Bryan Anthony Chan

Targeted therapy for non-small cell lung cancer: current standards and the promise of the future.

In recent years, there has been a major paradigm shift in the management of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). NSCLC should now be further sub-classified by histology and driver mutation if one is known or present. Translational research advances now allow such mutations to be inhibited by either receptor monoclonal antibodies (mAb) or small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI). Whilst empirical chemotherapy with a platinum-doublet remains the gold standard for advanced NSCLC without a known driver mutation, targeted therapy is pushing the boundary to significantly improve patient outcomes and quality of life. In this review, we will examine the major subtypes of oncogenic drivers behind NSCLC as well as the development of targeted agents available to treat them both now and in the foreseeable future.

Run-Time Support for the Automatic Parallelization of Java Programs

We describe and evaluate a novel approach for the automatic parallelization of programs that use pointer-based dynamic data structures, written in Java. The approach exploits parallelism among methods by creating an asynchronous thread of execution for each method invocation in a program. At compile time, methods are analyzed to determine the data they access, parameterized by their context. A description of these data accesses is transmitted to a run-time system during program execution. The run-time system utilizes this description to determine when a thread may execute, and to enforce dependences among threads. This run-time system is the main focus of this paper. More specifically, the paper details the representation of data accesses in a method and the framework used by the run-time system to detect and enforce dependences among threads. Experimental evaluation of an implementation of the run-time system on a four-processor Sun multiprocessor indicates that close to ideal speedup can be obtained for a number of benchmarks. This validates our approach.

Chemotherapy advances in small-cell lung cancer

Although chemotherapeutic advances have recently been heralded in lung adenocarcinomas, such success with small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) has been ominously absent. Indeed, the dismal outlook of this disease is exemplified by the failure of any significant advances in first line therapy since the introduction of the current standard platinum-etoposide doublet over 30 years ago. Moreover, such sluggish progress is compounded by the dearth of FDA-approved agents for patients with relapsed disease. However, over the past decade, novel formulations of drug classes commonly used in SCLC (e.g. topoisomerase inhibitors, anthracyclines, alkylating and platinum agents) are emerging as potential alternatives that could effectively add to the armamentarium of agents currently at our disposal. This review is introduced with an overview on the historical development of chemotherapeutic regimens used in this disease and followed by the recent encouraging advances witnessed in clinical trials with drugs such as amrubicin and belotecan which are forging new horizons for future treatment algorithms.

Rural Oncology Care Via Teleoncology and Outreach Clinics: Patient and Staff Perspectives and Comparisons

Paul A James, Lara Petelin, Ian Campbell, Hugh Dawkins, Stephen Fox, Janet Hiller, Judy Kirk, Geoffrey Lindeman, Finlay Macrae, Lyon Mascarenhas, Julie McGaughran, Bettina Meiser, April Morrow, Cassandra Nichols, Nicholas Pachter, Christobel Saunders, Clare Scott, Nicola Poplawski, Letitia Thrupp, Alison Trainer, Robyn Ward, Mary-Anne Young, Gillian Mitchell