background: this study addresses the null hypothesis that there is no expansion of heterotopic ossification (ho) in the elbow beyond what can be seen early on.   methods: the area of ho was measured on lateral radiographs of 38 consecutive patients that had operative treatment of ho between 2000 and 2013. measurements from radiographs obtained between 3 to 7 weeks were compared to measurements ...

25 years ago (1) Leslie Foulds formulated a number of 'rules' for tumor progression, the process whereby 'tumors go from bad to worse', in Peyton Rous' original description (2). These rules are equally pertinent today and accessible to analysis by the powerful tools of modem biology. Foulds dissected the malignant phenotype into 'unit characteristics', such as growth rate, invasiveness, metasta...

In this work we present a flexible tool for tumor progression, which simulates the evolutionary dynamics of cancer. Tumor progression implements a multi-type branching process where the key parameters are the fitness landscape, the mutation rate, and the average time of cell division. The fitness of a cancer cell depends on the mutations it has accumulated. The input to our tool could be any fi...

Molecular biomarkers are used by clinicians to guide selection of the most appropriate systemic therapy for metastatic breast cancer: endocrine therapy, chemotherapy, or human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) – targeted therapy, such as trastuzumab or lapatinib. With increased understanding that molecular biomarker status can change during tumor progression such that biomarker status i...

In the blood of cancer patients, some nucleic acid fragments and tumor cells can be found that make it possible to trace tumor changes through a simple blood test called “liquid biopsy”. The main components of liquid biopsy are fragments of DNA and RNA shed by tumors into the bloodstream and circulate freely( ctDNAs and ctRNAs). tumor cells which are shed into the blood (circulating tumor cells...

The intricate microenvironment in which malignant cells reside is essential for the progression of tumor growth. Both physical and biochemical features (TME) play a critical role promoting differentiation, proliferation, invasion, metastasis cancer cells. It therefore to understand how interact communicate with an assortment supportive tumor-associated including macrophages, fibroblasts, endoth...

Alternative splicing is a key molecular mechanism for increasing the functional diversity of the eukaryotic proteomes. A large body of experimental data implicates aberrant splicing in various human diseases, including cancer. Both mutations in cis-acting splicing elements and alterations in the expression and/or activity of splicing regulatory factors drastically affect the splicing profile of...

Keywords: tumor microenvironment; Heat-shock Factor 1 (HSF1) Billions of years of evolution through changing environments led organisms to develop an arsenal of cytoprotec-tive pathways to promote their survival under stressful conditions. We hypothesized that tumors exploit these mechanisms to support their own survival as they rapidly develop and evolve in a hostile and stressful environment....

Tumor progression is classically viewed as the Darwinian evolution of subclones that sequentially acquire genetic mutations and autonomously overproliferate. However, growing evidence suggests that tumor microenvironment and subclone heterogeneity contribute to non-autonomous tumor progression. Recent Drosophila studies revealed a common mechanism by which clones of genetically altered cells tr...