ESTIMATION OF HUMAN DOSE OF 188/186RE-HEDP COCKTAIL BASED ON OLINDA/EXM AND DISTRIBUTION DATA IN RATS

188Re and 186Re are two applicable rhenium medical radioisotopes with complementary features that make them beneficial for different sizes of tumours. The aim of this study is to investigate 188/186Re-HEDP efficacy as a cocktail by calculating absorbed radiation dose in human organs based on biodistribution data obtained by injecting it to normal rats. Three rats were sacrificed at different time intervals and the percentage of injected dose per gram of each organ was measured by direct counting from rat data. By calculating accumulated activities in each organ and extrapolating rat data to human data by the radiation dose assessment resource method and by using OLINDA/EXM software, the injected dose in various human organs was obtained. The calculated absorbed dose showed that the 188/186Re-HEDP has noticeable properties that can be more helpful in comparison with using each of the rhenium radioisotopes separately.

Objective, Quantitative, Data-Driven Assessment of Chemical Probes

ABSTRACTChemical probes are essential tools for understanding biological systems and for target validation, yet selecting tools for biomedical research is largely biased and subjective. Here we describe the Probe Miner: Chemical Probes Objective Assessment resource – capitalising on the plethora of public medicinal chemistry data to empower quantitative, objective, Big Data-driven assessment of chemical probes. We assess >1.8m compounds for their suitability as chemical tools against 2,220 human targets and dissect their biases and limitations.

Assessment for learning, online tasks, and the new Assessment Resource Banks

The main purpose for assessment should always be to improve learning (Ministry of Education, 2007). The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) acknowledges that evidence for assessment for learning is often gathered informally, and “analysis and interpretation, and use of information often take place in the mind of the teacher” (p. 39). At the same time an increasing body of research suggests that assessment for learning isn’t easy for teachers (see, for example, Mansell, James, and the Assessment Reform Group (2009)). In this short news article we discuss the changing face of a long-standing resource that helps teachers to use assessment data to improve learning.