Polygon Interface Analysis: A Concept For Analyzing Production Site Interactions In Urban Areas

Urban production bears the potential to not only reduce the negative impacts of production processes and global supply chains but also to generate a positive contribution to society and the environment when integrated symbiotically into the urban context. However, especially in urban areas, production is often associated with negative impacts on the surrounding environment. Therefore, the interactions between producing companies and their environment need to be considered and analysed. Hence, we derive a conceptual model that allows the exploitation of the potentials of urban locations for production by focusing on the interfaces between urban production and the urban environment. For this purpose, the Polygon Interface Analysis [P.I.A.] is introduced. It makes use of the principle of a Rubik's Cube or a Caesar Cipher by altering layers for matchmaking and integrates the business, city and interface perspective into an applicable analysis approach. To conceptualize this model existing approaches from the fields of factory planning and strategy development are examined in regard to their suitability for applying those for a location analysis of urban factories. Based on this, a suggestion for the application of the P.I.A. is given. The application of the model allows for the improvement of manufacturing integration in urban environments by supporting factory planning decisions, production system design, as well as location and site analysis for urban production

Role of cultivation media in the development of yeast strains for large scale industrial use

The composition of cultivation media in relation to strain development for industrial application is reviewed. Heterologous protein production and pentose utilization by Saccharomyces cerevisiae are used to illustrate the influence of media composition at different stages of strain construction and strain development. The effects of complex, defined and industrial media are compared. Auxotrophic strains and strain stability are discussed. Media for heterologous protein production and for bulk bio-commodity production are summarized

Identification of storage conditions stabilizing extracellular vesicles pre

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) play a key role in many physiological and pathophysiological processes and hold great potential for therapeutic and diagnostic use. Despite significant advances within the last decade, the key issue of EV storage stability remains unresolved and under investigated. Here, we aimed to identify storage conditions stabilizing EVs and comprehensively compared the impact of various storage buffer formulations at different temperatures on EVs derived from different cellular sources for up to 2 years. EV features including concentration, diameter, surface protein profile and nucleic acid contents were assessed by complementary methods, and engineered EVs containing fluorophores or functionalized surface proteins were utilized to compare cellular uptake and ligand binding. We show that storing EVs in PBS over time leads to drastically reduced recovery particularly for pure EV samples at all temperatures tested, starting already within days. We further report that using PBS as diluent was found to result in severely reduced EV recovery rates already within minutes. Several of the tested new buffer conditions largely prevented the observed effects, the lead candidate being PBS supplemented with human albumin and trehalose (PBS-HAT). We report that PBS-HAT buffer facilitates clearly improved short-term and long-term EV preservation for samples stored at -80°C, stability throughout several freeze-thaw cycles, and drastically improved EV recovery when using a diluent for EV samples for downstream applications

Neutrophils in cancer: neutral no more

Neutrophils are indispensable antagonists of microbial infection and facilitators of wound healing. In the cancer setting, a newfound appreciation for neutrophils has come into view. The traditionally held belief that neutrophils are inert bystanders is being challenged by the recent literature. Emerging evidence indicates that tumours manipulate neutrophils, sometimes early in their differentiation process, to create diverse phenotypic and functional polarization states able to alter tumour behaviour. In this Review, we discuss the involvement of neutrophils in cancer initiation and progression, and their potential as clinical biomarkers and therapeutic targets

Analysis in the Prospective Lynch Syndrome Database identifies sarcoma as part of the Lynch syndrome tumor spectrum

Non peer reviewe

Cancer risks by gene, age, and gender in 6350 carriers of pathogenic mismatch repair variants: findings from the Prospective Lynch Syndrome Database

*Shared first authorship (Dominguez-V M, Sampson J, Seppälä T)PURPOSE: Pathogenic variants affecting MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, and PMS2 cause Lynch syndrome and result in different but imprecisely known cancer risks. This study aimed to provide age and organ-specific cancer risks according to gene and gender and to determine survival after cancer. METHODS: We conducted an international, multicenter prospective observational study using independent test and validation cohorts of carriers of class 4 or class 5 variants. After validation the cohorts were merged providing 6350 participants and 51,646 follow-up years. RESULTS: There were 1808 prospectively observed cancers. Pathogenic MLH1 and MSH2 variants caused high penetrance dominant cancer syndromes sharing similar colorectal, endometrial, and ovarian cancer risks, but older MSH2 carriers had higher risk of cancers of the upper urinary tract, upper gastrointestinal tract, brain, and particularly prostate. Pathogenic MSH6 variants caused a sex-limited trait with high endometrial cancer risk but only modestly increased colorectal cancer risk in both genders. We did not demonstrate a significantly increased cancer risk in carriers of pathogenic PMS2 variants. Ten-year crude survival was over 80% following colon, endometrial, or ovarian cancer. CONCLUSION: Management guidelines for Lynch syndrome may require revision in light of these different gene and gender-specific risks and the good prognosis for the most commonly associated cancers.Peer reviewe

Correction:Cancer risks by gene, age, and gender in 6350 carriers of pathogenic mismatch repair variants: findings from the Prospective Lynch Syndrome Database

The original version of this Article did not contain details of Dutch Cancer Society (DCS) funding (grant number UL 2017-8223) in the Acknowledgements section. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article