THE ECONOMY OF ALBANIA TODAY AND THEN: THE DRIVERS TO GROWTH

Over the past two decades, Albania has faced many social and economic changes, since it changes it economic system from a centralized one to a democratic one in early 90s. During this transitory phase, Albania had faced difficult challenges such as of undertaking all the necessary reforms for the stabilization, liberalization, privatization and integration of its economy in the overall global and regional economic trends. The first aim of this paper is to study the Albania Economy in its democratic era. The second aim of this paper is the identification of the main drivers to economic growth in the Albanian case during past two decades and the challenges that it faces today. Furthermore, this paper deals with some of the challenges that Albanian economy faces today such as SMEs challenges that represent the 98% of the market, rail infrastructure, lack of entrepreneurship, low level of innovation spirit among the enterprises, lack of focus in R&D. This paper finds out that Albanian Economy has performed well but yet, there exists some critical challenges that should be face in order to achieve the desired level of economic development and competitiveness in global and regional market

The Natural Cytotoxicity Receptors in Health and Disease

The Natural Cytotoxicity Receptors (NCRs), NKp46, NKp44, and NKp30, were some of the first human activating Natural Killer (NK) cell receptors involved in the non-MHC-restricted recognition of tumor cells to be cloned over 20 years ago. Since this time many host- and pathogen-encoded ligands have been proposed to bind the NCRs and regulate the cytotoxic and cytokine-secreting functions of tissue NK cells. This diverse set of NCR ligands can manifest on the surface of tumor or virus-infected cells or can be secreted extracellularly, suggesting a remarkable NCR polyfunctionality that regulates the activity of NK cells in different tissue compartments during steady state or inflammation. Moreover, the NCRs can also be expressed by other innate and adaptive immune cell subsets under certain tissue conditions potentially conferring NK recognition programs to these cells. Here we review NCR biology in health and disease with particular reference to how this important class of receptors regulates the functions of tissue NK cells as well as confer NK cell recognition patterns to other innate and adaptive lymphocyte subsets. Finally, we highlight how NCR biology is being harnessed for novel therapeutic interventions particularly for enhanced tumor surveillance

What Impacts the Leverage Ration of the Banks in Albania?

Choosing the right amount of the leverage ratio is not an easy task for a firm as well as for a bank. Various determinants impact this ratio according to the type of business and also the market that it operation. The main aim of this paper is to examine the main determinant of leverage ratio in the Albanian banking system. To determine the short run impact of the determinant, panel data multi regression model where the dependent variable is the leverage ratio. The internal independent variables are profitability, return on assets, size, tangibility, and tax and dividend payment. The external independent variables are Gross Domestic Product annual growth rate and Inflation Growth Rate. In order to examine the long run relationship between leverage ratio and the independent variable Kao Residual Co-integration Test was conducted. The main results indicate that the negative relationship if found between leverage ratio and the variable of profitability, tax payment and Inflation rate. While the relationship with other variable was positive. Moreover, leverage ratio has a long run relationship with tax payment, tangibility, GDP growth rate and Inflation rate, as well as with all the independent variable taken together.Epoka Universit

Eradication of CD48-positive tumors by selectively enhanced YTS cells harnessing the lncRNA NeST

Summary: Natural killer (NK) cells are currently used in clinical trials to treat tumors. However, such therapies still suffer from problems such as donor variability, reproducibility, and more, which prevent a wider use of NK cells therapeutics. Here we show a potential immunotherapy combining NK cell-mediated tumor eradiation and long non-coding (lnc) RNAs. We overexpressed the interferon (IFN) γ secretion-enhancing lncRNA nettoie Salmonella pas Theiler’s (NeST) in the NK cell-like cell line YTS. YTS cells express the co-stimulatory receptor 2B4 whose main ligand is CD48. On YTS cells, 2B4 functions by direct activation. We showed that NeST overexpression in YTS cells resulted in increased IFNγ release upon interaction with CD48 (selectively enhanced (se)YTS cells). Following irradiation, the seYTS cells lost proliferation capacity but were still able to maintain their killing and IFNγ secretion capacities. Finally, we demonstrated that irradiated seYTS inhibit tumor growth in vivo. Thus, we propose seYTS cells as off-the-shelve therapy for CD48-expressing tumors

Altered NKp46 Recognition and Elimination of Influenza B Viruses

Every year, millions of people worldwide are infected with influenza, causing enormous health and economic problems. The most common type of influenza is influenza A. It is known that Natural Killer (NK) cells play an important role in controlling influenza A infection, mostly through the recognition of the viral protein hemagglutinin (HA) by the activating receptor, NKp46. In contrast, little is known regarding NK cell recognition of influenza B viruses, even though they are responsible for a third of all pediatric influenza deaths and are therefore included in the seasonal vaccine each year. Here we show that NKp46 also recognizes influenza B viruses. We show that NKp46 binds the HA protein of influenza B in a sialic acid-dependent manner, and identified the glycosylated residue in NKp46, which is critical for this interaction. We discovered that this interaction has a binding affinity approximately seven times lower than NKp46 binding of influenza A’s HA. Finally, we demonstrated, using mice deficient for the mouse orthologue of NKp46, named NCR1, that NKp46 is not important for influenza B elimination. These findings enable us to better understand the interactions between the different influenza viruses and NK cells that are known to be crucial for viral elimination