Virtual reality-based cognitive assessment: An exploratory pilot study including patients with cancer-related cognitive impairment.

Introduction: Cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI), or "chemo brain," can adversely affect quality of life and potentially survival for patients with cancer. CRCI can especially impact older adults with cancer. Cognitive assessment remains challenging in a busy oncology practice, and virtual reality (VR) based assessment is an emerging option.

High content screening for modulators of cardiac differentiation in human pluripotent stem cells.

Chemical genomics has the unique potential to expose novel mechanisms of complex cellular biology through screening of small molecules in in vitro assays of a biological phenotype of interest, followed by target identification. In the case of disease-specific assays, the cellular proteins identified might constitute novel drug targets, and the small molecules themselves might be developed as drug leads. In cardiovascular biology, a chemical genomics approach to study the formation of cardiomyocyte, vascular endothelial, and smooth muscle lineages might contribute to therapeutic regeneration.

A Nodal-to-TGFβ cascade exerts biphasic control over cardiopoiesis.

Rationale: The transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) family member Nodal promotes cardiogenesis, but the mechanism is unclear despite the relevance of TGFβ family proteins for myocardial remodeling and regeneration.

Objective: To determine the function(s) of TGFβ family members during stem cell cardiogenesis.

Methods And Results: Murine embryonic stem cells were engineered with a constitutively active human type I Nodal receptor (caACVR1b) to mimic activation by Nodal and found to secrete a paracrine signal that promotes cardiogenesis.

Small-molecule inhibitors of the Wnt pathway potently promote cardiomyocytes from human embryonic stem cell-derived mesoderm.

Rationale: Human embryonic stem cells can form cardiomyocytes when cultured under differentiation conditions. Although the initiating step of mesoderm formation is well characterized, the subsequent steps that promote for cardiac lineages are poorly understood and limit the yield of cardiomyocytes.

Objective: Our aim was to develop a human embryonic stem cell-based high-content screening assay to discover small molecules that drive cardiogenic differentiation after mesoderm is established to improve our understanding of the biology involved.