Characterization of metabolites in infiltrating gliomas using ex vivo &supl;H high-resolution magic angle spinning spectroscopy.

Gliomas are routinely graded according to histopathological criteria established by the World Health Organization. Although this classification can be used to understand some of the variance in the clinical outcome of patients, there is still substantial heterogeneity within and between lesions of the same grade. This study evaluated image-guided tissue samples acquired from a large cohort of patients presenting with either new or recurrent gliomas of grades II-IV using ex vivo proton high-resolution magic angle spinning spectroscopy. The quantification of metabolite levels revealed several discrete profiles associated with primary glioma subtypes, as well as secondary subtypes that had undergone transformation to a higher grade at the time of recurrence. Statistical modeling further demonstrated that these metabolomic profiles could be differentially classified with respect to pathological grading and inter-grade conversions. Importantly, the myo-inositol to total choline index allowed for a separation of recurrent low-grade gliomas on different pathological trajectories, the heightened ratio of phosphocholine to glycerophosphocholine uniformly characterized several forms of glioblastoma multiforme, and the onco-metabolite D-2-hydroxyglutarate was shown to help distinguish secondary from primary grade IV glioma, as well as grade II and III from grade IV glioma. These data provide evidence that metabolite levels are of interest in the assessment of both intra-grade and intra-lesional malignancy. Such information could be used to enhance the diagnostic specificity of in vivo spectroscopy and to aid in the selection of the most appropriate therapy for individual patients

Distance of Hi-GAL sources

Aims. Distances are key to determining the physical properties of sources. In the Galaxy, large (> 10 000) homogeneous samples of sources for which distance are available, covering the whole Galactic distance range, are still missing. Here we present a catalog of velocity and distance for a large sample (> 100 000) of Hi-GAL compact sources. Methods. We developed a fully automatic Python package to extract the velocity and determine the distance. To assign a velocity to a Hi-GAL compact source, the code uses all the available spectroscopic data complemented by a morphological analysis. Once the velocity is determined, if no stellar or maser parallax distance is known, the kinematic distance is calculated and the distance ambiguity (for sources located inside the Solar circle) is solved with the H I self-absorption method or from distance-extinction data. Results. Among the 150 223 compact sources of the Hi-GAL catalog, we obtained a distance for 124 069 sources for the 5σ catalog (and 128 351 sources for the 3σ catalog), where σ represents the noise level of each molecular spectrum used for the line detections made at 5σ and 3σ to produce the respective catalogs. © P. Mège et al. 2021

The European Solar Telescope

The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a project aimed at studying the magnetic connectivity of the solar atmosphere, from the deep photosphere to the upper chromosphere. Its design combines the knowledge and expertise gathered by the European solar physics community during the construction and operation of state-of-the-art solar telescopes operating in visible and near-infrared wavelengths: the Swedish 1m Solar Telescope, the German Vacuum Tower Telescope and GREGOR, the French Télescope Héliographique pour l'Étude du Magnétisme et des Instabilités Solaires, and the Dutch Open Telescope. With its 4.2 m primary mirror and an open configuration, EST will become the most powerful European ground-based facility to study the Sun in the coming decades in the visible and near-infrared bands. EST uses the most innovative technological advances: the first adaptive secondary mirror ever used in a solar telescope, a complex multi-conjugate adaptive optics with deformable mirrors that form part of the optical design in a natural way, a polarimetrically compensated telescope design that eliminates the complex temporal variation and wavelength dependence of the telescope Mueller matrix, and an instrument suite containing several (etalon-based) tunable imaging spectropolarimeters and several integral field unit spectropolarimeters. This publication summarises some fundamental science questions that can be addressed with the telescope, together with a complete description of its major subsystems

Gaia Early Data Release 3: The celestial reference frame (Gaia-CRF3)

Context. Gaia-CRF3 is the celestial reference frame for positions and proper motions in the third release of data from the Gaia mission, Gaia DR3 (and for the early third release, Gaia EDR3, which contains identical astrometric results). The reference frame is defined by the positions and proper motions at epoch 2016.0 for a specific set of extragalactic sources in the (E)DR3 catalogue. Aims. We describe the construction of Gaia-CRF3 and its properties in terms of the distributions in magnitude, colour, and astrometric quality. Methods. Compact extragalactic sources in Gaia DR3 were identified by positional cross-matching with 17 external catalogues of quasi-stellar objects (QSO) and active galactic nuclei (AGN), followed by astrometric filtering designed to remove stellar contaminants. Selecting a clean sample was favoured over including a higher number of extragalactic sources. For the final sample, the random and systematic errors in the proper motions are analysed, as well as the radio-optical offsets in position for sources in the third realisation of the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF3). Results. Gaia-CRF3 comprises about 1.6 million QSO-like sources, of which 1.2 million have five-parameter astrometric solutions in Gaia DR3 and 0.4 million have six-parameter solutions. The sources span the magnitude range G = 13-21 with a peak density at 20.6 mag, at which the typical positional uncertainty is about 1 mas. The proper motions show systematic errors on the level of 12 μas yr-1 on angular scales greater than 15 deg. For the 3142 optical counterparts of ICRF3 sources in the S/X frequency bands, the median offset from the radio positions is about 0.5 mas, but it exceeds 4 mas in either coordinate for 127 sources. We outline the future of Gaia-CRF in the next Gaia data releases. Appendices give further details on the external catalogues used, how to extract information about the Gaia-CRF3 sources, potential (Galactic) confusion sources, and the estimation of the spin and orientation of an astrometric solution

Two-year follow-up of the pharmacokinetics of immunosuppressive drugs in a neonate who underwent heart transplantation

Abstract: The pharmacokinetic properties of immunosuppressive drugs are quite different in newborns than in adults and few studies describe the pharmacokinetics of these drugs in pediatric heart transplant recipients. We report on the two-year follow up of a neonate who underwent heart transplantation for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome on day of life 9. Two different immunosuppressive regimens were used: cyclosporine, azathioprine and prednisone in the early postoperative period, followed by the routine tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil combination plus prednisone from post-transplant day 22. Our findings demonstrate marked variability in immunosuppressive pharmacokinetic profiles early post-transplant. Frequent monitoring of drug levels is required to ensure that they remain within the therapeutic range. After the first 2-3 months post-transplant, changes in immunosuppressive drug levels are less marked and correlate more with the administered dosage

Tpa-Induced Differentiation of Human Rhabdomiosarcoma Cells: Expression of the Myogenic Regulatory Factors.

RD cells (a cell line derived from a human rhabdomyosarcoma) undergo a very limited myogenic differentiation despite the fact that they express several myogenic determination genes. Since we have previously shown (Aguanno et ai., Cancer Res. 50, 3377, 1990) that the tumor promoter 12-0-tetradecanoylphorbol13-acetate (TPA) induces myogenic differentiation in these cells, in this paper we investigate the mechanism by which TPA interferes with the expression and/or function of the myogenic determination genes. Northern blot analysis revealed that RD cells express the myf3 (the human analog of MyoD) and myf4 (the human analog of myogenin) transcripts, but not myf5 or myf6 transcripts. The myf3 and the myf4 gene products are correctly translated and accumulated in the nuclei as shown by immunofluorescence analysis. The tumor promoter (TPA) does not modify the pattern of expression of the myf factors while it induces the accumulation of muscle-specific transcripts, such as -actin and fast myosin light chain I, and their corresponding proteins. On the other hand, within 1 day of treatment, TPA inhibits the expression of the Id gene, which is a negative regulator of MyoD activity. However, while the TPA-induced inhibition of Id message accumulation correlates with differentiation, cell confluence also causes a reduction in Id message accumulation, without inducing differentiation. Under our experimental conditions, overexpression of any of the myf cDNAs in RD cells does induce spontaneous differentiation but enhances the effect of TPA treatment independently from the level of the expressed message. These data suggest that differentiation of RD cells is likely to depend upon the activity of complexes containing the various members of the MyoD family, which can be regulated by proteins affecting MyoD dimerization such as Id, but also by other mechanisms induced by TPA, such as phosphorylation