Towards cutting-edge European humanitarian leadership. Egmont European Policy Brief No. 67 March 2021.

Added to the already enormous challenges faced by the humanitarian system and its constituent parts (proliferation of conflict and non-state actors, climate stress, mass migration, …), the global Covid-19 pandemic coupled with repeated assaults on the basic tenets of multilateralism have brought existing systems to a breaking point, if not irrelevance. Traditional principled humanitarian positioning has fallen short of engaging with or addressing nefarious global political trends with dramatic effects. The result has been inequitable access to life saving support to those who need it most, risk transfers, and overall reduced capacity for aid agencies to meet growing challenges. A paradigm shift is needed. The imminent Communication of the European Commission on humanitarian aid is an opportunity to clarify perimeters, reaffirm with force the authority of IHL and take the measure of how much the EU can leverage support to strengthen principled humanitarian action across the world. It should set the frame to address structural tensions that require more thinking and interactions and create at EU level a space for non-institutional and informal dialogue

GC×GC-(HR)TOFMS in Cancer Research

Peer reviewe

La place de l’élevage laitier dans la bioéconomie circulaire

La place de l’élevage laitier dans la bioéconomie circulaire. Colloque Apivale - Produits résiduaires organiques : ingrédients clés de la bioéconomie circulair

Correlations for untargeted GC × GC-HRTOF-MS metabolomics of colorectal cancer.

peer reviewed[en] INTRODUCTION: Modern comprehensive instrumentations provide an unprecedented coverage of complex matrices in the form of high-dimensional, information rich data sets. OBJECTIVES: In addition to the usual biomarker research that focuses on the detection of the studied condition, we aimed to define a proper strategy to conduct a correlation analysis on an untargeted colorectal cancer case study with a data set of 102 variables corresponding to metabolites obtained from serum samples analyzed with comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC × GC-HRTOF-MS). Indeed, the strength of association existing between the metabolites contains potentially valuable information about the molecular mechanisms involved and the underlying metabolic network associated to a global perturbation, at no additional analytical effort. METHODS: Following Anscombe's quartet, we took particular attention to four main aspects. First, the presence of non-linear relationships through the comparison of parametric and non-parametric correlation coefficients: Pearson's r, Spearman's rho, Kendall's tau and Goodman-Kruskal's gamma. Second, the visual control of the detected associations through scatterplots and their associated regressions and angles. Third, the effect and handling of atypical samples and values. Fourth, the role of the precision of the data on the attribution of the ranks through the presence of ties. RESULTS: Kendall's tau was found the method of choice for the data set at hand. Its application highlighted 17 correlations significantly altered in the active state of colorectal cancer (CRC) in comparison to matched healthy controls (HC), from which 10 were specific to this state in comparison to the remission one (R-CRC) investigated on distinct patients. 15 metabolites involved in the correlations of interest, on the 25 unique ones obtained, were annotated (Metabolomics Standards Initiative level 2). CONCLUSIONS: The metabolites highlighted could be used to better understand the pathology. The systematic investigation of the methodological aspects that we expose allows to implement correlation analysis to various fields and many specific cases

Interobserver Variation Study of the Rutgeerts Score to Assess Endoscopic Recurrence after Surgery for Crohn's Disease.

BACKGROUND: After resection surgery for Crohn's disease, recurrence of endoscopic lesions at the site of the anastomosis or in the neoterminal ileum is graded according to the Rutgeerts score (RS). The goal of this study was to test the interobserver variability for RS. METHODS: Thirteen trained endoscopists evaluated the RS on 39 videotapes of patients who had undergone resection for Crohn's disease with an ileocolonic anastomosis 6 months earlier. Videotapes were randomly assigned to endoscopists through a balanced incomplete block design. Each videotape was scored independently by four endoscopists, and each endoscopist evaluated 12 videotapes, making a total of 156 videotape assessments. Reproducibility levels of the RS were assessed through unweighted kappa estimates among multiple raters. The proportion of inappropriate therapeutic initiation was estimated by randomly selecting one endoscopist for each videorecording, assuming that the majority of endoscopists correctly classified endoscopic recurrence. RESULTS: The kappa estimates were 0.43 (95% confidence interval: 0.33-0.52) for the RS on a 5-grade scale, 0.47 (0.28-0.66) for RS /= i2, and 0.64 (0.42-0.85) for RS i2. The percentages of inappropriate therapeutic initiation were 12.8% (3.8-21.9) when initiation was triggered by a RS >/= i2 and 8.3% (1.1-15.6) when initiation was triggered by a RS > i2 (p = 0.41). CONCLUSION: The reproducibility of the RS was moderate, especially when differentiating /=i2, which may lead to incorrect therapeutic decisions in >10% of patients

Challenges for Biomarker Discovery in Body Fluids Using SELDI-TOF-MS

Protein profiling using SELDI-TOF-MS has gained over the past few years an increasing interest in the field of biomarker discovery. The technology presents great potential if some parameters, such as sample handling, SELDI settings, and data analysis, are strictly controlled. Practical considerations to set up a robust and sensitive strategy for biomarker discovery are presented. This paper also reviews biological fluids generally available including a description of their peculiar properties and the preanalytical challenges inherent to sample collection and storage. Finally, some new insights for biomarker identification and validation challenges are provided