albumin (Pedialb / AlbuRel / AlbuRel LS)

Non-Albumin Proteinuria After Sequential Finerenone: Interpreting a Derived Marker.

Yin Qinyi Q, Lu Hao H

Lactate Dehydrogenase-to-Albumin Ratio and Glasgow Prognostic Score as Prognostic Markers in Metastatic Breast Cancer Treated with CDK4/6 Inhibitors.

Sahin Hafizoglu Ece E, Ekinci Ferhat F, Sahbazlar Mustafa M, Erdogan Atike Pinar AP

Background: CDK4/6 inhibitors with endocrine therapy are standard first-line treatment for hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer, yet simple pretreatment prognostic markers are lacking. The LDH-to-albumin ratio (LAR) and the Glasgow Prognostic Score (GPS) both incorporate serum albumin and are each reported as prognostic, but have not been compared within a single cohort, and LAR has not been examined during CDK4/6 inhibitor therapy. This study evaluated both indices in this setting. Methods: Consecutive patients (n = 139) receiving palbociclib or ribociclib plus endocrine therapy (2020-2025) were analysed retrospectively. LAR was modelled continuously on the logarithmic scale, with hazard ratios per doubling; an external cut-off (46.27) served for Kaplan-Meier illustration only. GPS was calculated in its original form. As both contain albumin, each entered a separate multivariable Cox model with identical covariates. Endpoints were overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). Results: Over a median follow-up of 50.0 months, 72 deaths and 110 progression events occurred. LAR was independently associated with OS (adjusted HR 2.87 per doubling, 95% CI 1.78-4.62, p < 0.001) and PFS (2.21, 1.45-3.35, p < 0.001). GPS was independently associated with OS (1.72, 1.05-2.82, p = 0.032) but not PFS (1.32, 0.88-1.98, p = 0.187). LAR-based models had lower Akaike information criterion values (ΔAIC 12.3 and 10.9), but concordance did not differ significantly between the indices (ΔC ≈ 0.04, p > 0.20). Conclusions: Baseline LAR, an inexpensive routine index, was associated with both endpoints, whereas GPS was associated with overall survival alone. Discrimination was modest for both indices (C-index ≤ 0.61) and did not differ significantly between them. External validation is required.

Diene-Extended Chalcones Enable Red Fluorescence Detection of Human Serum Albumin Through FA1 Binding.

Corbin Brian B, Mason Jessica J, Houglan Paityn P, Murphey Amanda A et al.

Fluorescent molecular probes for selective and real-time detection of human serum albumin (HSA) protein in urine and blood have important applications in clinical diagnostics for various diseases. The majority of known fluorescent HSA probes give emission in the blue-green spectral region where biological autofluorescence could interfere with the detection. In this study, a series of chalcones with extended conjugation are shown to give red-emission with a large Stokes shift (λabs ≈ 430-445 nm, λem ≈ 620-640 nm), and low fluorescence in H2O. Upon addition of HSA protein, the fluorescence of these chalcones is shown to increase significantly, by as high as 30-fold. Potential site-selective binding to HSA has been examined by competitive displacement experiments using various known site-selective drugs. In conjunction with molecular docking experiments, the study further indicates that the chalcones could selectively enter the FA1 (Fatty Acid site 1) binding pocket (Drug Site III).

Analytical Evaluation of Simulated Kidney-Disease Profiles: Comparison of a Portable Near-Infrared Spectrophotometer with a Benchtop FT-NIR.

Serrano Diogo D, Zoio Paulo P, Carvalho Bernardo B BB, Fonseca Luís P LP et al.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is commonly assessed using blood biomarkers such as creatinine, urea and albumin. This study compared a portable six-channel near-infrared (NIR) analyzer (miniNIR; 1300-2100 nm) with a benchtop Fourier-transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) instrument for the discrimination and quantification of fifty-four independent concentration-defined profiles in composed fetal bovine serum solutions spanning six simulated KDIGO categories. SVM-RBF, Random Forest, XGBoost, Logistic regression and partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were evaluated. For miniNIR binary 'healthy/disease' profile discrimination, SVM-RBF yielded a validation AUC of 1.00, accuracy of 0.91, sensitivity of 1.00 and specificity of 0.83. The six-class profile assignment was substantially more difficult: PLS-DA was selected by grouped nested cross-validation, but validation accuracy was 0.18, macro-F1 was 0.11 and macro-AUC was 0.77 across the evaluable classes. For miniNIR regression, validation R2 values were 0.48 for creatinine, 0.30 for urea and 0.10 for albumin. The strongest FT-NIR validation results were R2 = 0.64 for creatinine, 0.79 for urea and 0.89 for albumin, depending on the spectral window. For FT-NIR binary 'healthy/disease' profile discrimination, SVM-RBF yielded a validation AUC of 0.99, accuracy of 0.71 and a specificity of 0.47. Although the high binary AUC in this controlled concentration design for the miniNIR, it should not be interpreted as evidence of CKD-specific recognition or clinical performance. The comparison quantifies the information retained and lost when continuous FT-NIR sampling is reduced to six broad discrete channels; validation in clinically characterized human samples is required before any screening application can be considered.