Search Our Scientific Publications & Authors

Pediatr Blood Cancer 2021 Apr 20;68(4):e28917. Epub 2021 Jan 20.

Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences, University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, Texas.

Background: Cancer among infants (<1 year old) has unique epidemiologic, clinical, and genetic characteristics compared with cancer in older children. Nonetheless, data on secular trends in infant cancer incidence and survival in the United States is sparse.

Methods: Population-based data from nine areas of the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) were used to estimate the incidence, average annual percentage change (APC) for trends, and survival of malignant neoplasm among infants from 1975 to 2014. Read More

Cancer Immunol Immunother 2021 Jan 8. Epub 2021 Jan 8.

State Key Laboratory of Experimental Hematology, National Clinical Research Center for Blood Diseases, Institute of Hematology and Blood Diseases Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Tianjin, 300020, China.

Introduction: Although recent clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy of CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for refractory or relapsed B acute lymphoblastic leukemia (r/r B-ALL), most trials exclude patients with high-burden CNS leukemia (CNSL) to avoid the risk of severe neurotoxicity. There were only sparse cases describing the effect of CAR T cells on low-burden CNSL, and the safety and effectiveness of CAR T cells in high-burden CNSL remains unknown.

Methods: Here, we retrospectively analyzed the results of CD19 CAR T-cell therapy in 12 pediatric patients that had low (Blasts < 20/μL in CSF) or high-burdens (Blasts or intracranial solid mass) of CNS B-ALL, that are enrolled in three clinical trials and one pilot study at Beijing Boren Hospital RESULTS: Eleven patients (91. Read More

BMC Bioinformatics 2020 Dec 28;21(Suppl 21):581. Epub 2020 Dec 28.

Department of Biostatistics, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1400 Pressler St., Houston, TX, USA.

Background: The estimation of microbial networks can provide important insight into the ecological relationships among the organisms that comprise the microbiome. However, there are a number of critical statistical challenges in the inference of such networks from high-throughput data. Since the abundances in each sample are constrained to have a fixed sum and there is incomplete overlap in microbial populations across subjects, the data are both compositional and zero-inflated. Read More

Cytometry A 2020 Dec 26. Epub 2020 Dec 26.

Department of Hematology, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark.

This panel was designed to identify, quantify and phenotypically characterize putative leukemic stem cells (LSCs) in bone marrow (BM) samples from individual pediatric patients diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Based on an aberrant expression on immunophenotypically defined hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), several antigens have been proposed as LSC markers in AML research, using healthy adult BM samples as reference material. Generally, these antigens have been evaluated individually in smaller panels (e. Read More

Front Genet 2020 11;11:585804. Epub 2020 Dec 11.

Department of Biostatistics and Data Science, School of Public Health, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, United States.

Treatment response is heterogeneous. However, the classical methods treat the treatment response as homogeneous and estimate the average treatment effects. The traditional methods are difficult to apply to precision oncology. Read More