BACKGROUND:The authors hypothesized that comprehensive genomic profiling of advanced-stage cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) could identify genomic-derived drug targets of therapy for patients with conventional therapy-resistant disease. METHODS: Comprehensive genomic profiling of 315 cancer genes was applied to 50 ng of DNA from 122 cSCC cases for the evaluation of all classes of genomic alterations (GAs). Clinically relevant genomic alterations (CRGAs) were defined as those identifying anticancer drugs on the market or in registered clinical trials. RESULTS: There were 21 women (17%) and 101 men (83%) with a median age of 64.9 years (range, 21-87 years). Eleven cSCC cases (9%) were histologic AJCC grade 1, 69 (57%) were grade 2, and 42 (34%) were grade 3. The primary cSCC was used for sequencing in 77 cases (63%). Metastatic lesions were sequenced in 37% of cases. There were 1120 total GAs identified (average of 9.2 GAs per tumor), with 100% of cases harboring at least 1 alteration. Of the 122 cSCCs, 107 (88%) harbored at least 1 CRGA (2.5 CRGAs per cSCC) includingNOTCH1 (43%); patched 1 (PTCH1) (11%); BRCA2 (10%); HRAS (8%); ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) (7%); erb-B2 receptor tyrosine kinase 4 (ERBB4) (7%); neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) (7%); erb-B2 receptor tyrosine kinase 2 (ERBB2) (6%); phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase, catalytic subunit alpha (PIK3CA) (6%); cyclin D1 (CCND1) (6%); epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) (5%); and F-box and WD repeat domain containing 7, E3 ubiquitin protein ligase (FBXW7) (5%). CONCLUSIONS: In the current study, approximately 88% of patients with cSCC were found to harbor clinically relevant GAs that have the potential to guide the treatment of patients with advanced-stage tumors with targeted therapeutic agents. Cancer 2016;122:249-57.

Background Fosaprepitant is a neurokinin‐1 receptor antagonist, approved for the prevention of chemotherapy‐induced nausea and vomiting. The data on the use of fosaprepitant in children are limited and therefore we conducted a phase III randomized controlled trial. Procedure Children aged 1‐12 years scheduled to receive moderately or highly emetogenic chemotherapy were randomly assigned to arm‐A (fosaprepitant) or arm‐B (placebo). Children recruited to arm‐A received intravenous ondansetron plus dexamethasone followed by fosaprepitant infusion. Children recruited to arm‐B received the same drugs as those given to children in arm‐A, except that fosaprepitant was substituted with a placebo. Ondansetron and dexamethasone were continued for 48 hours after completion of chemotherapy. The primary end point of the study was to determine the proportion of patients who achieved a complete response (CR), defined as no vomiting, no retching, and no use of rescue medication, during the 24‐120 hours (delayed phase) after administration of the last dose of chemotherapy. Secondary end points were the proportion of patients who achieved a CR during the acute phase (0‐24 hours) and overall after administration of the last dose of chemotherapy. Results One‐hundred‐sixty‐three patients were analyzed (81 in the fosaprepitant arm and 82 in the placebo arm). CR rates were significantly higher in the fosaprepitant arm compared to those in the placebo arm during the acute phase (86% vs 60%, P < 0.001), delayed phase (79% vs 51%, P < 0.001), and overall phase (70% vs 41%, P < 0.001). Three (4%) patients in the fosaprepitant arm and sixteen (20%) in the placebo arm required rescue anti‐emetics (P = 0.0017). Conclusion Addition of fosaprepitant to ondansetron and dexamethasone improved chemotherapy‐induced vomiting control in children treated with moderately or highly emetogenic chemotherapy.

Recent research in sensor networks has raised security issues for small embedded devices. Security concerns are motivated by the deployment of a large number of sensory devices in the field. Limitations in processing power, battery life, communication bandwidth and memory constrain the applicability of existing cryptography standards for small embedded devices. A mismatch between wide arithmetic for security (32 bit word operations) and embedded data bus widths (often only 8 or 16 bits) combined with lack of certain operations (e.g., multiply) in the ISA present other challenges. This paper offers two contributions. First, a survey investigating the computational requirements for a number of popular cryptographic algorithms and embedded architectures is presented. The objective of this work is to cover a wide class of commonly used encryption algorithms and to determine the impact of embedded architectures on their performance. This will help designers predict a system's performance for cryptographic tasks. Second, methods to derive the computational overhead of embedded architectures in general for encryption algorithms are developed. This allows one to project computational limitations and determine the threshold of feasible encryption schemes under a set of the constraints for an embedded architecture.Experimental measurements indicate uniform cryptographic cost for each encryption class and each architecture class and negligible impact of caches. RC4 is shown to outperform RC5 for the Motes Atmega platform contrary to the choice of RC5 for the Motes project, a choice driven in large by memory constraints. The analytical model allows to assess the impact of arbitrary embedded architectures as a multi-variant function for each encryption scheme. Overall, our results are not only valuable to assess the feasibility of encryption schemes for existing embedded architectures, they also extend to assess the feasibility of encryption methods for new algorithms and architectures for sensor systems.

There is paucity of data in pediatric Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) from developing countries. We analyzed the outcomes of 65 consecutive patients with pediatric AML treated at our centre from January-2008 to May-2013. The median event free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) were 12.6 and 14.6 months respectively. Patients with good-risk cytogenetics had a better EFS (p = 0.004) and OS (p = 0.01). Overall, these results are not comparable to that observed in other centres globally and leaves scope for further improvement. This includes implementing allogeneic bone marrow transplantation as a treatment for all children with high-risk AML.

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