doktor-schubert · net

Breast-Cancer-Vaccination Helps with Survival!

Mario — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:52:53 +0000

Vaccination against the tumor feature HER2/neu could improve the survival rate of patients with breast cancer, according to the preliminary conclusion of a study conducted by Linda Benavides and their employees from San Antonio, Texas. The American scientist now presented the results of their studies with the experimental vaccine NeuVax (E75), in which a total of 163 patients participated, at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research^[1].
Especially the group of patients in which only a low expression of HER2 is present in the tumor (“low expressors”), seems to profit from the vaccination. After succesful first line treatment of breast cancer with conventional chemotherapy a relapse of the disease could be greatly reduced through vaccination – only 8% of the vaccinated patients got a relapse, while the recurrence rate in the non-vaccinated patients was 21%. The vaccine appears to have a positive effect on the overall survival as well; while all vaccinated patients from the group of “low expressors” are still live, unfortunately 20% of patients in the control group succumbed to to their illness.
Interestingly, especially patients for whom treatment with the monoclonal HER2/neu-Antibody Mabthera is not applicable, might benefit from this new form of therapy.

Due to the small numbers of patients in this preliminary study there are still no definitive conclusions. We may be very excited about the results of the impact studies, on which about 700 to 1000 patients will participate.

(semi-automated translation thanks to google.com)

Share This

Literature & Sources

Medical News Today: low HER2 Expressing Breast Cancer Patients Respond To Preferentially Apthera’s NeuVax (16.04.2008)

I Got Awarded as Best Young Scientist

Mario — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:26:10 +0000

The German Society for Internal Medicine (DGIM) has awarded me as best author under 35 years in the field of hematology/oncology on their annual meeting. I was honoured for my publication:

Die N-Cadherin / [beta]-Catenin Interaktion spielt eine wichtige Rolle bei Selbsterhalt und Differenzierung humaner hämatopoetischer Stammzellen.

The honour and my gratitude goes to my co-authors, especially Larissa Pietsch.

As one out of 10 “best young authors” I am electible to the Young Investigators Award 2008. The election process requires a a 15min plenary talk on April, 01 2008 at the Rhein-Main-Halls at Wiesbaden. The prestigeous price is endowed with 3000 Euro.

Further Information

DGIM Annual Meeting 2008 (german)

Share This

Bla-bla Blubb (My Visit to the Georgia-Aquarium)

Mario — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:12:48 +0000

During my stay in Atlanta for the ASH-Annual Meeting I had the opportunity to visit the Georgia-Aquarium – one of the biggest Aquaria worldwide. In five wonderful “theme worlds” different natural maritime habitats and their inhabitants were presented.

Pictures from the Georgia Aquarium

Share This

ASH-Meeting 2007 in Atlanta

Mario — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 05:04:52 +0000

Every year the American Society of Hematology (ASH) invites to their meeting that lasts several days. This month I had the opportunity to attend to this biggest meeting for hematology/oncology worldwide. The Event took place in Atlanta, the capital of Georgia.

Pictures from the ASH-Meeting in Atlanta

Share This

Alternative screening method for positive pLKO-Clones

Mario — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:20:36 +0000

Referring to the Addgene’s cloning protocol for the lentiviral vector pLKO.1 I would like to propose an alternative screening method für positive clones.
The original protocol suggested a double digest with EcoRI and NcoI that resulted in two relatively large bands – one at 2kb and one at 5kb. In concequence, the length relations made it hard to reliably identify clones with an intact isert. With this alternative Protocol, conducting a digestion with XhoI, you get a gel picture that is, in my opinion, much easier to interpret.

unfortunately, the protocol is currently only available in German.

Alternatives Screening-Protokoll

Material

Plasmid Miniprep Kit (Qiagen #27104)
XhoI (Fermentas #ER0691)
TopVision LE Agarose (Fermentas #R0491)
Rotiphorese 10x TBE-Buffer (Carl Roth 3061.1)

Procedere

(Tag 1) Nach der Trafo und 16-18h Kultur auf LB-Amp Agarplatten ca. 5-10 Kolonien von der Platte picken und in 3ml LB-Amp übernacht kultivieren.
(Tag 2) 2ml der ÜN-Kultur für eine Mini-Präp verwenden,
Achtung: für den Elutionsschritt ddH₂O oder Tris-HCL Puffer nehmen, da EDTA die anschließenden enzymatischen Reaktionen stören kann. Die restliche Kultur wird vorübergehend im Kühlschrank bei +4°C gelagert oder kann als Glycerolstock eingefroren werden.
Für die photometrische Messung des DNA-Gehalts, mache eine 1:100 Verdünnung mit 5µl miniprep DNA und 495µl ddH₂O
Setze einen Master-Mix für den Verdau-Ansatz an (plane für n+2 Ansätze).
Berechne für jeden Ansatz:
- 1µg miniprep DNA
- 2µl Puffer R (Fermentas 10x Puffer für XhoI)
- 0.5µl XhoI
- auf 20µl ddH₂O
Inkubiere die Verdauansätze bei 37°C für 1-2h
Trage die Verdauansätze auf ein 1% Agarosegel auf und mache einen Gellauf bei 10V/cm für ca. 45 Minuten.

Positive Klone haben eine deutliche Bande bei 380bp, außerdem eine schwache Bande bei 190bp und den “Rest” bei ~5000bp. Diese Klone sollten zur Sequenzierung eingeschickt werden. Bei nicht intakten Inserts ergibt sich ein Bandenshift von 50-80bp. Klone mit religiertem Stuffer haben außerdem eine Bande bei ~2000bp.

Share This

Used Plugins

Mario — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:38:47 +0000

Derzeit sind 18 Plugins installiert: 16 aktive Plugins und 2 inaktive Plugins.

Active Plugins

Akismet 2.2.7
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.
[ Autor: Matt Mullenweg ] [ url ]

All in One SEO Pack 1.6.10.2
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. Options configuration panel | Upgrade to Pro Version | Donate | Support | Amazon Wishlist
[ Autor: Michael Torbert ] [ url ]

Category Cloud Widget 1.7.1
Adds a sidebar widget to display the categories as a tag cloud.
[ Autor: Lee Kelleher/Mario Schubert ] [ url ]

DoFollow 4.0
Selectively disable the “nofollow” tagging for comments. Configuration: Options » DoFollow.
[ Autor: Kimmo Suominen ] [ url ]

Drain Hole 2.2.8
A download management and monitoring plugin with statistics and file protection
[ Autor: John Godley ] [ url ]

Google XML Sitemaps 3.2.3
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
[ Autor: Arne Brachhold ] [ url ]

ImageManager 2.5.0
PHP ImageManager + Editor for WordPress. It will not be enabled until you have configured it via the Options >> ImageManager menu. *** Requires Wordpress 2.0 *** Licensed under the MIT License.
[ Autor: Per Soderlind ] [ url ]

Lightview Plus 2.4.3
Seamless integration of Lightview (similar to Lightbox, Thickbox, Floatbox, Thickbox, Fancybox) to create a nice overlay to display images and videos without the need to change html. Because Lightview by Nick Stakenburg isn’t licensed under the terms of gpl, it isn’t included. Read installation instructions on my website.
[ Autor: Puzich ] [ url ]

Link Indication 4.3
Adds CSS class attributes to external links and optionally specific attributes to any other link types such as wikipedia.org, flickr, imdb, file extensions like .pdf or .zip, etc. Thereby you can indicate your links, e.g. by images, for characterizing your types of links. Furthermore you can add target=”blank” to all external links, rel=”nofollow” to specific hyperlinks or display websnapr preview thumbnails. Navigate to Settings → Link Indication.
[ Autor: Michael Wöhrer ] [ url ]

Share This 1.4
Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. Thanks to Thomas McMahon for footwork on the URLs. Questions on configuration, etc.? Make sure to read the README.
[ Autor: Alex King ] [ url ]

Shashin 2.6.2
A plugin for integrating Picasa photos in WordPress.
[ Autor: Michael Toppa ] [ url ]

Simple Tagging 1.7
Simple Tagging is another tagging plugin for Wordpress: smarter, better, faster :-)
[ Autor: Amaury BALMER ] [ url ]

WordPress.com Stats 1.6.3
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.
[ Autor: Andy Skelton ] [ url ]

WP-Footnotes 3.3
Allows a user to easily add footnotes to a post.
[ Autor: Simon Elvery ] [ url ]

WP-PluginsUsed 1.90
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.
[ Autor: Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan; Mario Schubert ] [ url ]

WP-PostViews 1.50
Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. Modified by David Potter to include options for when and where to display view counts.
[ Autor: Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan ] [ url ]

Inactive Plugins

Exec-PHP 4.9
Executes code in your posts, pages and text widgets.
[ Autor: Sören Weber ] [ url ]

Third Party Host Fix 1.0.0
Fixes Wordpress’ inability to find the install directory when it’s not in the root folder. This is a plugin workaround to get the following built in features working – Plugin Installation, Theme Installation and Wordpress AutoUpdate.
[ Autor: DrenBoy ] [ url ]

Share This

Our Discovery Hits the News

Mario — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:55:23 +0000

The German Rhombos Nachrichtenservice wrote:

Trojanereinsatz gegen Bauchspeicheldrüsenkrebs Stammzellen spielen eine Rolle beim Wachstum von Geschwülsten und könnten in modifizierter Form einen therapeutischen Ansatz bieten.

The complete text of the newsflash can be found at
http://www.rhombos.de/shop/a/show/story/?1155.

Share This

EPC Award for Best Basic Science Paper

Mario — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:28:08 +0000

Meine Kooperation mit der Arbeitsgruppe von Prof. Ingrid Herr (Molekulare Onkochirurgie) und PD. Peter Büchler (Viszeralchirurgie) über die Rolle von mesenchymalen Stammzellen bei der Entstehung und der Therapie des duktalen Pankreaskarzinoms trägt erste Früchte: Beim diesjährigen 39. Treffen des European Pancreatic Club (EPC) in Newcastle, UK erhielt unsere Publikation “BONE MARROW DERIVED MESENCHYMAL STEM CELLS FOR THERAPY OF PANCREATIC CANCER” den Preis als bestes Grundlagenpaper (“EPC 2007 Award for best basic science paper”). Mein Glückwunsch und Dankeschön für die gute Zusammenarbeit gilt insbesondere meinen Koautoren aus der AG Herr.

Share This

Keystone-Meeting 2007

Mario — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 16:10:10 +0000

Vom 03. bis 08. März 2007 hatte ich die Gelegenheit das jährliche Stammzellmeeting in Keystone, Colorado zu besuchen. Vier Tage lang gab es exzellente Vorträge, Seminare und Postersessions rund um die Themen normale und leukämische Stammzellen und Stammzellnische.

Bilder aus Keystone

Share This

First script submitted to the DGCH

Mario — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 16:58:10 +0000

I’ll be speaking at the annual meeting of the german surgical society (DGCH) which takes place in munich from April, 5 to April, 8. During the “surgical forum” i will be giving a lecture about the role of notch-signalling for the neurovascular developement in pancreas carcinomas. the script will then be published to the surgical DGCH-yearbook, which, unfortunately, isn’t citated by medline.

Share This