Physical and Cultural Activity for Life Skills Development - Comparative Report

Life skills are defined as psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. Life skills can be fostered and are fundamental for a person’s progression in life, both personal and professional. Some of those skills are creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, effective communication and collaboration skills, cultivation of responsibility, development of healthy relationships and decision- making. These skills can be acquired through life experience but can be further developed through constant training and engagement. Life skills are particularly important for adolescents and young people. Adolescents and young people leave behind the dependence and the safety that childhood is associated with and enter adulthood with all its opportunities and freedoms but also with all its insecurities and anxieties. Life skills can help adolescents and young people strengthen their self-confidence, interpersonal skills, learn how to use them in assessing knowledge, use resources for their benefit, and make the proper decisions in order to promote their wellbeing2. This way life skills can help young people anticipate with all the difficulties that might occur in adulthood and be involved in the society. In other words, life skills can equip young people with all the necessary qualities in order to become resilient individuals and active citizens. The University of Gloucestershire (UK), Play Gloucestershire (UK), Rogers Személyközpontú Oktatásért Alapítvány (HU), KENTRO MERIMNAS OIKOGENEIAS KAI PAIDIOU(GR), CESIE (IT) and CLAVIS sprog & competence (DK) are implementing the 2 year Erasmus+ project entitled: PAClife – Physical and Cultural Activity for Life Skills Development (2020-2021). The project aims to support disadvantaged and migrant young people in building resilience through acquiring and developing life skills and key competences by participating in a programme of physical and cultural activity. This report presents the findings of a desk-based comparison of domestic projects that will inform the future development of the PAClife training tool to low-skilled/low qualified migrant and disadvantaged young people

Parkour as a donor sport for athletic development in youth team sports: insights through an ecological dynamics lens

Analyses of talent development in sport have identified that skill can be enhanced through early and continued involvement in donor sports which share affordances (opportunities for action) with a performer's main target sport. Aligning key ideas of the Athletic Skills Model and ecological dynamics theory, we propose how the sport of parkour could provide a representative and adaptive platform for developing athletic skill (e.g. coordination, timing, balance, agility, spatial awareness and muscular strength). We discuss how youth sport development programmes could be (re) designed to include parkour-style activities, in order to develop general athletic skills in affordance-rich environments. It is proposed that team sports development programmes could particularly benefit from parkour-style training since it is exploratory and adaptive nature shapes utilisation of affordances for innovative and autonomous performance by athletes. Early introduction to varied, relevant activities for development of athleticism and skill, in a diversified training programme, would provide impetus for a fundamental shift away from the early specialisation approach favoured by traditional theories of skill acquisition and expertise in sport

The hypoxia marker CAIX is prognostic in the UK phase III VorteX-Biobank cohort: an important resource for translational research in soft tissue sarcoma

BACKGROUND: Despite high metastasis rates, adjuvant/neoadjuvant systemic therapy for localised soft tissue sarcoma (STS) is not used routinely. Progress requires tailoring therapy to features of tumour biology, which need exploration in well-documented cohorts. Hypoxia has been linked to metastasis in STS and is targetable. This study evaluated hypoxia prognostic markers in the phase III adjuvant radiotherapy VorteX trial. METHODS: Formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tumour biopsies, fresh tumour/normal tissue and blood were collected before radiotherapy. Immunohistochemistry for HIF-1α, CAIX and GLUT1 was performed on tissue microarrays and assessed by two scorers (one pathologist). Prognostic analysis of disease-free survival (DFS) used Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression. RESULTS: Biobank and outcome data were available for 203 out of 216 randomised patients. High CAIX expression was associated with worse DFS (hazard ratio 2.28, 95% confidence interval: 1.44-3.59, P<0.001). Hypoxia-inducible factor-1α and GLUT1 were not prognostic. Carbonic anhydrase IX remained prognostic in multivariable analysis. CONCLUSIONS: The VorteX-Biobank contains tissue with linked outcome data and is an important resource for research. This study confirms hypoxia is linked to poor prognosis in STS and suggests that CAIX may be the best known marker. However, overlap between single marker positivity was poor and future work will develop an STS hypoxia gene signature to account for tumour heterogeneity

The application of methylation specific electrophoresis (MSE) to DNA methylation analysis of the 5' CpG island of mucin in cancer cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Methylation of CpG sites in genomic DNA plays an important role in gene regulation and especially in gene silencing. We have reported mechanisms of epigenetic regulation for expression of mucins, which are markers of malignancy potential and early detection of human neoplasms. Epigenetic changes in promoter regions appear to be the first step in expression of mucins. Thus, detection of promoter methylation status is important for early diagnosis of cancer, monitoring of tumor behavior, and evaluating the response of tumors to targeted therapy. However, conventional analytical methods for DNA methylation require a large amount of DNA and have low sensitivity.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Here, we report a modified version of the bisulfite-DGGE (denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis) using a nested PCR approach. We designated this method as methylation specific electrophoresis (MSE). The MSE method is comprised of the following steps: (a) bisulfite treatment of genomic DNA, (b) amplification of the target DNA by a nested PCR approach and (c) applying to DGGE. To examine whether the MSE method is able to analyze DNA methylation of mucin genes in various samples, we apply it to DNA obtained from state cell lines, ethanol-fixed colonic crypts and human pancreatic juices.</p> <p>Result</p> <p>The MSE method greatly decreases the amount of input DNA. The lower detection limit for distinguishing different methylation status is < 0.1% and the detectable minimum amount of DNA is 20 pg, which can be obtained from only a few cells. We also show that MSE can be used for analysis of challenging samples such as human isolated colonic crypts or human pancreatic juices, from which only a small amount of DNA can be extracted.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The MSE method can provide a qualitative information of methylated sequence profile. The MSE method allows sensitive and specific analysis of the DNA methylation pattern of almost any block of multiple CpG sites. The MSE method can be applied to analysis of DNA methylation status in many different clinical samples, and this may facilitate identification of new risk markers.</p

Physical and Cultural Activity for Life Skills Development - Comparative Report

Life skills are defined as psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. Life skills can be fostered and are fundamental for a person’s progression in life, both personal and professional. Some of those skills are creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, effective communication and collaboration skills, cultivation of responsibility, development of healthy relationships and decision- making. These skills can be acquired through life experience but can be further developed through constant training and engagement. Life skills are particularly important for adolescents and young people. Adolescents and young people leave behind the dependence and the safety that childhood is associated with and enter adulthood with all its opportunities and freedoms but also with all its insecurities and anxieties. Life skills can help adolescents and young people strengthen their self-confidence, interpersonal skills, learn how to use them in assessing knowledge, use resources for their benefit, and make the proper decisions in order to promote their wellbeing2. This way life skills can help young people anticipate with all the difficulties that might occur in adulthood and be involved in the society. In other words, life skills can equip young people with all the necessary qualities in order to become resilient individuals and active citizens. The University of Gloucestershire (UK), Play Gloucestershire (UK), Rogers Személyközpontú Oktatásért Alapítvány (HU), KENTRO MERIMNAS OIKOGENEIAS KAI PAIDIOU(GR), CESIE (IT) and CLAVIS sprog & competence (DK) are implementing the 2 year Erasmus+ project entitled: PAClife – Physical and Cultural Activity for Life Skills Development (2020-2021). The project aims to support disadvantaged and migrant young people in building resilience through acquiring and developing life skills and key competences by participating in a programme of physical and cultural activity. This report presents the findings of a desk-based comparison of domestic projects that will inform the future development of the PAClife training tool to low-skilled/low qualified migrant and disadvantaged young people

Pten dependence distinguishes haematopoietic stem cells from leukaemia-initiating cells

Recent advances have highlighted extensive phenotypic and functional similarities between normal stem cells and cancer stem cells. This raises the question of whether disease therapies can be developed that eliminate cancer stem cells without eliminating normal stem cells. Here we address this issue by conditionally deleting the Pten tumour suppressor gene in adult haematopoietic cells. This led to myeloproliferative disease within days and transplantable leukaemias within weeks. Pten deletion also promoted haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) proliferation. However, this led to HSC depletion via a cell-autonomous mechanism, preventing these cells from stably reconstituting irradiated mice. In contrast to leukaemia-initiating cells, HSCs were therefore unable to maintain themselves without Pten. These effects were mostly mediated by mTOR as they were inhibited by rapamycin. Rapamycin not only depleted leukaemia-initiating cells but also restored normal HSC function. Mechanistic differences between normal stem cells and cancer stem cells can thus be targeted to deplete cancer stem cells without damaging normal stem cells.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62514/1/nature04703.pd

The context and potential of epigenetics in oncology

Cancer has long been known to be a disease caused by alterations in the genetic blueprint of cells. In the past decade it has become evident that epigenetic processes have a function, at least equally important, in neoplasia. Epigenetics describes the mechanisms that result in heritable alterations in gene expression profiles without an accompanying change in DNA sequence. Genetics and epigenetics intricately interact in the pathogenesis of cancer (Esteller, 2007). In this review, we paint a broad picture of current understanding of epigenetic changes in cancer cells and reflect on the immense clinical potential of emerging knowledge of epigenetics in the diagnosis, prognostic assessment, treatment, and screening of cancer

Aberrant methylation of the Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) gene promoter is associated with the inflammatory breast cancer phenotype

Aberrant methylation of the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene promoter occurs in about 40% of breast tumours and has been correlated with reduced APC protein levels. To what extent epigenetic alterations of the APC gene may differ according to specific breast cancer phenotypes, remains to be elucidated. Our aim was to explore the role of APC methylation in the inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) phenotype. The status of APC gene promoter hypermethylation was investigated in DNA from normal breast tissues, IBC and non-IBC by both conventional and real-time quantitative methylation-specific PCR (MSP). APC methylation levels were compared with APC mRNA and protein levels. Hypermethylation of the APC gene promoter was present in 71% of IBC samples (n=21) and 43% of non-IBC samples (n=30) by conventional MSP (P=0.047). The APC gene also showed an increased frequency of high methylation levels in IBC (in 74% of cases, n=19) vs non-IBC (in 46% of cases, n=35) using a qMSP assay (P=0.048). We observed no significant association between APC methylation levels by qMSP and APC mRNA or protein expression levels. In conclusion, for the first time, we report the association of aberrant methylation of the APC gene promoter with the IBC phenotype, which might be of biological and clinical importance