Is microphthalmia-associated transcription factor gene amplification in metastatic melanoma a prognostic marker for patient survival , but not a predictive marker for chemosensitivity and chemotherapy response?
Our findings suggest that strong amplifications of the melanoma oncogene MITF affects patient survival but does not influence tumor chemosensitivity and chemotherapy response. Thus, the MITF gene copy number seems a useful prognostic marker in metastatic melanoma but could not be confirmed as a predictive marker of chemosensitivity and chemotherapy response.
This study shows negative correlation between NAA-levels and fMRI-activity in the left thalamus of KLS-patients while performing a WM task. This correlation could not be found in healthy control subjects, primarily interpreted as an effect of increased effort in the patient group upon performing the task. It might indicate a disturbance in the neuronal networks responsible for WM in KLS patients, resulting in higher effort at lower WM load, compared with healthy subjects. The general relationship between NAA and BOLD-signal is also discussed in the article.