Adult mesenchymal stem cell therapy for myelin repair in Multiple Sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating immune-mediated disease of the central nervous system (CNS). It is the most frequent neurological disease in young adults and affects over 2 million people worldwide. Current treatments reduce the relapse rate and the formation of inflammatory lesions in the CNS, but with only temporary and limited success. Despite the presence of endogenous oligodendroglial progenitors (OPCs) and of spontaneous remyelination, at least in early MS its levels and its qualities are apparently insufficient for a sustained endogenous functional repair. Therefore, novel MS therapies should consider not only immunemodulatory but also myelin repair activities. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) represent an attractive alternative to develop a cell-based therapy for MS. MSCs display stromal features and exert bystander immunemodulatory and neuroprotective activities. Importantly, MSCs induce oligodendrocyte fate decision and differentiation/maturation of adult neural progenitors, suggesting the existence of MSC-derived remyelination activity. Moreover, transplanted MSCs promote functional recovery and myelin repair in different MS animal models. Here, we summarize the current knowledge on endogenous mechanisms for remyelination and proposed autologous MSC therapy as a promising strategy for MS treatment

Twenty Years of Research on the Relationship Between Economic and Social Performance: A Meta-analysis Approach

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between economic and social performance in an organizational context. We perform a meta-analysis to test this relationship and to examine the influence of the measurement criteria and organizational characteristics, such as activity, social orientation, technology and cultural environment. We find 678 effect sizes in 83 papers. Our results reveal a positive relationship between economic and social performance, although differences in the sign are detected depending on the measurement instrument and the type of organization

Are Mediterranean nonprofits adopting the social enterprise model?

The social enterprise model, which is characterized by economic, social, and governance dimensions, has become a key aspect of modern welfare states in Europe. Despite its potential to increase revenue diversification for nonprofits, particularly through commercial income, its effects in the context of Mediterranean countries within the European Union are untested. This study aims to examine the adoption of the social enterprise model by Mediterranean nonprofits. The results suggest that organizations with high levels of diversification through commercial income exhibit some characteristics of the social enterprise model, and this behavior is influenced by factors such as the type of promoter, user, organizational aims, and activities

Formal Visual Modeling of Real-Time Systems in e-Motions: Two Case Studies

e-Motions is an Eclipse-based visual timed model transformation framework with a Real-Time Maude semantics that supports the usual Maude formal analysis methods, including simulation, reachability analysis, and LTL model checking. e-Motions is characterized by a novel and powerful set of constructs for expressing timed behaviors. In this paper we illustrate the use of these constructs --- and thereby implicitly investigate their suitability to define real-time systems in an intuitive way --- to define and formally analyze two prototypical and very different real-time systems: (i) a simple round trip time protocol for computing the time it takes a message to travel from one node to another, and back; and (ii) the EDF scheduling algorithm.Comment: In Proceedings AMMSE 2011, arXiv:1106.596

Beyond Clotting: A Role of Platelets in CNS Repair?

This work was supported by the State Government of Salzburg, Austria, (Stifungsprofessur, and 20204-WISS/80/199-2014), through funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreements n° HEALTH-F2-2011-278850 (INMiND), n° HEALTH-F2-2011-279288 (IDEA), n° FP7-REGPOT-316120 (GlowBrain), the Austrian Science Fund FWF Special Research Program (SFB) F44 (F4413-B23) “Cell Signaling in Chronic CNS Disorders,” by the research funds from the Paracelsus Medical University PMU-FFF (Long-Term Fellowship L-12/01/001-RIV to FR and Stand Alone grant 2058).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Frontiers via http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncel.2015.00511