Latin Americans and Caribbeans in Europe. A cross-country analysis

With the beginning of the 21st century, there has been an acceleration of migratory flows from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to Europe. As a result, and despite the negative impact of the economic crisis, 4.6 million Latin American and Caribbean immigrants reside in Europe, half of them in Spain. This article analyses the recent evolution of these migratory flows, their territorial distribution, and their demographic profiles according to the 2011 European census data disseminated by a new tool -the Census Hub- implemented by the European Statistical System. The analysis shows the existence of a high LAC immigrant concentration in Spain and in certain European cities, a marked young and feminized demographic profile, a great variety of educational levels and a different insertion in each European labour market, although many LAC immigrants work in low-skill occupations, being overqualified and underemployed in most of the countries

CIBERER : Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

Altres ajuts: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.CIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research

The transcriptional profiling of human <i>in vivo</i>-generated plasma cells identifies selective imbalances in monoclonal gammopathies

<div><p>Plasma cells (PC) represent the heterogeneous final stage of the B cells (BC) differentiation process. To characterize the transition of BC into PC, transcriptomes from human naïve BC were compared to those of three functionally-different subsets of human <i>in vivo</i>-generated PC: i) tonsil PC, mainly consisting of early PC; ii) PC released to the blood after a potent booster-immunization (mostly cycling plasmablasts); and, iii) bone marrow CD138⁺ PC that represent highly mature PC and include the long-lived PC compartment. This transcriptional transition involves subsets of genes related to key processes for PC maturation: the already known protein processing, apoptosis and homeostasis, and of new discovery including histones, macromolecule assembly, zinc-finger transcription factors and neuromodulation. This human PC signature is partially reproduced <i>in vitro</i> and is conserved in mouse. Moreover, the present study identifies genes that define PC subtypes (e.g., proliferation-associated genes for circulating PC and transcriptional-related genes for tonsil and bone marrow PC) and proposes some putative transcriptional regulators of the human PC signatures (e.g., OCT/POU, XBP1/CREB, E2F, among others). Finally, we also identified a restricted imbalance of the present PC transcriptional program in monoclonal gammopathies that correlated with PC malignancy.</p></div

Isolation of human <i>in vivo</i>-generated PC and B-cells.

<p><b>(A)</b> Tonsil PC (TPC), <b>(B)</b> peripheral blood PC (BPC), <b>(C)</b> bone marrow PC (BMPC) and <b>(D)</b> peripheral blood naïve B cells (BC) were isolated by magnetic selection and flow cytometry sorting according to their surface markers expression as was indicated in Material and methods section. Representative dot plots are depicted.</p

The PC transcriptional program is imbalanced in monoclonal gammopathies.

<p>Genes of the PC-down and PC-up signatures that were also dysregulated genes in MGUS, SMM and MM related to healthy BMPC are represented as total number <b>(A)</b> or as number and % in each signature and direction of change <b>(B, C)</b>. The same representation is depicted for BPC-up and TPC/BMPC-up signatures <b>(D-F)</b>. Data are expressed as mean ± SD. (A, B, D, E) or as proportion (C, F). <b>(G, H)</b> Prediction analysis of TFBS enrichment in the dysregulated genes in MM and MGUS. Similar to <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0183264#pone.0183264.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a>, The TFBS of the TRANSFAC database in the Pscan tool are ranked according to their Z-scores in the analysis of PC-down and PC-up signatures (G) and BPC-up and TPC/BMPC-up signatures (H). The black lines separate the significantly and non-significantly enriched TFBS (<i>P</i> < 0.05). Coloring follows the same code as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0183264#pone.0183264.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a>. The 95^th percentile (the most significantly enriched TFBS) is shown in a dash line for comparison purposes.</p

Genes of the PC signatures as potential MM risk markers.

<p>Genes of the PC signatures as potential MM risk markers.</p