Bringing onco‐innovation to Europe’s healthcare systems. The potential of biomarker testing, real world evidence, tumour agnostic therapies to empower personalised medicine

Rapid and continuing advances in biomarker testing are not being matched by uptake in health systems, and this is hampering both patient care and innovation. It also risks costing health systems the opportunity to make their services more efficient and, over time, more economical. The potential that genomics has brought to biomarker testing in diagnosis, prediction and research is being realised, pre‐eminently in many cancers, but also in an ever‐wider range of conditions— notably BRCA1/2 testing in ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers. Nevertheless, the implementation of genetic testing in clinical routine setting is still challenging. Development is impeded by country‐related heterogeneity, data deficiencies, and lack of policy alignment on standards, approval—and the role of real‐world evidence in the process—and reimbursement. The acute nature of the problem is compellingly illustrated by the particular challenges facing the development and use of tumour agnostic therapies, where the gaps in preparedness for taking advantage of this innovative approach to cancer therapy are sharply exposed. Europe should already have in place a guarantee of universal access to a minimum suite of biomarker tests and should be planning for an optimum testing scenario with a wider range of biomarker tests integrated into a more sophisticated health system articulated around personalised medicine. Improving healthcare and winning advantages for Europe’s industrial competitiveness and innovation require an appropriate policy framework—starting with an update to outdated recommendations. We show herein the main issues and proposals that emerged during the previous advisory boards organised by the European Alliance for Personalized Medicine which mainly focus on possible scenarios of harmonisation of both oncogenetic testing and management of cancer patients

Bringing onco-innovation to Europe’s healthcare systems: the potential of biomarker testing, real world evidence, tumour agnostic therapies to empower personalised medicine

International audienceRapid and continuing advances in biomarker testing are not being matched by uptake in health systems, and this is hampering both patient care and innovation. It also risks costing health systems the opportunity to make their services more efficient and, over time, more economical. The potential that genomics has brought to biomarker testing in diagnosis, prediction and research is being realised, pre-eminently in many cancers, but also in an ever-wider range of conditions—notably BRCA1/2 testing in ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers. Nevertheless, the implementation of genetic testing in clinical routine setting is still challenging. Development is impeded by country-related heterogeneity, data deficiencies, and lack of policy alignment on standards, approval—and the role of real-world evidence in the process—and reimbursement. The acute nature of the problem is compellingly illustrated by the particular challenges facing the development and use of tumour agnostic therapies, where the gaps in preparedness for taking advantage of this innovative approach to cancer therapy are sharply exposed. Europe should already have in place a guarantee of universal access to a minimum suite of biomarker tests and should be planning for an optimum testing scenario with a wider range of biomarker tests integrated into a more sophisticated health system articulated around personalised medicine. Improving healthcare and winning advantages for Europe’s industrial competitiveness and innovation require an appropriate policy framework—starting with an update to outdated recommendations. We show herein the main issues and proposals that emerged during the previous advisory boards organised by the European Alliance for Personalized Medicine which mainly focus on possible scenarios of harmonisation of both oncogenetic testing and management of cancer patients

Urban space and the social control of incivilities: perceptions of space influencing the regulationof anti-social behaviour

Contemporary cities are increasingly governed through space. In this article,we examine how urban space and perceptions thereof can influence the social control inthe area of incivilities. To this end, we first inspect the existing literature, in particularthe socio-spatial studies that emphasise the importance of culture and values in theinteraction with social control. Partly drawing on examples from our previous studies,we suggest that people’s perceptions of urban space (influenced by cultural symbols,social and media representations, aesthetics and other values) affect their perceptions ofincivilities, while the latter often determine or at least importantly contribute to theshaping of the social control of incivilities. We further highlight the role of gentrifica-tion as a medium and a tool of social control. The paper concludes by discussingimplications of this for the possible future, more integrated and interdisciplinaryresearch on the social control of incivilities in the city

Applications and Techniques for Fast Machine Learning in Science

In this community review report, we discuss applications and techniques for fast machine learning (ML) in science - the concept of integrating powerful ML methods into the real-time experimental data processing loop to accelerate scientific discovery. The material for the report builds on two workshops held by the Fast ML for Science community and covers three main areas: applications for fast ML across a number of scientific domains; techniques for training and implementing performant and resource-efficient ML algorithms; and computing architectures, platforms, and technologies for deploying these algorithms. We also present overlapping challenges across the multiple scientific domains where common solutions can be found. This community report is intended to give plenty of examples and inspiration for scientific discovery through integrated and accelerated ML solutions. This is followed by a high-level overview and organization of technical advances, including an abundance of pointers to source material, which can enable these breakthroughs

Wild species of vaccinium composition, nutritional value and utilization

There are still, in many parts of the globe, some edible fruit collects from the wild for human feeding and other uses. These fruits are utilised either in their raw nature or after some form of processing. One of these wild fruits are Vaccinium species such as Vaccinium myrtoides (Blume) Miq., Vaccinium cylindraceum, Vaccinium padifolium, Vaccinium corymbosum, Vaccinium myrtillus and others from the plant family Ericaceae. The term wild infers non-cultivated plants found in plantation felids or the forest. The species Vaccinium myrtoides and the others are small trees (shrubs) that are well known in Southeast Asian countries such as Philippines, Indonesia and other neighbouring islands. The plants classified as wild growing shrubs. However, the locals have made it be fully utilized in some areas as the wood that are used in grafting utensils and cutleries, or as fuel and fruits. The small-sized berry-like fruits with an average diameter of about 4–5 mm turn black when ripe. They have a delicious flavour that makes it edible and used in the making of other delicacies such as tart and pies to add flavour and as preservatives as well. A few published researches were done on Vaccinium myrtoides showing that it is still used in folkloric medicine. Leaves and fruits extracts showed strong antioxidant activity when tested in-vitro using DPPH (2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) free radical scavenging activity as part of a preliminary phytochemical screening for V. myrtoides. The study revealed that the antioxidant activity is due to the presence of flavonoids and other phenolic compounds in the plant leaves and fruit extracts

Rheological and thermal analysis of the filling stage of injection moulding

Flow conditions are different in the cavity of the injection mould from the capillary flow of a laboratory rheological instrument. An injection moulding slit die rheometer (Rheo-mould) was designed with a series of slit and orifice dies. Four pressure sensors were built in the stationary side of the mould, therefore the pressure could be measured at four different places. A changeable slit die insert was designed in the moving side. The shear stress and the shear rate can be calculated from the pressure gradient and from the flow rate of the melt, respectively. Flow curves of low density polyethylene were determined using Bagley, Rabinowitsch and Mooney corrections. The results were compared to the flow curves determined by Göttfert and Haake capillary equipments. It was found that the agreement between the methods is excellent