Assessment of recovery of European surface waters from acidification 1970-2000: An introduction to the Special Issue

International audienceNo Abstrac

The Chiral Soliton Model for Arbitrary Colors and Flavors

The quantum numbers of the chiral soliton are derived for an arbitrary number of colors and flavors

Self-consistent calculation of total energies of the electron gas using many-body perturbation theory

The performance of many-body perturbation theory for calculating ground-state properties is investigated. We present fully numerical results for the electron gas in three and two dimensions in the framework of the GW approximation. The overall agreement with very accurate Monte Carlo data is excellent, even for those ranges of densities for which the GW approach is often supposed to be unsuitable. The latter seems to be due to the fulfillment of general conservation rules. These results open further prospects for accurate calculations of ground-state properties circumventing the limitations of standard density-functional theory

Density functional theories and self-energy approaches

A purpose-designed microarray platform (Stressgenes, Phase 1) was utilised to investigate the changes in gene expression within the liver of rainbow trout during exposure to a prolonged period of confinement. Tissue and blood samples were collected from trout at intervals up to 648 h after transfer to a standardised confinement stressor, together with matched samples from undisturbed control fish. Plasma ACTH, cortisol, glucose and lactate were analysed to confirm that the neuroendocrine response to confinement was consistent with previous findings and to provide a phenotypic context to assist interpretation of gene expression data. Liver samples for suppression subtractive hybridisation (SSH) library construction were selected from within the experimental groups comprising “early” stress (2–48 h) and “late” stress (96–504 h). In order to reduce redundancy within the four SSH libraries and yield a higher number of unique clones an additional subtraction was carried out. After printing of the arrays a series of 55 hybridisations were executed to cover 6 time points. At 2 h, 6 h, 24 h, 168 h and 504 h 5 individual confined fish and 5 individual control fish were used with control fish only at 0 h. A preliminary list of 314 clones considered differentially regulated over the complete time course was generated by a combination of data analysis approaches and the most significant gene expression changes were found to occur during the 24 h to 168 h time period with a general approach to control levels by 504 h. Few changes in expression were apparent over the first 6 h. The list of genes whose expression was significantly altered comprised predominantly genes belonging to the biological process category (response to stimulus) and one cellular component category (extracellular region) and were dominated by so-called acute phase proteins. Analysis of the gene expression profile in liver tissue during confinement revealed a number of significant clusters. The major patterns comprised genes that were up-regulated at 24 h and beyond, the primary examples being haptoglobin, β-fibrinogen and EST10729. Two representative genes from each of the six k-means clusters were validated by qPCR. Correlations between microarray and qPCR expression patterns were significant for most of the genes tested. qPCR analysis revealed that haptoglobin expression was up-regulated approximately 8-fold at 24 h and over 13-fold by 168 h.This project was part funded by the European Commission (Q5RS-2001-02211), Enterprise Ireland and the Natural Environment Research Council of the United Kingdom

Synthesis and evaluation of boron compounds for neutron capture therapy of malignant brain tumors

Boron neutron capture therapy offers the potentiality for treating brain tumors currently resistant to treatment. The success of this form of therapy is directly dependent upon the delivery of sufficient numbers of thermal-neutrons to tumor cells which possess high concentrations of B-10. The objective of this project is to develop chemical methodology to synthesize boron-containing compounds with the potential for becoming incorporated into rapidly-dividing malignant brain tumor cells and excluded from normal components of the brain and surrounding tissues, to develope biological methods for assessing the potential of the compound by use of cell culture or intratumoral injection, to develop analytical methodology for measuring boron in cells and tissue using direct current plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (DCP-AES) and alpha track autoradiography, to develop biochemical and HPLC procedures for evaluating compound uptake and tissue half-life, and to develop procedures required to assess both in vitro and vivo efficacy of BNCT with selected compounds

Evaluation of boronated EGF as a potential delivery agent for BNCT of brain tumors

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene is often amplified in human glioblastomas, but, reflecting the cellular heterogeneity of these tumors, the frequency of amplification is variable. Since the number of EGFR has been considered as a potential target for the specific delivery of diagnostic and therapeutic agents to brain tumors. Initially, the focus was on using anti-EGFR monoclonal antibodies or their fragments, but within the past few years there has been increasing interest in using EGF based bioconjugates as targeting agents. Recently, we have described a method for the boronation of EGF and have characterized the resulting bioconjugates in vitro. In the present study, we have investigated the potential usefulness of boronated EGF as a delivery agent for neutron capture therapy in rats bearing intracerebral implants of the C6 glioma, which has been transfected with the gene encoding EGFR. Our results indicate that following intratumoral injection, boronated EGF selectivity targeted the transfected EGFR positive C6 glioma, and that the amount of delivered to the tumor exceeded by 3-4 orders of magnitude that which could be delivered by intravenous injection