Ghana’s law on publication of false news is vague and easily abused

Ghana repealed its controversial criminal libel law two decades ago, but the Ghana Police Service have used a new law to arrest and prosecute some media personalities. Legal practitioner and media law lecturer Samuel Appiah Darko explains why the law was passed, the inherent dangers of its wording and the abuses it is enabling

Assessing the Challenges to Sustainable Mining: A Supply Chain Perspective (A Case of Li Tong Mining Company in Ghana)

The mining industry contributes significantly to the economic growth of the country however frequent occurrences of collapsed pits, less regard for the disposal of waste into river bodies, poor service conditions to staff of small- scale mining companies and poor corporate social responsibility to mining communities have raised a lot of international concerns. These challenges can be highly minimized when the mining industry shifts from unsustainable patterns of operations. The high cost of sustainable operations and many other challenges are key de-motivational challenges to the adoption of sustainable practices.The study revealed that management and staff of the industry have little knowledge in sustainable mining practices whilst others perceive a low senior management support. The researchers found a positive effect of the challenges on their inability to practice sustainability and recommend a periodic rigorous training for all staff and management of all small scale mining companies and also recommend that the Minerals and Mining Act and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Act are implemented to the later. Keywords: Sustainable development, Mining, Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, Environmental Management

Wanted: standards for automatic reproducibility of computational experiments

Those seeking to reproduce a computational experiment often need to manually look at the code to see how to build necessary libraries, configure parameters, find data, and invoke the experiment; it is not automatic. Automatic reproducibility is a more stringent goal, but working towards it would benefit the community. This work discusses a machine-readable language for specifying how to execute a computational experiment. We invite interested stakeholders to discuss this language at https://github.com/charmoniumQ/execution-description .Comment: Submitted to SE4RS'23 Portland, O

A novel bispecific antibody for HER2+ breast cancer: The BEAT GBR 1302

While the idea of bispecific drugs was brought up over 30 years ago, the development of formats mature enough for the clinic remained for a long time a challenge. The whole field has been hampered by major problems of manufacturability (e.g. product purity and yields) and immunogenicity. With the recent arrival of new bispecific formats, either as antibody–like molecules (containing an Fc) or scFv fragments, at least 18 bispecific molecules have entered clinical trials showing very promising results. The BEAT® format has been developed as bispecific antibodies maintaining the pharmacokinetics and the low immunogenicity of human IgG with excellent manufacturability properties. In brief, the molecule is asymmetric consisting of a Hc, a Lc and a Fc-scFv. A proprietary engineered CH3 interface mimics the natural association of the heterodimeric TCRα β chains driving heterodimerization of the Hc and Fc-scFv. CHO cell lines are generated with a volumetric productivity of several g/L and a high product purity (e.g. \u3e90% of bispecific product). Based on a built-in purification approach the BEAT molecules can be purified using a standard DSP process with yield and purity comparable to standard mAbs. The presentation will highlight a new bispecific drug targeting HER2 on tumor cellsand CD3 on cytotoxic T-cells: the GBR 1302-BEAT molecule. GBR 1302-BEAT effectively recruits cytotoxic T cells against HER2 positive breast cancer cells including the trastuzumab-resistant breast cancer cell line JIMT-1. It shows strong tumor cell lysis activity with a better in vitro potential than current HER2-targeting therapies including the ADC TDM-1. The differential killing efficacy both in vitro and in vivo of HER2 overexpressing (3+) and normal, HER2 (0) cells reveals a large therapeutic window. In addition GBR 1302 does not trigger non-specific T cell activation. The excellent manufacturing attributes and the pre-clinical efficacy and safety of GBR1302 justify further clinical development as a treatment for HER2 positive cancers

Evaluation of the Food and Drugs Authority, Ghana Regulatory Review Process: Challenges and Opportunities

© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Purpose: This study aimed to assess the current regulatory review process of the food and drugs authority (FDA) Ghana by identifying key milestones, target timelines, good review practices and quality decision-making practices and evaluating the overall regulatory performance from 2019 to 2021, as well as the challenges and opportunities for improvement. Methods: The FDA Ghana representatives completed the optimising efficiencies in regulatory agencies (OpERA) questionnaire, including data identifying the milestones and overall approval times for all products registered by the FDA Ghana from 2019 to 2021. Results: Of the new active substances approved from 2019 to 2021, 91% were biologicals processed by full or abridged reviews pathways. Timelines for these reviews were within authority targets but were longer compared with generics. Of generics approved from 2019 to 2021, 97% were pharmaceuticals processed by the full review pathway, with timelines within authority targets and shorter compared with new active substances. Regardless of the review model used, approval times for new active substances increased from 84 to 355 calendar days 2019–2021 due to the impact of the pandemic. Guidelines, standard operating procedures and review templates were in place and the majority of indicators for good review practices were implemented. Several quality decision-making practices were implemented, although currently there is not a systematic structured approach. Conclusion: The FDA Ghana monitors regulatory performance and currently meets its target timelines. To achieve World Health Organization Maturity Level 4 status, an electronic tracking system, benefit-risk assessment framework and template and the publication of assessment reports are recommended.Peer reviewe

System-wide Analysis of the T Cell Response

SummaryThe T cell receptor (TCR) controls the cellular adaptive immune response to antigens, but our understanding of TCR repertoire diversity and response to challenge is still incomplete. For example, TCR clones shared by different individuals with minimal alteration to germline gene sequences (public clones) are detectable in all vertebrates, but their significance is unknown. Although small in size, the zebrafish TCR repertoire is controlled by processes similar to those operating in mammals. Thus, we studied the zebrafish TCR repertoire and its response to stimulation with self and foreign antigens. We found that cross-reactive public TCRs dominate the T cell response, endowing a limited TCR repertoire with the ability to cope with diverse antigenic challenges. These features of vertebrate public TCRs might provide a mechanism for the rapid generation of protective T cell immunity, allowing a short temporal window for the development of more specific private T cell responses

Molecular epidemiology and whole genome sequencing analysis of clinical Mycobacterium bovis from Ghana.

BACKGROUND: Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) caused by Mycobacterium bovis is a re-emerging problem in both livestock and humans. The association of some M. bovis strains with hyper-virulence, MDR-TB and disseminated disease makes it imperative to understand the biology of the pathogen. METHODS: Mycobacterium bovis (15) among 1755 M. tuberculosis complex (MTBC) isolated between 2012 and 2014 were characterized and analyzed for associated patient demography and other risk factors. Five of the M. bovis isolates were whole-genome sequenced and comparatively analyzed against a global collection of published M. bovis genomes. RESULTS: Mycobacterium bovis was isolated from 3/560(0.5%) females and 12/1195(1.0%) males with pulmonary TB. The average age of M. bovis infected cases was 46.8 years (7-72years). TB patients from the Northern region of Ghana (1.9%;4/212) had a higher rate of infection with M. bovis (OR = 2.7,p = 0.0968) compared to those from the Greater Accra region (0.7%;11/1543). Among TB patients with available HIV status, the odds of isolating M. bovis from HIV patients (2/119) was 3.3 higher relative to non-HIV patients (4/774). Direct contact with livestock or their unpasteurized products was significantly associated with bTB (p<0.0001, OR = 124.4,95% CI = 30.1-508.3). Two (13.3%) of the M. bovis isolates were INH resistant due to the S315T mutation in katG whereas one (6.7%) was RIF resistant with Q432P and I1491S mutations in rpoB. M. bovis from Ghana resolved as mono-phyletic branch among mostly M. bovis from Africa irrespective of the host and were closest to the root of the global M. bovis phylogeny. M. bovis-specific amino acid mutations were detected among MTBC core genes such as mce1A, mmpL1, pks6, phoT, pstB, glgP and Rv2955c. Additional mutations P6T in chaA, G187E in mgtC, T35A in Rv1979c, S387A in narK1, L400F in fas and A563T in eccA1 were restricted to the 5 clinical M. bovis from Ghana. CONCLUSION: Our data indicate potential zoonotic transmission of bTB in Ghana and hence calls for intensified public education on bTB, especially among risk groups

SIV-specific CD8+ T cells are clonotypically distinct across lymphoid and mucosal tissues

CD8+ T cell responses are necessary for immune control of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). However, the key parameters that dictate antiviral potency remain elusive, conceivably because most studies to date have been restricted to analyses of circulating CD8+ T cells. We conducted a detailed clonotypic, functional, and phenotypic survey of SIV-specific CD8+ T cells across multiple anatomical sites in chronically infected rhesus macaques with high (>10,000 copies/mL plasma) or low burdens of viral RNA (<10,000 copies/mL plasma). No significant differences in response magnitude were identified across anatomical compartments. Rhesus macaques with low viral loads (VLs) harbored higher frequencies of polyfunctional CXCR5+ SIV-specific CD8+ T cells in various lymphoid tissues and higher proportions of unique Gag-specific CD8+ T cell clonotypes in the mesenteric lymph nodes relative to rhesus macaques with high VLs. In addition, public Gag-specific CD8+ T cell clonotypes were more commonly shared across distinct anatomical sites than the corresponding private clonotypes, which tended to form tissue-specific repertoires, especially in the peripheral blood and the gastrointestinal tract. Collectively, these data suggest that functionality and tissue localization are important determinants of CD8+ T cell–mediated efficacy against SIV

Tropospheric water vapour isotopologue data (H₂¹⁶O, H₂¹⁸O, and HD¹⁶O) as obtained from NDACC/FTIR solar absorption spectra

We report on the ground-based FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) tropospheric water vapour isotopologue remote sensing data that have been recently made available via the database of NDACC (Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change; ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ndacc/MUSICA/) and via doi:10.5281/zenodo.48902. Currently, data are available for 12 globally distributed stations. They have been centrally retrieved and quality-filtered in the framework of the MUSICA project (MUlti-platform remote Sensing of Isotopologues for investigating the Cycle of Atmospheric water). We explain particularities of retrieving the water vapour isotopologue state (vertical distribution of H216O, H218O, and HD16O) and reveal the need for a new metadata template for archiving FTIR isotopologue data. We describe the format of different data components and give recommendations for correct data usage. Data are provided as two data types. The first type is best-suited for tropospheric water vapour distribution studies disregarding different isotopologues (comparison with radiosonde data, analyses of water vapour variability and trends, etc.). The second type is needed for analysing moisture pathways by means of H2O, δD-pair distributions