CD44

THURSDAY, Aug. 22, 2024 -- Elevated salivary levels of CD44 and total protein (TP) can identify head and neck cancer patients with an increased risk for cancer recurrence, according to a study published online Aug. 15 in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery . Elizabeth J. Franzmann, M.D., from the University of Miami Health System and Jackson Memorial Hospital, and colleagues conducted a multi-institutional nonrandomized clinical trial testing a novel diagnostic/screening assay to examine whether soluble CD44 and TP are useful for monitoring head and neck cancer recurrence in a point-of-care (POC) test. Oral rinses were collected at pretreatment baseline and at three, six, 12, and 18 months after completion of therapy. To define disease status, participants were followed for three years. Among the 172 patients who were enrolled, the researchers found an association for tumor site with test results at baseline; a higher baseline positive POC test rate was seen for patients with oral cavity cancer versus oropharyngeal cancer (92.2 versus 77.3 percent). A higher CD44 level showed a significant association with a higher risk for recurrence using Cox regression models with CD44 or TP level as a time-varying covariate (hazard ratio, 1.06). Higher CD44 and TP levels were associated with increased hazard ratios of recurrence of 1.13 and 3.51, respectively, in a multivariate adjusted analysis. “Our study suggests biomarker detection in saliva collected from an oral rinse after initial treatment offers potential to readily assess recurrence risk,” Franzmann said in a statement. “Elevated levels of either of two biomarkers were associated with disease return.” One author disclosed ties to the biopharmaceutical industry and is inventor of the intellectual property used in the study.

MONDAY, July 8, 2024 -- Pancreatic cancer is particularly aggressive and difficult to treat, partly because it’s often resistant to chemotherapy. Researchers now think they know why chemo struggles to work against pancreatic cancer – and how to reverse that resistance. It turns out that the physical stiffness of the tissue around the cancer cells makes chemo less effective, researchers reported July 4 in the journal Nature Materials . “We found that stiffer tissue can cause pancreatic cancer cells to become resistant to chemotherapy, while softer tissue made the cancer cells more responsive to chemotherapy,” senior researcher Sarah Heilshorn , a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University, said in a news release. “These results suggest an exciting new direction for future drug development to help overcome chemoresistance, which is a major clinical challenge in pancreatic cancer,” she added. The study focused on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, which accounts for 90% of pancreatic cancer cases. This form of cancer starts in the cells lining the ducts of the pancreas. In these cancers, the tissue becomes notably stiffer, acting as a physical block that prevents chemo from reaching cancer cells, researchers said. To figure out what is happening, researchers designed tissue in the lab that mimicked the properties of both pancreatic tumors and healthy pancreas tissues. They then used this tissue to culture cells drawn from pancreatic cancer patients. “We created a designer matrix that would allow us to test the idea that these cancerous cells might be responding to the chemical signals and mechanical properties in the matrix around them,” Heilshorn said. The researchers found that two things caused pancreatic cancer to become resistant to chemo – stiffer tissue and high amounts of hyaluronic acid, a substance that helps stiffen the tissue. Hyaluronic acid interacts with cellular tissue through a receptor called CD44. Researchers found they could make tissue softer and more responsive to chemo if they blocked the CD44 receptor. “We can revert the cells back to a state where they are sensitive to chemotherapy,” Heilshorn said. “This suggests that if we can disrupt the stiffness signaling that’s happening through the CD44 receptor, we could make patients’ pancreatic cancer treatable by normal chemotherapy.” The research team continues to investigate the CD44 receptor, as well as the chain of events that follows after the receptor is activated in a cancerous cell. The researchers are also working to improve their cell culture model, so that it can be used to predict how chemo and other cancer therapies will work in specific patients. “When we design chemotherapies, we should be testing our cultures in matrices that are relevant to a patient,” Heilshorn said. “Because it matters – the way cells respond to drugs depends on the matrix that’s around them.” Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

PharmaNest, a leader in high-resolution, single-fiber quantitative Digital Pathology and Artificial Intelligence, showcases the performance of its FibroNest Ph-FCS digital biomarker for quantifying fibrosis severity and its clinical utility in Phase 2 and Phase 3 studies for patients with Metabolic Associated Steatohepatitis (MASH). PRINCETON, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / June 3, 2024 / Pharmanest Inc., a leader in high-resolution quantitative Digital Pathology and Artificial Intelligence, announces today that it will present, alongside its collaborators, seven abstracts at this year's International Liver Congress - EASL in Milan, Italy, June 5-8, 2024. The abstracts highlight the utility and performance of its FibroNest Ph-FCS digital pathology biomarker for quantifying fibrosis severity and its clinical utility in Phase 2 and Phase 3 studies for patients with Metabolic Associated Steatohepatitis (MASH). PharmaNest Inc. FibroNest is the first multivendor, high-resolution, single-fiber digital pathology quantitative image analysis platform for assessing the severity and progression of fibrosis and inflammation in MASH. Presentations include results from the analytical validation of the fibrosis biomarker, focusing on accuracy, reproducibility, repeatability, and intra-liver variability. Additionally, the presentations will demonstrate the biomarker's sensitivity to detect changes and regression of fibrosis in patients with MASH following bariatric surgery, a well-known and efficacious intervention. Additional oral and poster presentations will describe the utility of the FibroNest method in screening for anti-fibrotic compounds and evaluating complex phenotypes of fibrosis in the extracellular matrix, along with their relationship to intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. "The automated high-resolution quantification of the phenotype of fibrosis severity from the same slides reviewed by pathologists offers a robust and scalable method to generate continuous digital biomarkers that resolve faint changes in fibrosis severity, account for the efficacy of an intervention, and predict liver-related clinical events," said Mathieu Petitjean, Ph.D., CEO and founder of PharmaNest. "Because the approach is fully quantitative and not based on existing staging or grading paradigms, it can be used throughout the drug discovery and development process and across etiologies of fibrosis." Communications will take place on the following schedule: Wednesday, June 5, 2024: (OS-026-YI) Functional role of CD44+ cancer stem cells in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma with Dr. Paula Cantallops Vila at Institut d'Investigacions biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain. Wednesday, June 5, 2024: (WED-262) AI-assisted, quantitative digital pathology-based continuous fibrosis scores perform better than conventional pathology in documenting fibrosis reduction in collaboration with Pr. Vald Ratziu. Thursday, June 6, 2024: (THU-278) Digital pathology with artificial intelligence analysis provides insight to the efficacy of antifibrotic compounds in human 3D MASH model in collaboration with InSphero AG. Thursday, June 6, 2024: (THU-282) Evaluation of performance of a cellular profiling technique for quantification of inflammation and steatosis in liver biopsies of patients with MASH. Thursday, June 6, 2024: (THU-298) Evaluation of performance of AI digital pathology on the reproducibility and repeatability of fibrosis phenotyping in MASH liver biopsies Thursday, June 6, 2024: (THU-305) Evaluation of the performance of AI digital pathology method (FibroNest) on subsections of biopsies to assess performance variability due to region selection. Friday, June 7, 2024: (FRI-225) Novel digital pathology adequacy score benchmarks the performance of pre-analytical method for digital pathology and AI end-to-end tissue assays. These abstracts will be available on the PharmaNest website at the end of the week at fibronest.com/science. Contact Information: Mathieu Petitjean CEO info@pharmanest.com (609) 375 2003 SOURCE: PharmaNest, Inc. View the original press release on newswire.com.