Stability testing of HPCs and MNCs from apheresis products.

Background: Hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) and mononuclear cells (MNCs) are critical components of cell-based therapies, including bone marrow transplantation and regenerative treatments. Evaluation of the characteristics of these products during collection, storage, and transport is essential for maintaining cell viability and functionality. In this study, we evaluated the functional and molecular stability of samples collected for the evaluation of fresh HPC and MNC products.

Risk stratification of childhood infection using host markers of immune and endothelial activation in Asia (Spot Sepsis): a multi-country, prospective, cohort study.

Background: Prognostic tools for febrile illnesses are urgently required in resource-constrained community contexts. Circulating immune and endothelial activation markers stratify risk in common childhood infections. We aimed to assess their use in children with febrile illness presenting from rural communities across Asia.

An updated review on chemical compositions of cocoa products and by-products with a focus on toxic elements and organic pollutants.

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) is an economically significant plant because of its components that benefit human health and emotion. This review was conducted to provide updated insights into cocoa chemical concentrations, profiles, and influencing factors.

The emerging predictive and prognostic role of HER2 in HER2-negative early breast cancer: a retrospective study.

Purpose: Many patients with early breast cancer (eBC) undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy do not achieve pathological complete response (pCR), which is a prognostic factor. We examined the role of HER2-low expression in predicting pCR and prognosis in HER2-negative eBC.

Methods: We evaluated patients with stage I-III HER2-negative BC, treated between 2013 and 2023 at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London.

Expanding the reach of commercial cell therapies requires changes at medical centers.

The clinical application of cell therapies is becoming increasingly important for the treatment of cancer, congenital immune deficiencies, and hemoglobinopathies. These therapies have been primarily manufactured and used at academic medical centers. However, cell therapies are now increasingly being produced in centralized manufacturing facilities and shipped to medical centers for administration.

Healthcare center-based cell therapy laboratories supporting off-site manufactured cell therapies: The experiences of a single academic cell therapy laboratory.

Background: Healthcare center-based cell therapy laboratories (HC CTLs) evolved from solely processing hematopoietic stem cells for transplantation to manufacturing various advanced cellular therapies. With increasing interest in cellular therapy applications, off-site manufactured products are becoming more common. HC CTLs play a critical role in supporting these products by shipping out cellular starting material (CSM) for further manufacturing and/or receiving, storing, and distributing final products.

Optimization Conditions of Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction for Phenolic Compounds and Antioxidant Activity from Poir Leaves.

Poir ( Poir) leaves are rich in phenolic compounds, offering many health benefits due to their incredible antioxidant potential. In this study, conditions for the ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) of phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity from Poir leaves were optimized using response surface methodology (RSM). This methodology assessed the effects of ultrasound power (: 100-500 W), extraction temperature (: 30-60°C), and extraction time (: 5-55 min).

New Dibenzocyclooctadiene Lignans and Phenolics from Kadsura heteroclite with Anti-Inflammatory Activity.

A chemical investigation of K. heteroclite led to isolation of two new dibenzocyclooctadienes (1 and 2) together with 14 known compounds (3-16) by using multiple chromatographic techniques. New compounds (1 and 2) were obtained and identified by spectroscopic methods (HR-ESI-MS, 1D and 2D NMR, and ECD) as well as by comparison of their experimental data with those reported in the literatures.

Preventing Risks of Infections and Medication Errors in IV therapy (PRIME): a patient safety initiative.

Background: Two major avoidable reasons for adverse events in hospital are medication errors and intravenous therapy-induced infections or complications. Training for clinical staff and compliance to patient safety principles could address these.

Methods: Joint Commission International (JCI) consultants created a standardised, 6-month training programme for clinical staff in hospitals.

An RNA Damage Response Network Mediates the Lethality of 5-FU in Clinically Relevant Tumor Types.

5-fluorouracil (5-FU) is a successful and broadly used anti-cancer therapeutic. A major mechanism of action of 5-FU is thought to be through thymidylate synthase (TYMS) inhibition resulting in dTTP depletion and activation of the DNA damage response. This suggests that 5-FU should synergize with other DNA damaging agents.

Effects of extended transport on cryopreserved allogeneic hematopoietic progenitor cell (HPC) product quality and optimal methods to assess HPC stability.

Background: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, cryopreservation of hematopoietic progenitor cell (HPC) products has been increasingly used to ensure allogeneic donor graft availability prior to recipient conditioning for transplantation. However, in addition to variables such as graft transport duration and storage conditions, the cryopreservation process itself may adversely affect graft quality. Furthermore, the optimal methods to assess graft quality have not yet been determined.

Reference gene selection for clinical chimeric antigen receptor T-cell product vector copy number assays.

Background Aims: Reference genes are an essential part of clinical assays such as droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR), which measure the number of copies of vector integrated into genetically engineered cells and the loss of plasmids in reprogrammed cells used in clinical cell therapies. Care should be taken to select reference genes, because it has been discovered that there may be thousands of variations in copy number from genomic segments among different individuals. In addition, within the same person in the context of cancer and other proliferative disorders, substantial parts of the genome also can differ in copy number between cells from diseased and healthy people.

Longitudinal transcriptional analysis of peripheral blood leukocytes in COVID-19 convalescent donors.

Background: SARS-CoV2 can induce a strong host immune response. Many studies have evaluated antibody response following SARS-CoV2 infections. This study investigated the immune response and T cell receptor diversity in people who had recovered from SARS-CoV2 infection (COVID-19).

Growth and Distribution of Boron in Oilseed Rape ( L.) as Affected by Boron Supply.

Oilseed rape ( L.) is one of the most important oilseed crops. It has relatively high boron (B) requirements for growth.

The need for uniform and coordinated practices involving centrally manufactured cell therapies.

Cellular therapies have become an important part of clinical care. The treatment of patients with cell therapies often involves the collection of autologous cells at the medical center treating the patient, the shipment of these cells to a centralized manufacturing site, and the return of the cryopreserved clinical cell therapy to the medical center treating the patient for storage until infusion. As this activity grows, cell processing laboratories at many academic medical centers are involved with many different autologous products manufactured by several different centralized laboratories.

Intracorneal knot or flange depot fixation: new transscleral technique for intraocular lens fixation.

A new surgical technique of transscleral-intracorneal suture fixation of intraocular lenses with suture ends located within the transparent corneal or corneal-limbal paracentesis is reported. This new technique significantly reduces scleral and conjunctival trauma, is minimally invasive, is simple to perform, is not associated with complicated intraocular surgical maneuvers, and precludes suture knot, flange, and suture-end erosion. The internal part of the corneal stroma or corneal-limbal area serves as a secure depot for suture-end fixation with durable resistance.

Fetal ECG Extraction From Maternal ECG Using Attention-Based CycleGAN.

A non-invasive fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) is used to monitor the electrical pulse of the fetal heart. Decomposing the FECG signal from the maternal ECG (MECG) is a blind source separation problem, which is hard due to the low amplitude of the FECG, the overlap of R waves, and the potential exposure to noise from different sources. Traditional decomposition techniques, such as adaptive filters, require tuning, alignment, or pre-configuration, such as modeling the noise or desired signal to map the MECG to the FECG.

One-Time Foliar Application and Continuous Resupply via Roots Equally Improved the Growth and Physiological Response of B-Deficient Oilseed Rape.

Oilseed rape ( L.) is a high-boron (B)-demanding crop, and initially, normal growing plants might show B deficiency at advanced growth stages on soils with marginal B availability. Hence, we compared the effects of B resupply via roots and leaves on growth and physiological response, and relative expression of B transporters in B-deficient oilseed rape plants.

Age Related Differences in Acute Coronary Syndrome: an Observation at a Central Hospital in Vietnam.

Background And Objectives: There is little data regarding the characteristics of young Vietnamese patients (<40 years old) who get acute coronary syndrome (ACS). This study aimed to compare the risk factors, clinical-subclinical characteristics, coronary lesions, and mortality prediction (based on the GRACE and TIMI scores) of young ACS patients with their older counterparts.

Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted amongst 69 patients with ACS at the Cardiovascular Center of Hue Central Hospital from May 2017 to December 2018.

Next-generation sequencing technologies: An overview.

Since the days of Sanger sequencing, next-generation sequencing technologies have significantly evolved to provide increased data output, efficiencies, and applications. These next generations of technologies can be categorized based on read length. This review provides an overview of these technologies as two paradigms: short-read, or "second-generation," technologies, and long-read, or "third-generation," technologies.

Boron uptake and distribution by oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) as affected by different nitrogen forms under low and high boron supply.

Ammonium (NH) and nitrate (NO) conversely alter pH of the rooting medium, and thus differentially affect the equilibrium between boric acid and borate in soil solution. This can alter boron (B) uptake by plants, which is passive under high, but facilitated (boric acid) or active (borate) under low B supply. Therefore, the effect of NH and NO forms was investigated on the growth, B uptake rate and accumulation, and expression of B transporters in Brassica napus grown with low (1 μM) or high (100 μM) B for five days in the nutrient solution.

Enhancing chemotherapy response through augmented synthetic lethality by co-targeting nucleotide excision repair and cell-cycle checkpoints.

In response to DNA damage, a synthetic lethal relationship exists between the cell cycle checkpoint kinase MK2 and the tumor suppressor p53. Here, we describe the concept of augmented synthetic lethality (ASL): depletion of a third gene product enhances a pre-existing synthetic lethal combination. We show that loss of the DNA repair protein XPA markedly augments the synthetic lethality between MK2 and p53, enhancing anti-tumor responses alone and in combination with cisplatin chemotherapy.

Utilizing nanopore sequencing technology for the rapid and comprehensive characterization of eleven HLA loci; addressing the need for deceased donor expedited HLA typing.

The comprehensive characterization of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genomic sequences remains a challenging problem. Despite the significant advantages of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in the field of Immunogenetics, there has yet to be a single solution for unambiguous, accurate, simple, cost-effective, and timely genotyping necessary for all clinical applications. This report demonstrates the benefits of nanopore sequencing introduced by Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) for HLA genotyping.

Complex Linkage Disequilibrium Effects in HLA-DPB1 Expression and Molecular Mismatch Analyses of Transplantation Outcomes.

Background: HLA molecular mismatch (MM) is a risk factor for de novo donor-specific antibody (dnDSA) development in solid organ transplantation. HLA expression differences have also been associated with adverse outcomes in hematopoietic cell transplantation. We sought to study both MM and expression in assessing dnDSA risk.