Prediction of pathological complete response using radiomics on MRI in patients with breast cancer undergoing neoadjuvant pharmacotherapy.

PURPOSE: Neoadjuvant pharmacotherapy is essential for patients with breast cancer who wish to preserve the breast by shrinking the malignant tumor, allowing breast-conserving surgery. It may eliminate cancer cells completely, which is known as pathologic complete response (pCR). Patients with pCR have a lower risk of recurrence. The purpose of this study was to develop a method for predicting patients who achieve pCR by neoadjuvant pharmacotherapy using radiomic features in MR images. METHODS: Fat-suppressed T2-weighted MR images of 64 cases were identified from the ISPY1 dataset. There were 26 cases of pCR and 38 cases of non-pCR. The image slice with the largest tumor diameter was selected from MR images, and the tumor region was manually segmented. A total of 371 radiomic features were calculated from the tumor region. We selected nine radiomic features using Lasso in this study. A support vector machine (SVM) with nine radiomic features was used for predicting patients with pCR. RESULTS: The result of the ROC analysis showed that the area under the curve of SVM was 0.92 for distinguishing between pCR and non-pCR. Although the input data contain data that were misclassified by SVM, the survival curve classified into the pCR group was at a higher position than the non-pCR group. However, the log-rank test was [Formula: see text]. CONCLUSIONS: We developed a method to predict patients with pCR by neoadjuvant pharmacotherapy using noninvasive MR images. The survival curve of patients classified as having pCR by the proposed method was higher than those classified as non-pCR. Since the proposed method predicts patients who achieve pCR by neoadjuvant pharmacotherapy, it enhances the value of preoperative image information.

Development of the Timed Re-Insemination (TRI-synch) program re-inseminating 24 days after the initial service in dairy cows.

For the timed re-insemination at the minimal interbreeding interval, cows were treated with a progesterone (P4 )-releasing intravaginal device from Days 13-15 to 21 post-insemination (Day 0 = estrus), followed by plasma P4 assay on Day 23 and then subjected to the Experiments 1 and 2. In Experiment 1, of 18 cows, 6 cows were determined as luteolysis with low (<1 ng/ml) plasma P4 concentrations on Day 23 and ovulated on Days 24 (3 cows), 25 (1 cow), and 26 (1 cow) except a cow affected by ovarian quiescence. In Experiment 2, all cows were treated with GnRH on Day 23. Cows with low (<1 ng/ml) plasma P4 concentrations on Day 23 were diagnosed as non-pregnant and subjected to the re-insemination in the morning of Day 24 irrespective of estrous signs. Of 36 cows, 15 cows were diagnosed as being non-pregnant on Day 23. Fourteen cows of the non-pregnant animals were re-inseminated in the morning of Day 24 irrespective of estrous signs and the pregnancy rate of re-insemination was 36%. The conception rates of initial and re-inseminations were 50% (18/36) and 36% (5/14), respectively. The overall pregnancy rate by adding the rates of initial and re-inseminations was 64% (23/36).

Is estrogen effective for full-thickness cutaneous wound healing in young male mice?

The aim of this study is to show the effects of estrogen upon its topical application on the wound healing process in young male mice. Fifty-six male mice aged 7 weeks old were divided into 4 groups: sham operation, castration, estrogen treatment after sham operation, and estrogen treatment after castration. Wound healing was observed daily until day 14 after wounding. Specimens were harvested on days 3, 7, 10, and 14, and stained to evaluate reepithelialization, inflammation, contraction, and collagenaccumulation. Wound healing periods of all groups were almost the same, although the concentration of serum estrogen in the estrogen-applied mice was very high, and that in the nonapplied groups was low. The numbers of macrophages in the castrated, estrogen-treated after sham operation, and estrogen-treated after castration groups were significantly decreased compared with that in the sham group in the inflammatory phase; however, the ratio of wound area in these groups did not decrease, and other histological data did not reveal any effects of estrogen. These results indicate that estrogen may show limited effectiveness for full-thickness cutaneous wound healing in young male mice, and decreased inflammation may not always be associated with decreased wound area. .