Vicent Giner-Bosch

Phase II trial of oxaliplatin and capecitabine after progression to first-line chemotherapy in androgen-independent prostate cancer patients.

Introduction:Docetaxel plus prednisone is the current standard of care in first-line chemotherapy for metastatic hormone-refractory prostate cancer. However, there is no agent proven as effective after progression to standard docetaxel-based therapy. Platins and capecitabine have shown activity in this setting. Patients and Methods:A total of 14 patients were included in this prospective, single-center trial. All patients had progressed to first-line docetaxel-based treatment. Patients received oxaliplatin 100 mg/sqm on D1 and capecitabine 1000 mg/sqm/bid on days 1 to 14 every 21 days. Results:Median number of cycles was 3. No unexpected toxicity was observed. Only grade 3 toxicity reported was grade 3 anemia. Of the 14 patients, 3 presented grade 2 neuropathy which was spontaneously resolved. Prostate-specific antigenresponse rate was 57%, with a median time to progression of 14.5 weeks, and overall survival of 24 weeks. Conclusions:In the second-line setting, after receiving docetaxel-based chemotherapy, the combination of oxaliplatin and capecitabine offers promising activity with an excellent safety profile.

Experience with fulvestrant acetate in castration-resistant prostate cancer patients

Fulvestrant is a selective estrogen receptor (ER) downregulator; fulvestrant inhibits ER dimerization [1] and reduces ER’s half-life [2]. In preclinical models, fulvestrant inhibited cell growth of the DU145 prostate cancer (PCa) cell line through an ER-b-dependent mechanism [3]. Metastatic PCa expresses ER-b mainly in metastases to the lymph nodes and bones [4]. Androgen receptor (AR) expression is retained in a significant proportion of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) [5]. Bhattacharyya treated PCa cell lines with fulvestrant obtaining a 70% of inhibition of the cell growth, demonstrating that fulvestrant is a potent AR down-regulator [6]; thus, combined down-regulation of ARs and ERs appears as an attractive strategy for treating CRPC.

Predicting the duration of chemotherapy-induced neutropenia: new scores and validation

BACKGROUND the objective of this study was to develop predictive models to classify febrile neutropenic patients into two groups, according to a prediction of the duration of the chemotherapy-induced neutropenia episode. PATIENTS AND METHODS for this retrospective analysis, 106 patients with solid tumours and an episode of febrile neutropenia (FN) were eligible. A score was attributed to each chemotherapy treatment drug according to its expected toxicity. Three new scores were proposed based only on this classification. Two of them are a combination of the individual drug scores and the third one was built using statistical techniques such as cluster analysis and classification trees. RESULTS statistical techniques produced the best score, distinguishing two groups of patients with statistically different neutropenia durations, with median durations until haematological recovery of absolute neutrophil count 2 × 10(9)/l of 4 versus 2 days (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS our methodological approach based on statistical techniques identifies the patients who will need the longest times to recover from FN. The input of this predictive system is only the aggressiveness of the cytotoxic agents in a chemotherapy regimen. Our proposal succeeded in distinguishing two groups of patients and the results show better performance than other scores in previous studies.

A methodology based on profitability criteria for defining the partial defection of customers in non-contractual settings

The defection or churn of customers represents an important concern for any company and a central matter of interest in customer base analysis. An additional complication arises in non-contractual settings, where the characteristics that should be observed to saying that a customer has totally or partially defected are not clearly defined. As a matter of fact, different definitions of the churn situation could be used in this context. Focusing on non-contractual settings, in this paper we propose a methodology for evaluating the short-time economic effects that using a certain definition of churn would have on a company. With this aim, we have defined two efficiency measures for the economic results of a marketing campaign implemented against churn, and these measures have been computed using a set of definitions of partial defection. Our methodology finds that definition maximizing both efficiency measures and moreover, the monetary amount that the company should invest per customer in the campaign for achieving the optimal solution. This has been modelled as a multiobjective optimization problem that we solved using compromise programming. Numerical results using real data from a Spanish retailing company are presented and discussed in order to show the performance and validity of our proposal.

Optimal Design of Pre‐control Plans

Pre-control is a quality tool for quick set-up approvals, especially used in short-run processes. It is based on specifications instead of the natural variability of the process and uses cumulative counts in order to yield a conclusion. Its main drawbacks are a high false alarm rate and a low power to detect process deviations, under certain circumstances. These issues can be addressed by making the technique more flexible, as shown in previous works. In this paper, we introduce a Mathematical Programming approach in order to optimally determine the value of the pre-control parameters, so that it can meet the users requirements while minimizing the sample size of the technique as much as possible. We propose and develop a mathematical model for optimal pre-control and perform some numerical experiments in order to show its effectiveness. Copyright

A multiobjective approach for optimization of the multihead weighing process

Packaging technology can be of strategic importance to a company, as it can be a key to competitive advantage in the modern food industry. A multihead weighing process is a packaging process based on the sum of weights from several individual hoppers. The final quality of the packaged product in a modern automated food packing system should fulfill mo objectives -the quality of the packaging process itself and the sensory quality of the packaged food. The first one is often related to the proximity of the total weight to a nominal value of sale and to the variability of the packaging process, and the second one can be achieved by minimizing the total residence time of the food in the packing system. In this paper, we jointly address both objectives through multi objective programming. More precisely, a biobjective algorithm is developed, in which a subset of hoppers is selected from the set of available ones at each packing operation, in such a way that the relative importance of both aforementioned objectives is dynamically managed and adjusted. We conduct numerical experiments to examine the quality of the solutions being produced.

Mortality forecasting in Colombia from abridged life tables by sex

BackgroundAn adequate forecasting model of mortality that allows an analysis of different population changes is a topic of interest for countries in demographic transition. Phenomena such as the reduction of mortality, ageing, and the increase in life expectancy are extremely useful in the planning of public policies that seek to promote the economic and social development of countries. To our knowledge, this paper is one of the first to evaluate the performance of mortality forecasting models applied to abridged life tables.ObjectiveSelect a mortality model that best describes and forecasts the characteristics of mortality in Colombia when only abridged life tables are available.Data and methodWe used Colombian abridged life tables for the period 1973–2005 with data from the Latin American Human Mortality Database. Different mortality models to deal with modeling and forecasting probability of death are presented in this study. For the comparison of mortality models, two criteria were analyzed: graphical residuals analysis and the hold-out method to evaluate the predictive performance of the models, applying different goodness of fit measures.ResultsOnly three models did not have convergence problems: Lee-Carter (LC), Lee-Carter with two terms (LC2), and Age-Period-Cohort (APC) models. All models fit better for women, the improvement of LC2 on LC is mostly for central ages for men, and the APC model’s fit is worse than the other two. The analysis of the standardized deviance residuals allows us to deduce that the models that reasonably fit the Colombian mortality data are LC and LC2. The major residuals correspond to children’s ages and later ages for both sexes.ConclusionThe LC and LC2 models present better goodness of fit, identifying the principal characteristics of mortality for Colombia.Mortality forecasting from abridged life tables by sex has clear added value for studying differences between developing countries and convergence/divergence of demographic changes.

Bi-objective optimisation of a multihead weighing process

A multihead weighing process is a packaging technology that can be of strategic importance to a company, as it can be a key to competitive advantage in the modern food industry. The improvement in the process quality and sensory quality of food packaged in a multihead weighing process investigated in this paper is relevant to industrial engineering. A bi-objective ad hoc algorithm based on explicit enumeration for the packaging processes in multihead weighers with an unequal supply of the product to the weighing hoppers is developed. The algorithm uses an a priori strategy to generate Pareto-optimal solutions and select a subset of hoppers from the set of available ones in each packing operation. The relative importance of both aforementioned objectives is dynamically managed and adjusted. The numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm and find the optimum operational conditions for the process. [Received 19 March 2016; Revised 8 November 2016; Revised 18 January 2017; Accepted 6 March 2017]