Arham Saeed Khan

SUMMARYBackgroundREGEN-COV is a combination of 2 monoclonal antibodies (casirivimab and imdevimab) that bind to two different sites on the receptor binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of REGEN-COV in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19.MethodsIn this randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial, several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients hospitalised with COVID-19. Eligible and consenting patients were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone (usual care group) or usual care plus a single dose of REGEN-COV 8g (casirivimab 4g and imdevimab 4g) by intravenous infusion (REGEN-COV group). The primary outcome was 28-day mortality assessed first among patients without detectable antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 at randomisation (seronegative) and then in the overall population. The trial is registered with ISRCTN (50189673) and clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04381936).FindingsBetween 18...

We previously showed that FRA7G, an aphidicolin-inducible common fragile site at 7q31.2, colocalized with the common region of loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in a number of different tumors. Based on the sequence analysis of 150 Kb in the FRA7G region, we identified four new polymorphic microsatellite markers. In this article, we have used these four microsatellite markers and eight additional markers from 7q22-32 to analyze the breakage and loss of the region surrounding FRA7G in 49 invasive epithelial ovarian cancers and three borderline ovarian tumors. No allelic loss was detected in the ovarian tumors of borderline malignancy, but 71% (35/49) of the invasive tumors showed LOH at one or more loci in the region analyzed. Of the 12 markers analyzed, most of the markers exhibiting a high frequency of LOH were within FRA7G, and the highest frequency of LOH was seen with the new marker 7G14 (37%, 15/41). Breakpoint analysis in tumors with LOH demonstrated that the frequent loss of DNA sequences seen within the FRA7G region was due to frequent small interstitial deletions and not a result of loss of the whole fragile site region. These findings indicate that FRA7G does play a role in the breakage and loss of 7q sequences in invasive ovarian cancer. In addition, the newly identified markers enable us to further delineate a smallest common region of loss in invasive ovarian tumors to a 150-Kb region flanked by markers D7S486 and 7G14.