Dexterous Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation by Pivoting

International audienc

Production and N-glycan engineering of Varlilumab in Nicotiana benthamiana

N-glycan engineering has dramatically evolved for the development and quality control of recombinant antibodies. Fc region of IgG contains two N-glycans whose galactose terminals on Fc-glycan have been shown to increase the stability of CH2 domain and improve effector functions. Nicotiana benthamiana has become one of the most attractive production systems for therapeutic antibodies. In this study, Varlilumab, a CD27-targeting monoclonal antibody, was transiently produced in fresh leaves of soil-grown and hydroponic-grown N. benthamiana, resulted in the yield of 174 and 618 µg/gram, respectively. However, the IgG produced in wild-type N. benthamiana lacked the terminal galactose residues in its N-glycan. Therefore, N-glycan engineering was applied to fine-tune recombinant antibodies produced in plant platforms. We further co-expressed IgG together with murine β1,4-galactosyltransferase (β1,4-GALT) to modify plant N-glycan with β1,4-linked Gal residue(s) and Arabidopsis thaliana β1,3-galactosylatransferase (β1,3-GALT) to improve galactosylation. The co-expression of IgG with each of GALTs successfully resulted in modification of N-glycan structures on the plant-produced IgG. Notably, IgG co-expressed with murine β1,4-GALT in soil-grown N. benthamiana had 42.5% of N-glycans variants having galactose (Gal) residues at the non-reducing terminus and 55.3% of that in hydroponic-grown N. benthamiana plants. Concomitantly, N-glycan profile analysis of IgG co-expressed with β1,3-GALT demonstrated that there was an increased efficiency of galactosylation and an enhancement in the formation of Lewis a structure in plant-derived antibodies. Taken together, our findings show that the first plant-derived Varlilumab was successfully produced with biantennary β1,4-galactosylated N-glycan structures.Nguyen K.D., Kajiura H., Kamiya R., et al. Production and N-glycan engineering of Varlilumab in Nicotiana benthamiana. Frontiers in Plant Science 14, 1215580 (2023); https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1215580

Mortality and life expectancy of Yokkaichi Asthma patients, Japan: Late effects of air pollution in 1960–70s

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchial asthma began increasing in early 1960s in the population of Yokkaichi-city (Mie Prefecture, Japan). The cause of the disease was sulfur oxide air pollution, and it is known as Yokkaichi Asthma. The pollution markedly decreased by the end of 1970s; no new cases have been reported since 1988. This study aimed at examining the late effects of air pollution on the health of Yokkaichi Asthma patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Mortality rate and life expectancy of patients, registered between 1965 and 1988, were investigated from 1975 through 2000.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Mortality rates for COPD and asthma in patients from Yokkaichi-city were significantly higher than in the whole population of Mie Prefecture. For all ages (except for males between 80 and 84 years in 1985), the life expectancy of both males and females were significantly reduced in patients from Yokkaichi-city as compared with the whole population of Mie Prefecture. The potential gains in life expectancy excluding the mortality for respiratory diseases including COPD and asthma were larger for all ages in patients from Yokkaichi-city.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Mortality and life expectancy were adversely affected in patients from Yokkaichi-city, despite the fact that the air pollution problem has been already solved.</p

Efficient reaching motion planning and execution for exploration by humanoid robots

Abstract—This paper presents a reaching motion planning and execution framework tailored for exploration missions by human-operated humanoid robots in hazardous environments such as nuclear plants. This framework offers low-level but practical autonomy that allows the robot to plan and execute simple tasks, such as reaching a target object, within a rea-sonable amount of time. The human operator benefits from the efficiency of the framework to maneuver the robot without waiting for the planning results for minutes. The efficiency improvement is achieved in the following two phases. In the first phase, a reaching motion is planned quickly through approximation of mass distribution and kinematic structure to apply analytical solutions of inverse kinematics. Supposing that the robot is working in environments not completely known, the proposed planner can use measured voxel maps. In the second phase, the planned path is executed while compensating the approximation error in real time without violating other constraints. We confirm through simulations that a reaching motion for the HRP-2 humanoid with 30 DOFs in a constrained environment with pipes is planned in around one second. The simulation results also validate the efficiency of execution with real-time error compensation. I