The effect of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Artemisia herba alba on human laryngeal carcinoma and murine mammary adenocarcinoma cell lines

The present study was carried out to evaluate the cytological effects of aqueous (AE) and ethanolic (EE) extracts of Artemisia herba alba on human laryngeal carcinoma (Hep-2) cell line and murine mammary adenocarcinoma (AMN-3) cell line in vitro. The cytological study performed simultaneously with cell growth assay. The results of study revealed concentration-dependent cytological changes like patchy growth inhibition, loss of confluent feature and cellular degeneration after exposure to the lowest concentrations (156.25 and 312.5 μg/ml). The early findings of cytolysis were seen after exposure to 625 μg/ml. While the highest concentrations (1250, 2500 and 5000 μg/ml) caused severe growth inhibition with marked cytolytic features including loss of cellular outlines, large numbers of dead cells and high content of cellular debris. In conclusion, the results of this study revealed the high cytological effect of Artemisia herba alba extracts on Hep-2 and AMN-3 cell lines in vitro

Learning and social cohesion in schools in Jordan

This is the final report of a multi-phased, eighteen-month-long research project assessing how educational interventions in Jordan have enabled access to quality education for Syrian and Jordanian students. The final report examines social cohesion in Ministry of Education (MoE) formal schools1 and non-formal settings in Jordan

Detection of RAF fusion transcripts in FFPE samples of Medullablastoma and Ependymom in Iraqi children with RT-RQPCR assays

Medulloblastomas and ependymomas are the most common malignant brain tumors in children. However genetic abnormalities associated with their development and prognosis remain unclear. Recently two gene fusions, KIAA1549–BRAF and SRGAP3–RAF1 have been detected in a number of brain tumours. We report here our development and validation of RT-RQPCR assays to detect various isoforms of these two fusion genes in formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues of medulloblastoma and ependymoma. We examined these fusion genes in 44 paediatric brain tumours, 33 medulloblastomas and 11 ependymomas. We detected both fusion transcripts in 8/33, 5/33 SRGAP3 ex10/RAF1 ex10, and 3/33 KIAA1549 ex16/BRAF ex9, meduloblastomas but none in the 11 ependymomas examined. This investigation provided evidence to the value of RT-RQPCR assays for the detection of these fusion genes in large-scale studies on FFPE tissues. The study also reports the first detection of RAF fusion genes in meduloblstomas

Robust H-infinity filtering for 2-D systems with intermittent measurements

This paper is concerned with the problem of robust H∞ filtering for uncertain two-dimensional (2-D) systems with intermittent measurements. The parameter uncertainty is assumed to be of polytopic type, and the measurements transmission is assumed to be imperfect, which is modeled by a stochastic variable satisfying the Bernoulli random binary distribution. Our attention is focused on the design of an H∞ filter such that the filtering error system is stochastically stable and preserves a guaranteed H∞ performance. This problem is solved in the parameter-dependent framework, which is much less conservative than the quadratic approach. By introducing some slack matrix variables, the coupling between the positive definite matrices and the system matrices is eliminated, which greatly facilitates the filter design procedure. The corresponding results are established in terms of linear matrix inequalities, which can be easily tested by using standard numerical software. An example is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed approac

Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy For Multiple Myeloma: A Consensus Statement From The European Myeloma Network

Adoptive cellular therapy using chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CART) therapy is currently being evaluated in patients with relapsed / refractory multiple myeloma (MM). The majority of CAR-T cell programs now being tested in clinical trials are targeting B-cell maturation antigen. Several recent phase I / II trials show promising preliminary results in patients with MM progressing on proteasome inhibitors, immunomodulatory drugs and monoclonal antibodies targeting CD38. CAR-T cell therapy is a potentially life-threatening strategy that can only be administered in experienced centers. For the moment, CAR-T cell therapy for MM is still experimental, but once this strategy has been approved in relapsed/refractory MM, it will become one of the most important indications for this therapy in Europe and world-wide. This manuscript proposes practical considerations for the use of CAR-T cell therapy in MM, and discusses several important issues for its future development