Platinum-based therapy is the most often used chemotherapeutic agent to treat advanced cases of head and neck cancers. However, only a small fraction of the patient population responds to cisplatin, with a median survival time of less than a year. Currently, there is a lack of clinically employable molecular characterization of the disease beyond HPV status to classify patients who would respond favorably to platinum-based therapy. In this regard, CD24 expression level appears to be a significant molecular phenotype of cisplatin resistance in laryngeal carcinoma. This study demonstrates that CD24 expression level in HNSCC has a linear relationship with cisplatin resistance, and it affects the transcription of critical apoptotic, stem, and drug resistance genes. The knockdown of the CD24 transcript reduces tumor growth rate and increases the overall cisplatin sensitivity in mice xenograft experiments. A retrospective analysis of a cohort of 25 HNSCC patient tumor samples suggests that CD24-high tumors go on to show an unfavorable response to cisplatin treatment. Overall, based on the strength of further clinical analysis, CD24 presents a strong rationale to be utilized as a predictive indicator to stratify head and neck cancer patients for platinum-based therapy. This study also provides a rationale for using CD24 as a therapeutic adjuvant target along with standard cisplatin therapy in head and neck cancers.

Charles University Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of Biological and Medical Sciences Student: Zuzana Drobná Supervisor: PharmDr. Miroslav Kovařík, Ph.D. Title: Dynamometry as a prognostic and prediction marker Dynamometry is a method for measuring muscle strength. It is one of the methods of biomechanical motion analysis. There are two types of dynamometry. Isokinetic dynamometry is based on isokinetic muscle contraction. In this contraction, the muscles change their length. Isometric dynamometry is based on isometric muscle contraction. The length of the muscle does not change during the contraction. In my master thesis, 22 studies were included. Of this, 18 were engaged in a dynamometer, which measured muscle strength. Studies have been focused on prediction of short and long-term mortality, prognosis of hospitalized and severely ill patients, prediction of disease symptoms (cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, liver disease). I searched for studies according to the PubMed database. In 16 studies, it was confirmed that dynamometry can be used in the present time as a reliable diagnostic, predictive and prognostic method. Dynamometry is characterized as a simple, objective, non-invasive, easily transposable and reproducible method. Keywords: dynamometer, muscle...