lateral rectus muscle in each of 6 patients with comitant esotropia with the use of the electrical activity recorded from the needle tip to guide injection. Magnetic resonance imaging was performed before and at intervals after injection to estimate changes in muscle size. Clinical measures of alignment were made before and at intervals after injection. Two patients required a second injection for adequate effect. RESULTS: Four patients showed improved eye alignment, averaging 12(Delta), measured an average of 367 days after the last injection (range, 244-540 days). Two patients were substantially unchanged. Alignment improvement for all 6 patients averaged 8(Delta) (range, 0-14(Delta)). Volumetric enlargement of the injected muscle, computed from magnetic resonance images, was 6.2% (range, -1.5% to 13.3%). There was a positive correlation between alignment change and muscle enlargement averaging 0.65. Injection caused a retrobulbar hemorrhage in an unchanged patient that cleared without affecting vision. CONCLUSIONS: Bupivacaine injection improved eye alignment in 4 of 6 esotropic patients. There was a positive correlation between improved eye alignment and increased muscle size. Clinical and laboratory studies are underway to determine optimal dosages, effects in other strabismus conditions, and differential effects of bupivacaine on contractile and elastic muscle components.

Treating strabismus by injecting the agonist muscle with bupivacaine and the antagonist with botulinum toxin.

PURPOSE: We report the results of injection of bupivacaine (BUP) and botulinum toxin (BT) into agonist and antagonist muscles, respectively, to treat horizontal strabismus. METHODS: We treated both horizontal muscles of 7 patients with comitant horizontal strabismus, 2 patients with partial lateral rectus (LR) paralysis, and one elderly myopic patient with acquired esotropia, injecting the agonist muscle with BUP in concentrations of 0.75% to 3.0% and volumes of 3.0 to 5.0 mL, and the antagonist with BT in about half the usual therapeutic dose to prevent it from stretching the BUP-treated muscle during its regeneration following BUP myotoxicity. We reinjected BT in one patient who had an inadequate response from the initial BT dose. RESULTS: The 7 comitant patients were corrected (on average) 19.7 prism diopters (Delta), from 28.3Delta to 8.6Delta, at 193 days after injection. Muscle volume increase after BUP injection was 5.8% at 158 days. One LR palsy patient without LR atrophy was changed 55Delta; the other, with LR atrophy, was corrected 4Delta. Two patients had transient vertical deviations from the BT injection. The myopic patient with esotropia was unchanged. CONCLUSIONS: Injections of BUP and BT corrected 7 patients with comitant horizontal strabismus an average of 19.7Delta, about double the correction reported from BUP injection alone. BUP-injected muscles increased size by 5.8%. Of 2 patients with LR weakness, one without LR atrophy was changed by 55Delta, but another with LR atrophy was corrected only 4Delta.