[Well-being center in CHU of Liege : interest for oncological patients and their families]

Although conventional medicine has made considerable progress in the treatment of cancer, this disease remains a distressing experience for patients who may feel they are losing control of their live. In response to this need for autonomy over their therapeutic choices and their health, some patients turn to complementary and alternative medicine. Some oncology care centres therefore complete their offer of care by providing patients with a well-being centre where activities focusing on the well-being and comfort of the person are offered. In order to ensure that the needs of people are met, a survey was carried out among 82 patients attending the oncology day hospital and the radiotherapy department. The results enabled us to establish an action plan in line with the patients' wishes with a view to creating a well-being centre named OASIS, which will be located in the heart of the Arsène Burny Cancer Institute at the CHU of Liège. The different activities organised around psycho/corporal and bodily/psychological axes are presented in this article.

Erratum to: Methods for evaluating medical tests and biomarkers

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s41512-016-0001-y.].

MiR-210 promotes a hypoxic phenotype and increases radioresistance in human lung cancer cell lines

The resistance of hypoxic cells to radiotherapy and chemotherapy is a major problem in the treatment of cancer. Recently, an additional mode of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-dependent transcriptional regulation, involving modulation of a specific set of micro RNAs (miRNAs), including miR-210, has emerged. We have recently shown that HIF-1 induction of miR-210 also stabilizes HIF-1 through a positive regulatory loop. Therefore, we hypothesized that by stabilizing HIF-1 in normoxia, miR-210 may protect cancer cells from radiation. We developed a non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC)-derived cell line (A549) stably expressing miR-210 (pmiR-210) or a control miRNA (pmiR-Ctl). The miR-210-expressing cells showed a significant stabilization of HIF-1 associated with mitochondrial defects and a glycolytic phenotype. Cells were subjected to radiation levels ranging from 0 to 10 Gy in normoxia and hypoxia. Cells expressing miR-210 in normoxia had the same level of radioresistance as control cells in hypoxia. Under hypoxia, pmiR-210 cells showed a low mortality rate owing to a decrease in apoptosis, with an ability to grow even at 10 Gy. This miR-210 phenotype was reproduced in another NSCLC cell line (H1975) and in HeLa cells. We have established that radioresistance was independent of p53 and cell cycle status. In addition, we have shown that genomic double-strand breaks (DSBs) foci disappear faster in pmiR-210 than in pmiR-Ctl cells, suggesting that miR-210 expression promotes a more efficient DSB repair. Finally, HIF-1 invalidation in pmiR-210 cells removed the radioresistant phenotype, showing that this mechanism is dependent on HIF-1. In conclusion, miR-210 appears to be a component of the radioresistance of hypoxic cancer cells. Given the high stability of most miRNAs, this advantage could be used by tumor cells in conditions where reoxygenation has occurred and suggests that strategies targeting miR-210 could enhance tumor radiosensitization.