Background:To compare the accuracy of five major risk stratification systems (RSS) in classifying the risk of recurrence and nodal metastases in early-stage endometrial cancer (EC).Methods:Data of 553 patients with early-stage EC were abstracted from a prospective multicentre database between January 2001 and December 2012. The following RSS were identified in a PubMed literature search and included the Post Operative Radiation Therapy in Endometrial Carcinoma (PORTEC-1), the Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG)-99, the Survival effect of para-aortic lymphadenectomy (SEPAL), the ESMO and the ESMO-modified classifications. The accuracy of each RSS was evaluated in terms of recurrence-free survival (RFS) and nodal metastases according to discrimination.Results:Overall, the ESMO -modified RSS provided the highest discrimination for both RFS and for nodal metastases with a concordance index (C-index) of 0.73 (95% CI, 0.70–0.76) and an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.80 (0.78–0.72), respectively. The other RSS performed as follows: the PORTEC1, GOG-99, SEPAL, ESMO classifications gave a C-index of 0.68 (0.66–0.70), 0.65 (0.63–0.67), 0.66 (0.63–0.69), 0.71 (0.68–0.74), respectively, for RFS and an AUC of 0.69 (0.66–0.72), 0.69 (0.67–0.71), 0.68 (0.66–0.70), 0.70 (0.68–0.72), respectively, for node metastases.Conclusions:None of the five major RSS showed high accuracy in stratifying the risk of recurrence or nodal metastases in patients with early-stage EC, although the ESMO-modified classification emerged as having the highest power of discrimination for both parameters. Therefore, there is a need to revisit existing RSS using additional tools such as biological markers to better stratify risk for these patients.

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Nano is everywhere but actinides are the forgotten elements of the nanoworld! Isotropic faceted uranium oxide nanodots and anisotropic thorium oxide nanorods were synthesized. These nano‐objects are very well crystallized and monodisperse. The characteristics of the actinide oxide nanocrystals can be controlled by tuning the reactivity of the starting actinide precursors. Such results pave the way for the synthesis of transuranium‐based nano‐objects.

Apart from its technological importance, plutonium (Pu) is also one of the most intriguing elements because of its non-conventional physical properties and fascinating chemistry. Those fundamental aspects are particularly interesting when dealing with the challenging study of plutonium-based nanomaterials. Here we show that ultra-small (3.2±0.9 nm) and highly crystalline plutonium oxide (PuO2 ) nanocrystals (NCs) can be synthesized by the thermal decomposition of plutonyl nitrate ([PuO2 (NO3 )2 ]⋅3 H2 O) in a highly coordinating organic medium. This is the first example reporting on the preparation of significant quantities (several tens of milligrams) of PuO2 NCs, in a controllable and reproducible manner. The structure and magnetic properties of PuO2 NCs have been characterized by a wide variety of techniques (powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS), X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES), TEM, IR, Raman, UV/Vis spectroscopies, and superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometry). The current PuO2 NCs constitute an innovative material for the study of challenging problems as diverse as the transport behavior of plutonium in the environment or size and shape effects on the physics of transuranium elements.

Very little is known about the size and shape effects on the properties of actinide compounds. As a consequence, the controlled synthesis of well-defined actinide-based nanocrystals constitutes a fundamental step before studying their corresponding properties. In this paper, we report on the non-aqueous surfactant-assisted synthesis of thorium and uranium oxide nanocrystals. The final characteristics of thorium and uranium oxide nanocrystals can be easily tuned by controlling a few experimental parameters such as the nature of the actinide precursor and the composition of the organic system (e.g., the chemical nature of the surfactants and their relative concentrations). Additionally, the influence of these parameters on the outcome of the synthesis is highly dependent on the nature of the actinide element (thorium versus uranium). By using optimised experimental conditions, monodisperse isotropic uranium oxide nanocrystals with different sizes (4.5 and 10.7 nm) as well as branched nanocrystals (overall size ca. 5 nm), nanodots (ca. 4 nm) and nanorods (with ultra-small diameters of 1 nm) of thorium oxide were synthesised.