Blood Banking in Living Droplets

Blood banking has a broad public health impact influencing millions of lives daily. It could potentially benefit from emerging biopreservation technologies. However, although vitrification has shown advantages over traditional cryopreservation techniques, it has not been incorporated into transfusion medicine mainly due to throughput challenges. Here, we present a scalable method that can vitrify red blood cells in microdroplets. This approach enables the vitrification of large volumes of blood in a short amount of time, and makes it a viable and scalable biotechnology tool for blood cryopreservation.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH R21 EB007707)Wallace H. Coulter FoundationUnited States. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (Acquisition Activity Cooperative Agreement RO1 A1081534)Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative TechnologyUnited States. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (Acquisition Activity Cooperative Agreement R21 AI087107)United States. Army. Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Cente

Novel CTCF binding at a site in exon1A of BCL6 is associated with active histone marks and a transcriptionally active locus

BCL6 is a zinc-finger transcriptional repressor, which is highly expressed in germinal centre B-cells and is essential for germinal centre formation and T-dependent antibody responses. Constitutive BCL6 expression is sufficient to produce lymphomas in mice. Deregulated expression of BCL6 due to chromosomal rearrangements, mutations of a negative autoregulatory site in the BCL6 promoter region and aberrant post-translational modifications have been detected in a number of human lymphomas. Tight lineage and temporal regulation of BCL6 is, therefore, required for normal immunity, and abnormal regulation occurs in lymphomas. CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) is a multi-functional chromatin regulator, which has recently been shown to bind in a methylation-sensitive manner to sites within the BCL6 first intron. We demonstrate a novel CTCF-binding site in BCL6 exon1A within a potential CpG island, which is unmethylated both in cell lines and in primary lymphoma samples. CTCF binding, which was found in BCL6-expressing cell lines, correlated with the presence of histone variant H2A.Z and active histone marks, suggesting that CTCF induces chromatin modification at a transcriptionally active BCL6 locus. CTCF binding to exon1A was required to maintain BCL6 expression in germinal centre cells by avoiding BCL6-negative autoregulation. Silencing of CTCF in BCL6-expressing cells reduced BCL6 mRNA and protein expression, which is sufficient to induce B-cell terminal differentiation toward plasma cells. Moreover, lack of CTCF binding to exon1A shifts the BCL6 local chromatin from an active to a repressive state. This work demonstrates that, in contexts in which BCL6 is expressed, CTCF binding to BCL6 exon1A associates with epigenetic modifications indicative of transcriptionally open chromatin

Runx1 Loss Minimally Impacts Long-Term Hematopoietic Stem Cells

RUNX1 encodes a DNA binding subunit of the core-binding transcription factors and is frequently mutated in acute leukemia, therapy-related leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, and chronic myelomonocytic leukemia. Mutations in RUNX1 are thought to confer upon hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) a pre-leukemic state, but the fundamental properties of Runx1 deficient pre-leukemic HSCs are not well defined. Here we show that Runx1 deficiency decreases both apoptosis and proliferation, but only minimally impacts the frequency of long term repopulating HSCs (LT-HSCs). It has been variously reported that Runx1 loss increases LT-HSC numbers, decreases LT-HSC numbers, or causes age-related HSC exhaustion. We attempt to resolve these discrepancies by showing that Runx1 deficiency alters the expression of several key HSC markers, and that the number of functional LT-HSCs varies depending on the criteria used to score them. Finally, we identify genes and pathways, including the cell cycle and p53 pathways that are dysregulated in Runx1 deficient HSCs

Echocardiography practice, training and accreditation in the intensive care: document for the World Interactive Network Focused on Critical Ultrasound (WINFOCUS)

Echocardiography is increasingly used in the management of the critically ill patient as a non-invasive diagnostic and monitoring tool. Whilst in few countries specialized national training schemes for intensive care unit (ICU) echocardiography have been developed, specific guidelines for ICU physicians wishing to incorporate echocardiography into their clinical practice are lacking. Further, existing echocardiography accreditation does not reflect the requirements of the ICU practitioner. The WINFOCUS (World Interactive Network Focused On Critical UltraSound) ECHO-ICU Group drew up a document aimed at providing guidance to individual physicians, trainers and the relevant societies of the requirements for the development of skills in echocardiography in the ICU setting. The document is based on recommendations published by the Royal College of Radiologists, British Society of Echocardiography, European Association of Echocardiography and American Society of Echocardiography, together with international input from established practitioners of ICU echocardiography. The recommendations contained in this document are concerned with theoretical basis of ultrasonography, the practical aspects of building an ICU-based echocardiography service as well as the key components of standard adult TTE and TEE studies to be performed on the ICU. Specific issues regarding echocardiography in different ICU clinical scenarios are then described

Hierarchical ordering of nests in a joint mode and destination choice model

Discrete choice models, Mode choice, Destination choice, Demand, Elasticity, Hierarchical nesting, Integrated models,