Processing oblique aerial photographs in Flanders: the Havik Project at the Ghent University. A contribution to archaeological resource management

A contribution to archaeological resource management. Ghent University has organised an archaeological aerial survey of both provinces of East- and West-Flanders since the beginning of the 1980s. As a result of these activities, some 50,000 photographs have been captured. They reveal thousands of archaeological structures, from the Neolithic through to the most recent periods. Since 1997, financial support has been received from the Flemish Community aimed at the realisation of a GIS based database (Access 97 relational database - Arcview 3.1) and the digitalisation of some 50% of the photographs. As a result, it was possible to locate all 50,000 images and connect them with geographical information offered by the support centre GIS Flanders. It is expected in the near future that this information will be available for SMR-purposes and archaeological heritage management. There are also several scientific outputs: one of them is the study of Bronze Age barrows

Safe targeting of T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia by pathology-specific NOTCH inhibition

Given the high frequency of activating NOTCH1 mutations in T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), inhibition of the γ-secretase complex remains an attractive target to prevent ligand-independent release of the cytoplasmic tail and oncogenic NOTCH1 signaling. However, four different γ-secretase complexes exist, and available inhibitors block all complexes equally. As a result, these cause severe “on-target” gastrointestinal tract, skin, and thymus toxicity, limiting their therapeutic application. Here, we demonstrate that genetic deletion or pharmacologic inhibition of the presenilin-1 (PSEN1) subclass of γ-secretase complexes is highly effective in decreasing leukemia while avoiding dose-limiting toxicities. Clinically, T-ALL samples were found to selectively express only PSEN1-containing γ-secretase complexes. The conditional knockout of Psen1 in developing T cells attenuated the development of a mutant NOTCH1-driven leukemia in mice in vivo but did not abrogate normal T cell development. Treatment of T-ALL cell lines with the selective PSEN1 inhibitor MRK-560 effectively decreased mutant NOTCH1 processing and led to cell cycle arrest. These observations were extended to T-ALL patient-derived xenografts in vivo, demonstrating that MRK-560 treatment decreases leukemia burden and increased overall survival without any associated gut toxicity. Therefore, PSEN1-selective compounds provide a potential therapeutic strategy for safe and effective targeting of T-ALL and possibly also for other diseases in which NOTCH signaling plays a role

Flemish aerial archaeology in the last 20 years: past and future perspectives

Aerial prospection in Belgium started some 40 years ago. Charles Leva was the pioneering instrument of this technique in our country. The main accent of his research, however, was situated in the Wallonian part of Belgium and the Roman period [1], [2], [3], [4]. During the last two decades, new prospections were set up, first in the western part of Flanders (University of Ghent), later in the northwestern part (University of Leuven). The main purpose of the aerial research at the University of Ghent is prospection (discovery of new sites). At the University of Leuven, there is a larger focus on known sites (from literature, old finds)