Programa de formación de voluntariado tecnológico

La Federación Española de Ingeniería Sin Fronteras (ISF) es una organización con una fuerte base de voluntariado que lleva trabajando desde el año 1995 en la implementación de proyectos de cooperación al desarrollo, poniendo la tecnología al servicio del desarrollo humano y acumulando una destacada experiencia en áreas como agua y saneamiento, energías renovables, telecomunicaciones, servicios urbanos y desarrollo agropecuario. ISF entiende que la implementación y creación de tecnología no es neutra, sino que es dependiente del tejido sociocultural y económico en el que se desarrolla. Así pues, el Programa de Formación Tecnológico está orientado a la formación de aquellos voluntarios y voluntarias que centran su par ticipación en la aplicación de tecnologías apropiadas y que posibilitan aspectos tan fundamentales como el acceso a los servicios básicos. Existe actualmente una falta de perfiles profesionales con formación tecnológica y conocimientos en Cooperación Internacional, Desarrollo Sostenible y Tecnología y tampoco existe oferta de formación no presen cial en un ámbito tan específico como la Tecnología para el Desarrollo Humano. Estos factores han contribuido, por un lado a un aumento de la demanda de las acciones formativas incluidas en este Programa y por otro, a la ampliación del mismo con el objetivo de ofrecer una mayor especialización a los voluntarios y voluntarias con más experiencia.Postprint (published version

Valorization of brewer’s spent grain by furfural recovery/removal from subcritical water hydrolysates by pervaporation

This work is focused on the development of a sustainable process for the valorisation of the main by-product generated in the brewing industry, the brewer’s spent grain (BSG). A two-step process combining subcritical water treatment and pervaporation (PV) was proposed to hydrolyse the hemicelluloses fraction of this lignocellulosic biomass and further removal/recovery of some of the degradation products of sugars by using two different organophilic membranes, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polyoctilmethylsiloxane (POMS) membranes. Specifically, furfural is the dehydration product of pentoses and it is one of the top biomass-based chemicals being an important platform chemical. For synthetic binary mixtures, lower total permeation flux but higher enrichment factors for furfural were determined for POMS. When dealing with subW hydrolysates, POMS membranes yielded the highest furfural recovery, 94.1 %, with permeate concentrations as high as 40 g⋅L1 . Furthermore, it was assessed that PV is a suitable detoxification method that yielded a retentate nearly free of furfural allowing its use as growth media in the opposite to the subW hydrolysate with inhibitory furfural concentrations for microbial bioprocesses.publishe

Valorization of brewer’s spent grain by furfural recovery/removal from subcritical water hydrolysates by pervaporation

This work is focused on the development of a sustainable process for the valorisation of the main by-product generated in the brewing industry, the brewer’s spent grain (BSG). A two-step process combining subcritical water treatment and pervaporation (PV) was proposed to hydrolyse the hemicelluloses fraction of this lignocellulosic biomass and further removal/recovery of some of the degradation products of sugars by using two different organophilic membranes, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polyoctilmethylsiloxane (POMS) membranes. Specifically, furfural is the dehydration product of pentoses and it is one of the top biomass-based chemicals being an important platform chemical. For synthetic binary mixtures, lower total permeation flux but higher enrichment factors for furfural were determined for POMS. When dealing with subW hydrolysates, POMS membranes yielded the highest furfural recovery, 94.1 %, with permeate concentrations as high as 40 g⋅L1 . Furthermore, it was assessed that PV is a suitable detoxification method that yielded a retentate nearly free of furfural allowing its use as growth media in the opposite to the subW hydrolysate with inhibitory furfural concentrations for microbial bioprocesses.This work was supported by the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion ´ [Grants No PID2019-104950RB-I00 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033, TED2021-129311B-I00 and PDC2022-133443-I00] and the Junta de Castilla y Leon ´ (JCyL) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) [grant number BU050P20]. P. Alonso-Riano ˜ predoctoral contract was funded by JCyL and the European Social Fund (ESF) by ORDEN EDU/556/2019 de 5 de junio. This work was also developed within the scope of the project CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials UIDB/50011/2020, UIDP/50011/ 2020 & LA/P/0006/2020 financed by national funds through the FCT/ MEC (PIDDAC)

Promoción y aprendizaje de tecnologías para el desarrollo humano a través de la formación online

Uno de los métodos aplicados para promocionar la Tecnología para el Desarrollo Humano (TDH) es la incorporación de actividades de Educación para el Desarrollo en la formación de ingeniería. Bajo este enfoque nace y se desarrolla la oferta formativa online, impulsada por ISF y el GRECDH de la UPC. El presente trabajo, además de presentar el origen, las motivaciones, los objetivos y metodología, analiza cómo, más allá de ser un puro instrumento educativo, la formación online permite cumplir estrategias y objetivos en el campo de la Educación para el Desarrollo y en el de la promoción de la TDH con ventajas objetivas sobre la formación presencia.Postprint (published version

Colon-specific eQTL analysis to inform on functional SNPs

BACKGROUND: Genome-wide association studies on colorectal cancer have identified more than 60 susceptibility loci, but for most of them there is no clear knowledge of functionality or the underlying gene responsible for the risk modification. Expression quantitative trail loci (eQTL) may provide functional information for such single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). METHODS: We have performed detailed eQTL analysis specific for colon tissue on a series of 97 colon tumours, their paired adjacent normal mucosa and 47 colon mucosa samples donated by healthy individuals. R package MatrixEQTL was used to search for genome-wide cis-eQTL and trans-eQTL fitting linear models adjusted for age, gender and tissue type to rank transformed expression data. RESULTS: The cis-eQTL analyses has revealed 29,073 SNP-gene associations with permutation-adjusted P-values < 0.01. These correspond to 363 unique genes. The trans-eQTL analysis identified 10,665 significant SNP-gene associations, most of them in the same chromosome, further than 1 Mb of the gene. We provide a web tool to search for specific SNPs or genes. The tool calculates Pearson or Spearman correlation, and allows to select tissue type for analysis. Data and plots can be exported. CONCLUSIONS: This resource should be useful to prioritise SNPs for further functional studies and to identify relevant genes behind identified loci

Lung metastases share common immune features regardless of primary tumor origin

Background: Only certain disseminated cells are able to grow in secondary organs to create a metastatic tumor. Under the hypothesis that the immune microenvironment of the host tissue may play an important role in this process, we have categorized metastatic samples based on their immune features. Methods: Gene expression data of metastatic samples (n=374) from four secondary sites (brain, bone, liver and lung) were used to characterize samples based on their immune and stromal infiltration using gene signatures and cell quantification tools. A clustering analysis was done that separated metastatic samples into three different immune categories: high, medium and low. Results: Significant differences were found between the immune profiles of samples metastasizing in distinct organs. Metastases in lung showed a higher immunogenic score than metastases in brain, liver or bone, regardless of their primary site of origin. Also, they preferentially clustered in the high immune group. Samples in this cluster exhibited a clear inflammatory phenotype, higher levels of immune infiltrate, overexpression of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA4) pathways and upregulation of genes predicting clinical response to programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) blockade (T-cell inflammatory signature). A decision tree algorithm was used to select CD74 as a biomarker that identify samples belonging to this high-immune subtype of metastases, having specificity of 0.96 and sensitivity of 1. Conclusions: We have found a group of lung-enriched metastases showing an inflammatory phenotype susceptible to be treated with immunotherapy

Telomere length alterations in microsatellite stable colorectal cancer and association with the immune response

Telomeres are repetitive sequences (TTAGGG) located at the end of chromosomes. Telomeres progressively shorten with each cell replication cycle, ultimately leading to chromosomal instability and loss of cell viability. Telomere length anomaly appears to be one of the earliest and most prevalent genetic alterations in malignant transformation. Here we aim to estimate telomere length from whole-exome sequencing data in colon tumors and normal colonic mucosa, and to analyze the potential association of telomere length with clinical factors and gene expression in colon cancer. Reads containing at least five repetitions of the telomere sequence (TTAGGG) were extracted from the raw sequences of 42 adjacent normal-tumor paired samples. The number of reads from the tumor sample was normalized to build the Tumor Telomere Length Ratio (TTLR), considered an estimation of telomere length change in the tumor compared to the paired normal tissue. We evaluated the associations between TTLR and clinical factors, gene expression and copy number (CN) aberrations measured in the same tumor samples. Colon tumors showed significantly shorter telomeres than their paired normal samples. No significant association was observed between TTLR and gender, age, tumor location, prognosis, stromal infiltration or molecular subtypes. The functional gene set enrichment analysis showed pathways related to immune response significantly associated with TLLR. By extracting a relative measure of telomere length from whole-exome sequencing data, we have assessed that colon tumor cells predominantly shorten telomeres, and this alteration is associated with expression changes in genes related to immune response and inflammation in tumor cells

Identifying causal models between genetically regulated methylation patterns and gene expression in healthy colon tissue

Background: DNA methylation is involved in the regulation of gene expression and phenotypic variation, but the inter-relationship between genetic variation, DNA methylation and gene expression remains poorly understood. Here we combine the analysis of genetic variants related to methylation markers (methylation quantitative trait loci: mQTLs) and gene expression (expression quantitative trait loci: eQTLs) with methylation markers related to gene expression (expression quantitative trait methylation: eQTMs), to provide novel insights into the genetic/epigenetic architecture of colocalizing molecular markers. Results: Normal mucosa from 100 patients with colon cancer and 50 healthy donors included in the Colonomics project have been analyzed. Linear models have been used to find mQTLs and eQTMs within 1 Mb of the target gene. From 32,446 eQTLs previously detected, we found a total of 6850 SNPs, 114 CpGs and 52 genes interrelated, generating 13,987 significant combinations of co-occurring associations (meQTLs) after Bonferromi correction. Non-redundant meQTLs were 54, enriched in genes involved in metabolism of glucose and xenobiotics and immune system. SNPs in meQTLs were enriched in regulatory elements (enhancers and promoters) compared to random SNPs within 1 Mb of genes. Three colorectal cancer GWAS SNPs were related to methylation changes, and four SNPs were related to chemerin levels. Bayesian networks have been used to identify putative causal relationships among associated SNPs, CpG and gene expression triads. We identified that most of these combinations showed the canonical pathway of methylation markers causes gene expression variation (60.1%) or non-causal relationship between methylation and gene expression (33.9%); however, in up to 6% of these combinations, gene expression was causing variation in methylation markers. Conclusions: In this study we provided a characterization of the regulation between genetic variants and inter-dependent methylation markers and gene expression in a set of 150 healthy colon tissue samples. This is an important finding for the understanding of molecular susceptibility on colon-related complex diseases

Mutanome and expression of immune response genes in microsatellite stable colon cancer

The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of the mutanome in the prognosis of microsatellite stable stage II CRC tumors. The exome of 42 stage II, microsatellite stable, colon tumors (21 of them relapse) and their paired mucosa were sequenced and analyzed. Although some pathways accumulated more mutations in patients exhibiting good or poor prognosis, no single somatic mutation was associated with prognosis. Exome sequencing data is also valuable to infer tumor neoantigens able to elicit a host immune response. Hence, putative neoantigens were identified by combining information about missense mutations in each tumor and HLAs genotypes of the patients. Under the hypothesis that neoantigens should be correctly presented in order to activate the immune response, expression levels of genes involved in the antigen presentation machinery were also assessed. In addition, CD8A level (as a marker of T-cell infiltration) was measured. We found that tumors with better prognosis showed a tendency to generate a higher number of immunogenic epitopes, and up-regulated genes involved in the antigen processing machinery. Moreover, tumors with higher T-cell infiltration also showed better prognosis. Stratifying by consensus molecular subtype, CMS4 tumors showed the highest association of expression levels of genes involved in the antigen presentation machinery with prognosis. Thus, we hypothesize that a subset of stage II microsatellite stable CRC tumors are able to generate an immune response in the host via MHC class I antigen presentation, directly related with a better prognosis

Los filtros metodológicos: aplicación a la búsqueda bibliográfica en la medicina del trabajo española

Artículo original[ES] Fundamento: Conocer la producción científica española sobre Medicina del Trabajo mediante la utilización de un filtro metodológico de búsqueda (ecuación de búsqueda). Metodología: Se propone un filtro metodológico de búsqueda construido por unión booleana de un filtro temático, utilizando Descriptores sobre Medicina del Trabajo en forma de Major Topic y un filtro geográfico previamenteprobado en anteriores estudios (filtro temático AND filtro geográfico). Se estudiaron variables bibliométricas para conocer la idoneidad de los trabajos recuperados. Resultados: Se construyó un filtro que permite observar su aptitud en relación a la materia del estudio,Medicina del Trabajo, donde se recuperó un 90,87% de trabajos pertinentes. En cuanto a la filiación institucional se com probó la procedencia española en el 96,58% referencias recuperadas.Conclusión: Se propone un filtro eficaz para la búsqueda en MEDLINE de trabajos sobre Medicina del Trabajo, pudiéndose usar de forma sistemática e incluso utilizar junto a otras ecuaciones para especificar la búsqueda a temas más concretos. Los resultados bibliométricos obtenidos son similares a la de otros estudios del área de las ciencias de la salud. [ES] Fundaments: To know the Spanish scientific produc tion on Labour Medicine by means of the use of a methodologic filter search (searching equation). Methodology: A searching methodologic filter made up by the boolean union of a thematic filter was proposed. Labour Medicine descriptors used as Major Topic and a geographic filter previously checked in other studies (thematic filter AND geographic filter). Bibliometric variables were studied to know the suitability of the recovered works. Results: A filter that allows observation of the aptitude in relation to the matter of study was constructed. Using Labour Medicine, 90.87% pertinent works were found. In respect to the institutional filiations, Spanish precedence was found in 96.58% of the recovered references. Conclusion: The purpose is to use an effective filter for the MEDLINE search of studies that focus in Labour Medicine produced by Spanish institutions, being able to use them in a systematic way and even use them with other equations and focus the search in more concrete themes. The bibliometric results obtained are similar to other studies in the area of health sciences.N