Estado del arte del proyecto

El Consultorio Jurídico de la Universidad de la Costa CUC presta un servicio social gratuito a la comunidad de estratos 0,1,2 y 3, o aquellos sin capacidad económica ,el servicio social prestado por el consultorio busca asesorar a la población en las diferentes consultas sobre temas que son de su interés, el consultorio jurídico de la CUC fue creado en hace más de 40 años y cada día viene ampliando más su cobertura de servicios para satisfacer las necesidades de la comunidad de Barranquilla y su área Metropolitana. El impacto que ha generado el Consultorio Jurídico de la CUC en su área de influencia ha sido importante hasta el punto de ser reconocido ampliamente por la población como una herramienta importante de ayuda para la restauración de los derechos que se consagran en la Constitución y las normas legales. Es misión del consultorio jurídico contribuir a la formación integral de los estudiantes de los últimos 2 años lectivos del programa de derecho formándolos en competencias para el ejercicio de su vida profesional, en pos de la prestación de un servicio de alta calidad por medio de procesos eficientes y eficaces que contribuyan a resolver la problemática social. El presente proyecto apunta a determinar, cuantificar y describir las rutas de atención del Consultorio jurídico

The genomic landscape of juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia

Juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML) is a myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) of childhood with a poor prognosis. Mutations in NF1, NRAS, KRAS, PTPN11 and CBL occur in 85% of patients, yet there are currently no risk stratification algorithms capable of predicting which patients will be refractory to conventional treatment and therefore be candidates for experimental therapies. In addition, there have been few other molecular pathways identified aside from the Ras/MAPK pathway to serve as the basis for such novel therapeutic strategies. We therefore sought to genomically characterize serial samples from patients at diagnosis through relapse and transformation to acute myeloid leukemia in order to expand our knowledge of the mutational spectrum in JMML. We identified recurrent mutations in genes involved in signal transduction, gene splicing, the polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) and transcription. Importantly, the number of somatic alterations present at diagnosis appears to be the major determinant of outcome

A blood atlas of COVID-19 defines hallmarks of disease severity and specificity.

Treatment of severe COVID-19 is currently limited by clinical heterogeneity and incomplete description of specific immune biomarkers. We present here a comprehensive multi-omic blood atlas for patients with varying COVID-19 severity in an integrated comparison with influenza and sepsis patients versus healthy volunteers. We identify immune signatures and correlates of host response. Hallmarks of disease severity involved cells, their inflammatory mediators and networks, including progenitor cells and specific myeloid and lymphocyte subsets, features of the immune repertoire, acute phase response, metabolism, and coagulation. Persisting immune activation involving AP-1/p38MAPK was a specific feature of COVID-19. The plasma proteome enabled sub-phenotyping into patient clusters, predictive of severity and outcome. Systems-based integrative analyses including tensor and matrix decomposition of all modalities revealed feature groupings linked with severity and specificity compared to influenza and sepsis. Our approach and blood atlas will support future drug development, clinical trial design, and personalized medicine approaches for COVID-19

The Issue of Readability in the Chilean EFL Textbook

At the end of high school in Chile, it is expected that students achieve a B1 English language proficiency level. In the present article, we measure the level of readability of the texts used in the new EFL Chilean textbook and compare it with the readability level of the texts used in the Cambridge B1 preliminary exam to check its appropriacy. The results reveal that, even though the classic readability indices show a similar level of difficulty in the texts, the index RDL2, which is specific for second language learning, shows that there is a statistically significant difference. This finding indicates that the texts in the Chilean EFL textbook are more difficult to read than the ones students are supposed to read. Implications at a local and international level are then shared

Cyclic Metronomic Chemotherapy for Pediatric Tumors: Six Case Reports and a Review of the Literature

We report a retrospective case series of six Hispanic children with tumors treated with metronomic chemotherapy. The six cases comprised one rhabdoid tumor of the kidney, one ependymoma, two medulloblastomas, one neuroblastoma, and a type II neurocytoma of the spine. Treatment included oral cyclophosphamide daily for 21 days alternating with oral etoposide daily for 21 days in a backbone of daily valproic acid and celecoxib. In one case, celecoxib was substituted with sulindac. Of the six patients, three showed complete responses, and all patients showed some response to metronomic therapy with only minor hematologic toxicity. One patient had hemorrhagic gastritis likely associated with NSAIDs while off prophylactic antacids. These data add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that continuous doses of valproic acid and celecoxib coupled with alternating metronomic chemotherapy of agents such as etoposide and cyclophosphamide can produce responses in pediatric tumors relapsing to conventional dose chemotherapy

Types of listening comprehension developed in the Chilean EFL textbook Global English

This article reports the results and reflections of an analysis of the EFL textbook provided by the Ministry of Education of Chile to all 11th graders in public and subsidized schools.  The objective of this article is to identify the type(s) of comprehension developed in the listening comprehension section. The results show that the there is no clear progress across the units and that the vast majority of the tasks aim at comprehension at the surface level. This significantly reduces the opportunities to develop critical thinking and to foster the perception of listening as an active skill.

Cyclic Metronomic Chemotherapy for Pediatric Tumors: Six Case Reports and a Review of the Literature

We report a retrospective case series of six Hispanic children with tumors treated with metronomic chemotherapy. The six cases comprised one rhabdoid tumor of the kidney, one ependymoma, two medulloblastomas, one neuroblastoma, and a type II neurocytoma of the spine. Treatment included oral cyclophosphamide daily for 21 days alternating with oral etoposide daily for 21 days in a backbone of daily valproic acid and celecoxib. In one case, celecoxib was substituted with sulindac. Of the six patients, three showed complete responses, and all patients showed some response to metronomic therapy with only minor hematologic toxicity. One patient had hemorrhagic gastritis likely associated with NSAIDs while off prophylactic antacids. These data add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that continuous doses of valproic acid and celecoxib coupled with alternating metronomic chemotherapy of agents such as etoposide and cyclophosphamide can produce responses in pediatric tumors relapsing to conventional dose chemotherapy

Two-Component Signaling Systems Regulate Diverse Virulence-Associated Traits in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that can cause problematic infections at different sites throughout the human body. P. aeruginosa encodes a large suite of over 60 two-component signaling systems that enable cells to rapidly sense and respond to external signals. Previous work has shown that some of these sensory systems contribute to P. aeruginosa pathogenesis, but the virulence-associated processes and phenotypic traits that each of these systems controls are still largely unclear. To aid investigations of these sensory systems, we have generated deletion strains for each of 64 genes encoding histidine kinases and one histidine phosphotransferase in P. aeruginosa PA14. We carried out initial phenotypic characterizations of this collection by assaying these mutants for over a dozen virulence-associated traits, and we found that each of these phenotypes is regulated by multiple sensory systems. Our work highlights the usefulness of this collection for further studies of P. aeruginosa two-component signaling systems and provides insight into how these systems may contribute to P. aeruginosa infection.NIBIB/NIH (Award R01-EB017755)National Science Foundation (Award PHY-1454673)National Science Foundation (Award PHY-1454673 and Grant 1745302)U.S. Army Research Office (Contract W911NF-19-2-0026)NIH (Grant R01-GM082899

A local tumor microenvironment acquired super-enhancer induces an oncogenic driver in colorectal carcinoma

The changes in super-enhancer (SE) landscape of cancers are mainly attributed to cell-intrinsic genomic alterations. Here, the authors perform epigenomic profiling on primary colorectal cancers (CRCs) and their matched normal tissues and show that local tumour microenvironment induces a SE activation and that its target, PDZK1IP1 promotes CRC growth