Point-of-care testing for disasters: needs assessment, strategic planning, and future design.

Objective evidence-based national surveys serve as a first step in identifying suitable point-of-care device designs, effective test clusters, and environmental operating conditions. Preliminary survey results show the need for point-of-care testing (POCT) devices using test clusters that specifically detect pathogens found in disaster scenarios. Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in southeast Asia, and the current influenza pandemic (H1N1, "swine flu") vividly illustrate lack of national and global preparedness. Gap analysis of current POCT devices versus survey results reveals how POCT needs can be fulfilled. Future thinking will help avoid the worst consequences of disasters on the horizon, such as extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis and pandemic influenzas. A global effort must be made to improve POC technologies to rapidly diagnose and treat patients to improve triaging, on-site decision making, and, ultimately, economic and medical outcomes

Absence of Host Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor 1 Prevents Cancer Invasion and Vascularization

Acquisition of invasive/metastatic potential through protease expression is an essential event in tumor progression. High levels of components of the plasminogen activation system, including urokinase, but paradoxically also its inhibitor, plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI1), have been correlated with a poor prognosis for some cancers. We report here that deficient PAI1 expression in host mice prevented local invasion and tumor vascularization of transplanted malignant keratinocytes. When this PAI1 deficiency was circumvented by intravenous injection of a replication-defective adenoviral vector expressing human PAI1, invasion and associated angiogenesis were restored. This experimental evidence demonstrates that host-produced PAI is essential for cancer cell invasion and angiogenesis

Multi-program platform for enhanced modelling and techno-economic assessment of CO2 to bio-materials conversion by cyanobacteria

International audienceCarbon mitigation has become a prior concern for industry, since the global policies progressively head to an imposition on greenhouse gases emissions reduction. Thenceforth, technology is developing in the sake of offering technical and economic answers, able to implement an autonomous business. Biotechnology offers a multilevel added-value and readiness carbon based outlets. Nevertheless, state of art shows numerous engineering, energetic integration and economic assessment constrains limiting deployability.The aim of this work is to present the progress on multi-program platforms applied to the conversion of CO2 contained in exhaust gases from incinerators and its conversion into bio-materials. SYCTOM facilities of Saint-Ouen and Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, are the reference facilities. This work proposes a systemic understanding of photobioreactors and down-stream processes by a multi-physics and multi-system process.Modelling work towards process optimization consists on building a computer super-structure as follows:- C++ and VBA codes pilots data exchange between programs,- Aspen Tech (Plus and HYSYS) are considered for down-stream process simulation (unitary operations),- COMSOL and in house Matlab/Modelica perform the modelling CO2 mass transfer from flue gases to the liquid phase with cyanobacteria, growth with complex kinetics that include water saturation level, multi-phase flow control, light penetration, and chemicals availability,- Matlab, COMSOL and other CFD tools enable novel technologies of biomass harvesting to be coded and considered in the full process,- Matlab and Modelica tools include optimization routines based on genetic algorithms to improve the performance of the full CO2 to bio-material processes.This work highlighted the potential application of combining different modelling programs and opened new perspectives for further highly complex processes and system requiring such engineering development