ABSTRACT

Hepatoblastoma (HB) is the main paediatric liver cancer, but it is a very rare disease. Despite significant improvements in the treatment of children diagnosed with HB, limited treatment options exist for patients with advanced tumours. Besides, survivors generally have long-term adverse effects derived from treatment such as ototoxicity, cardiotoxicity, delayed growth, and secondary tumours. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to define new and efficient therapeutic strategies for patients with HB. Computational methods to predict drug sensitivity from a tumour's transcriptome have been successfully applied for some common adult malignancies, but specific efforts in paediatric cancers are lacking because of paucity of data. In this study, we computationally screened the efficacy of drugs in HB patients with the aggressive C2 subtype and poor clinical outcome starting from their transcriptome. Our method utilized publicly available collections of pan-cancer transcriptional profiles and drug responses across 36 tumour types and 495 compounds. The drugs predicted to be most effective were experimentally validated using patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models of HB grown in vitro and in vivo. We thus identified two CDK9 inhibitors, alvocidib and dinaciclib as potent HB growth inhibitors for the high-risk C2 molecular subtype. We also found that in a cohort of 46 patients with HB, high CDK9 tumour expression was significantly associated with poor prognosis. Our work proves the usefulness of computational methods trained on pan-cancer datasets to reposition drugs in rare paediatric cancers such as HB, and to help clinicians in choosing the best treatment options for their patients.

PMID:37729391 | DOI:10.1097/HEP.0000000000000601

16:42

PubMed articles on: Cardio-Oncology

Relationship between cardiac mechanical properties and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging at rest in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia survivors

Int J Cardiovasc Imaging. 2023 Sep 20. doi: 10.1007/s10554-023-02953-4. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The characterization of cardiac mechanical properties may contribute to better understanding of doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity. Our study aims to investigate the relationship between cardiac mechanical properties, T1 and T2 relaxation times and partition coefficient. Fifty childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia survivors underwent a cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) at rest on a 3T MRI system and included a standard ECG-gated 3(3)3(3)5 MOLLI sequence for T1 mapping and an ECG-gated T2-prepared TrueFISP sequence for T2 mapping. Partition coefficient, ejection fraction, end-diastolic volume (EDV) and end-systolic volume (ESV) were calculated. CircAdapt model was used to study cardiac mechanical performance (left ventricle stiffness (LVS), contractility (LVC) and pressure (Pmin and Pmax), cardiac work efficiency (CWE) and ventricular arterial coupling). In the whole cohort, our results showed that LVC (R2 = 69.2%, r = 0.83), Pmin (R2 = 62.9%, r = 0.79) and Pmax can be predicted by significant CMR parameters, while T1 (R2 = 23.2%, r = 0.48) and partition coefficient (R2 = 13.8%, r = 0.37) can be predicted by significant cardiac mechanical properties. In SR group LVS (R2 = 94.8%, r = 0.97), LVC (R2 = 93.7%, r = 0.96) and Pmin (R2 = 90.6%, r = 0.95) can be predicted by significant cardiac mechanical properties, while in HR + DEX group CWE (R2 = 49.8%, r = 0.70) can be predicted by significant cardiac mechanical properties. Partition coefficient (R2 = 72.6%, r = 0.85) can be predicted by significant CMR parameters in SR group. Early characterization of cardiac mechanical properties from CMR parameters has the potential to early detect doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity.

PMID:37728802 | DOI:10.1007/s10554-023-02953-4

16:42

PubMed articles on: Cardio-Oncology

SIRT2 inhibition protects against cardiac hypertrophy and ischemic injury

Elife. 2023 Sep 20;12:e85571. doi: 10.7554/eLife.85571. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT