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This commentary was written as a collaboration between the Board of the Metastasis Research Society and two patients with metastatic breast cancer. It was conceived in response to how preclinical scientific research is sometimes presented to non-scientists in a way that can cause stress and confusion. Translation of preclinical findings to the clinic requires overcoming multiple barriers. This is irrespective of whether the findings relate to exciting responses to new therapies or problematic effects of currently used therapies. It is important that these barriers are understood and acknowledged when research findings are summarized for mainstream reporting. To minimize confusion, patients should continue to rely on their oncology care team to help them interpret whether research findings presented in mainstream media have relevance for their individual care. Researchers, both bench and clinical, should work together where possible to increase options for patients with metastatic disease, which is still in desperate need of effective therapeutic approaches.

Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis (SJS/TEN) is a life-threatening, immunologically mediated, and usually drug-induced disease with a high burden to individuals, their families, and society with an annual incidence of 1 to 5 per 1,000,000. To effect significant reduction in short- and long-term morbidity and mortality, and advance clinical care and research, coordination of multiple medical, surgical, behavioral, and basic scientific disciplines is required. On March 2, 2017, an investigator-driven meeting was held immediately before the American Academy of Dermatology Annual meeting for the central purpose of assembling, for the first time in the United States, clinicians and scientists from multiple disciplines involved in SJS/TEN clinical care and basic science research. As a product of this meeting, this article summarizes the current state of knowledge and expert opinion related to SJS/TEN covering a broad spectrum of topics including epidemiology and pharmacogenomic networks; clinical management and complications; special populations such as pediatrics, the elderly, and pregnant women; regulatory issues and the electronic health record; new agents that cause SJS/TEN; pharmacogenomics and immunopathogenesis; and the patient perspective. Goals include the maintenance of a durable and productive multidisciplinary network that will significantly further scientific progress and translation into prevention, early diagnosis, and management of SJS/TEN.
Copyright © 2017 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. All rights reserved.

No therapies have been shown to improve outcomes in patients with acute kidney injury (AKI). Given the high morbidity and mortality associated with AKI this represents an important unmet medical need. A common feature of all of the therapeutic development efforts for AKI is that none were driven by target selection or preclinical modeling that was based primarily on human data. This is important when considering a heterogeneous and dynamic condition such as AKI, in which in the absence of more accurate molecular classifications, clinical cohorts are likely to include patients with different types of injury at different stages in the injury and repair continuum. The National Institutes of Health precision medicine initiative offers an opportunity to address this. By creating a molecular tissue atlas of AKI, defining patient subgroups, and identifying critical cells and pathways involved in human AKI, this initiative has the potential to transform our current approach to therapeutic discovery. In this review, we discuss the opportunities and challenges that this initiative presents, with a specific focus on AKI, what additional efforts will be needed to apply these discoveries to therapeutic development, and how we believe this effort might lead to the development of new therapeutics for subsets of patients with AKI.
Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Mass spectrometry- and nuclear magnetic resonance-based metabolomic studies comparing diseased versus healthy individuals have shown that microbial metabolites are often the compounds most markedly altered in the disease state. Recent studies suggest that several of these metabolites that derive from microbial transformation of dietary components have significant effects on physiological processes such as gut and immune homeostasis, energy metabolism, vascular function, and neurological behavior. Here, we review several of the most intriguing diet-dependent metabolites that may impact host physiology and may therefore be appropriate targets for therapeutic interventions, such as short-chain fatty acids, trimethylamine N-oxide, tryptophan and tyrosine derivatives, and oxidized fatty acids. Such interventions will require modulating either bacterial species or the bacterial biosynthetic enzymes required to produce these metabolites, so we briefly describe the current understanding of the bacterial and enzymatic pathways involved in their biosynthesis and summarize their molecular mechanisms of action. We then discuss in more detail the impact of these metabolites on health and disease, and review current strategies to modulate levels of these metabolites to promote human health. We also suggest future studies that are needed to realize the full therapeutic potential of targeting the gut microbiota.

Heightened interest in sensory function in persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) presents an unprecedented opportunity for impactful, interdisciplinary work between neuroscientists and clinical practitioners for whom sensory processing is a focus. In spite of this promise, and a number of overlapping perspectives on sensory function in persons with ASD, neuroscientists and clinical practitioners are faced with significant practical barriers to transcending disciplinary silos. These barriers include divergent goals, values, and approaches that shape each discipline, as well as different lexical conventions. This commentary is itself an interdisciplinary effort to describe the shared perspectives, and to conceptualize a framework that may guide future investigation in this area. We summarize progress to date and issue a call for clinical practitioners and neuroscientists to expand cross-disciplinary dialogue and to capitalize on the complementary strengths of each field to unveil the links between neural and behavioral manifestations of sensory differences in persons with ASD. Joining forces to face these challenges in a truly interdisciplinary way will lead to more clinically informed neuroscientific investigation of sensory function, and better translation of those findings to clinical practice. Likewise, a more coordinated effort may shed light not only on how current approaches to treating sensory processing differences affect brain and behavioral responses to sensory stimuli in individuals with ASD, but also on whether such approaches translate to gains in broader characteristics associated with ASD. It is our hope that such interdisciplinary undertakings will ultimately converge to improve assessment and interventions for persons with ASD. Autism Res 2016, 9: 920-925. © 2016 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
© 2016 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this era of tremendous technological capabilities and increased focus on improving clinical outcomes, decreasing costs, and increasing precision, there is a need for a more quantitative approach to the field of surgery. Multiscale computational modeling has the potential to bridge the gap to the emerging paradigms of Precision Medicine and Translational Systems Biology, in which quantitative metrics and data guide patient care through improved stratification, diagnosis, and therapy. Achievements by multiple groups have demonstrated the potential for (1) multiscale computational modeling, at a biological level, of diseases treated with surgery and the surgical procedure process at the level of the individual and the population; along with (2) patient-specific, computationally-enabled surgical planning, delivery, and guidance and robotically-augmented manipulation. In this perspective article, we discuss these concepts, and cite emerging examples from the fields of trauma, wound healing, and cardiac surgery.

The current lack of effective therapeutics for patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) represents an important and unmet medical need. Given the importance of the clinical problem, it is time for us to take a few steps back and reexamine current practices. The focus of this review is to explore the extent to which failure of therapeutic translation from animal studies to human studies stems from deficiencies in the preclinical models of AKI. We will evaluate whether the preclinical models of AKI that are commonly used recapitulate the known pathophysiologies of AKI that are being modeled in humans, focusing on four common scenarios that are studied in clinical therapeutic intervention trials: cardiac surgery-induced AKI; contrast-induced AKI; cisplatin-induced AKI; and sepsis associated AKI. Based on our observations, we have identified a number of common limitations in current preclinical modeling of AKI that could be addressed. In the long term, we suggest that progress in developing better preclinical models of AKI will depend on developing a better understanding of human AKI. To this this end, we suggest that there is a need to develop greater in-depth molecular analyses of kidney biopsy tissues coupled with improved clinical and molecular classification of patients with AKI.

Despite extensive research, no therapeutic interventions have been shown to prevent AKI, accelerate recovery of AKI, or reduce progression of AKI to CKD in patients. This failure in translation has led investigators to speculate that the animal models being used do not predict therapeutic responses in humans. Although this issue continues to be debated, an important concern that has not been addressed is whether improvements in preclinical study design can be identified that might also increase the likelihood of translating basic AKI research into clinical practice using the current models. In this review, we have taken an evidence-based approach to identify common weaknesses in study design and reporting in preclinical AKI research that may contribute to the poor translatability of the findings. We focused on use of N-acetylcysteine or sodium bicarbonate for the prevention of contrast-induced AKI and use of erythropoietin for the prevention of AKI, two therapeutic approaches that have been extensively studied in clinical trials. On the basis of our findings, we identified five areas for improvement in preclinical study design and reporting. These suggested and preliminary guidelines may help improve the quality of preclinical research for AKI drug development.
Copyright © 2015 by the American Society of Nephrology.