Cisplatin is a valuable adjuvant to radiotherapy for the treatment of cervical cancer. Because the advantage of combining cisplatin with radiotherapy is likely to be attributable to additive cell killing by these 2 agents, such protocols should primarily benefit patients who have inherently cisplatin-sensitive tumors. Development of a molecular assay to rapidly evaluate the cisplatin responsiveness of cervical tumors would thus be extremely valuable. We investigated whether high pre-treatment mRNA levels of the ERCC1 nucleotide excision repair gene are predictive of cisplatin resistance in early-passage human cervical cancer cells, as they are in several other tumor types. Expression of the ERCC1 gene at the mRNA and protein levels was established by Northern and Western blotting, respectively, in a panel of single-cell-derived cervical carcinoma cell lines that exhibited a wide range of inherent sensitivity to cisplatin. There was a significant (p

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Purpose: To demonstrate, at 9.4 T, that J-coupling interactions exhibited by lipid protons affects lipid composition determination with a point resolved spectroscopy (PRESS) sequence. Materials and Methods:Experiments were conducted on four oils (almond, corn, sesame, and sunflower), on visceral adipose tissue of a euthanized mouse, and on pure linoleic acid at 9.4 T. The 2.1, 2.3, and 2.8 ppm resonances were measured at multiple echo times (TEs) by a standard PRESS sequence and by a PRESS sequence consisting of narrow-bandwidth refocusing pulses designed to rewind the J-coupling evolution of the target peak protons in the voxel of interest. T 2 corrections were performed on both groups of data for the three peaks and lipid compositions for the oils and for the mouse tissue were determined. Lipid compositions were also calculated from a short-TE standard PRESS spectrum.Results: A chemical analysis of the samples was not performed; however, the oil compositions calculated from resonance peaks acquired with the PRESS sequence designed to minimize J-coupling effects, following T 2 relaxation correction, closely agreed with values in the literature, which was not the case for all of the compositions determined from the regular PRESS spectra. Conclusion:The presented work brings to attention the significance of J-coupling effects when calculating lipid compositions from localized proton spectra.

We report the development of a sensitive and reliable multi-modality scoring system, the RAKSS, for evaluation of OA severity in pre-clinical animal models. Using this scoring system, we found that celecoxib prevented enlargement of osteophytes in this animal model of PTOA, and thus it may be useful in preventing OA progression. However, it did not show any chondroprotective effect using the recommended dose. In contrast, high dose glucosamine had no measurable effects.

Funding information Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaGlutamine (Gln), glutamate (Glu) and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) are relevant brain metabolites that can be measured with magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). This work optimizes the point-resolved spectroscopy (PRESS) sequence echo times, TE 1 and TE 2 , for improved simultaneous quantification of the three metabolites at 9.4 T. Quantification was based on the proton resonances of Gln, Glu and GABA at ≈2.45, ≈2.35 and ≈2.28 ppm, respectively. Glu exhibits overlap with both Gln and GABA; in addition, the Gln peak is contaminated by signal from the strongly coupled protons of N-acetylaspartate (NAA), which resonate at about 2.49 ppm. J-coupling evolution of the protons was characterized numerically and verified experimentally. A {TE 1 , TE 2 } combination of {106 ms, 16 ms} minimized the NAA signal in the Gln spectral region, whilst retaining Gln, Glu and GABA peaks. The efficacy of the technique was verified on phantom solutions and on rat brain in vivo. LCModel was employed to analyze the in vivo spectra. The average T 2 -corrected Gln, Glu and GABA concentrations were found to be 3.39, 11.43 and 2.20 mM, respectively, assuming a total creatine concentration of 8.5 mM. LCModel Cramér-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) for Gln, Glu and GABA were in the ranges 14-17%, 4-6% and 16-19%, respectively. The optimal TE resulted in concentrations for Gln and GABA that agreed more closely with literature concentrations compared with concentrations obtained from short-TE spectra acquired with a {TE 1 , TE 2 } combination of {12 ms, 9 ms}. LCModel estimations were also evaluated with short-TE PRESS and with the optimized long TE of {106 ms, 16 ms}, using phantom solutions of known metabolite concentrations. It was shown that concentrations estimated with LCModel can be inaccurate when combined with short-TE PRESS, where there is peak overlap, even when low (<20%) CRLBs are reported.