FARSB stratifies prognosis and cold tumor microenvironment across different cancer types: an integrated single cell and bulk RNA sequencing analysis / 南方医科大学学报

OBJECTIVE@#Immunotherapy has brought significant clinical benefits to a subset of patients, but has thus far been disappointing in the treatment of immunologically "cold" tumors. Existing biomarkers that can precisely identify these populations are insufficient. In this context, a potential cold tumor microenvironment (TME) marker FARSB was investigated to reveal its impact on TME and patients' response to immunotherapy across pan-cancer.@*METHODS@#The expression levels and mutational landscape of FARSB in pan-cancer were investigated. Kaplan-Meier and univariate Cox regression analyses were applied to analyze the prognostic significance of FARSB. Pathways affected by FARSB were investigated by gene set enrichment and variation analysis. The relationship between FARSB expression and immune infiltration was examined using the TIMER2 and R packages. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data of several cancer types from GSE72056, GSE131907, GSE132465, GSE125449 and PMID32561858 were analyzed to validate the impact of FARSB on the TME. The predictive effect of FARSB on immunotherapy efficacy was explored in 3 immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs)- treated cohorts (PMID32472114, GSE176307, and Riaz2017).@*RESULTS@#FARSB expression was significantly higher in 25 tumor tissues than in normal tissues and was associated with poor prognosis in almost all tumor types. FARSB expression exhibited a strong association with several DNA damage repair pathways and was significantly associated with TP53 mutation in lung adenocarcinoma (P < 0.0001, OR=2.25). FARSB characterized a typical immune desert TME and correlated with impaired expression of chemokines and chemokines receptors. Large-scale scRNA-seq analysis confirmed the immunosuppressive role of FARSB and revealed that FARSB potentially shapes the cold TME by impeding intercellular interactions. In 3 ICI-treated cohorts, FARSB demonstrated predictive value for immunotherapy.@*CONCLUSION@#This study provides a pan-cancer landscape of the FARSB gene by integrated single-cell and bulk DNA sequencing analysis and elucidates its biological function to promote DNA damage repair and construct the immune desert TME, suggesting the potential value of FARSB as a novel marker for stratifying patients with poor immunotherapeutic benefits and "cold" TME.

A phase II study of bevacizumab in non-squamous, non-small-cell lung cancer patients with malignant pleural effusion.

Aim: To investigate the efficacy, safety and optimal dosage of bevacizumab in non-squamous, non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with malignant pleural effusion (MPE). Methods: 20 patients were enrolled and received intrapleural injection of bevacizumab (group A: 2.5 mg/kg d1, d8; group B: 5 mg/kg d1, d8; group C: 7.5 mg/kg d1, d8). Results: The objective response rate (ORR) of MPE was 50%. The median progression-free survival (PFS) of MPE was 7.0 months (95% CI 4.9-9.2). The ORR and PFS of MPE from group B were better than those of group A and group C. The most common adverse events (AEs) were hypertension (15%) and anemia (15%). Conclusion: Bevacizumab has certain efficacy in non-squamous NSCLC patients with MPE. Clinical Trial Registration: NCT02942043 (ClinicalTrials.gov).

Analysis of non-tumor diseases affecting the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients / 中国肿瘤临床

Objective:To investigate the types of non-tumor diseases in patients with cancer, and to explore the effects of those dis-eases on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients. Methods:We collected the medical records of cancer patients from January 2013 to December 2017 in Peking University Cancer Hospital, and screened for non-tumor diseases. The clinical records of the patients in this group were analyzed retrospectively, and the effects of those diseases on the diagnosis and treatment of tumors were dis-cussed. Results:Of the 1,323 cases of inter-hospital consultation, 1,153 cases of non-tumor disease (87.2％) were selected. There were 773 men (67.0％) and 380 women (33.0％) included. The median age was 62 (14-90) years. The primary tumor types included lung can-cer, gastric cancer, lymphoma, colorectal cancer, esophageal cancer, breast cancer, malignant melanoma, liver cancer, cholangiocarci-noma/gallbladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, and other tumors. Non-neoplastic diseases included cardiovascular disease in 356 cases (30.9％), respiratory system disease (17.0％) in 196 cases, digestive system disease in 107 cases (9.3％), skin and venereal diseases in 81 cases (7.0％), nervous system lesions (6.4％) in 74 cases, urinary system disease in 72 cases (6.2％), blood disease in 70 cases (6.1％), en-docrine and metabolic diseases in 47 cases (4.1％), autoimmune disease in 23 cases (2.0％), and other diseases (11.0％) in 127 cases. Impact on tumor diagnosis and treatment was as follows:direct, 771 cases (66.9％);no influence, 313 cases (27.1％);and uncertain, 69 cases (6.0％). Conclusions:Cardiovascular disease is a major non-tumor disease associated with cancer. Non-neoplastic diseases are important factors affecting the diagnosis and treatment plans of cancer.

Bioavailability of Silymarin-loaded Nanoparticles / 中成药

AIM:To study the oral bioavailability of Silymarin-loaded Nanoparticles(SM-NP). METHODS: Beagle dogs were employed as experiment animals,Yiganling Tablet and Silymarin Extraction were used as the reference preparations.Three constituents were isolated on Ultimate~(TM) AQ-C_(18) column with mobile phase methanol:water(50∶50) at 0.8 mL/min flow rate using gradient elution and ESI ionic source and negative ion detection.Silybin plasma concentration in rat was determined by LC-M. RESULTS: The pharmacokinetics of the tested preparation and Yiganling Tablet met with one-compartment model.The relative bioavailability of three components of SMNP were higher than that of Yiganling Tablet. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that SM-NP has better bioavailability than the reference preparation,which confirms that nanoparticles is a good carrier for improving oral bioavailability of poorly-soluble drugs.