Improvement plan to reduce the operating costs of an agro-industrial milling company [Plan de mejora para reducir los costos operativos de una empresa agroindustrial molinera]

This study was performed in an agro-industrial milling company with the aim of reducing operative costs over the production and manteinance areas. The company's data was obtained through an interview and documentary analysis. Initial diagnosis was made using the following methods: SWOT analysis, Porter's five forces, PESTLE analysis, IFE and EFE Matrix, Ishikawa diagram and Pareto chart. An improvement plan was designed including tools related to Production Management and Manteinance Management: Demand Forecasting, MRP, Preventing Manteinance Plan, Transport network optimization, SRM and Process Standarizing. The improvement plan was simulated in ProModel 2016 software, using projected production data from the development of the proposed tools. Results obtained were: removal of rate of unscheduled plant shutdown, 14% decreased of the production rate not achieved by the machine "Table Paddy" and 9% decreased of the rate of unused capacity; obtaining 54.65% total reduction of the operating costs analyzed. The profitability of the improvement plan was demonstrated with a NPV of S/ 87,052.97 and an IRR of 69%.El presente estudio se desarrolló en una empresa agroindustrial molinera con el objetivo de reducir los costos operativos en las áreas de producción y mantenimiento. Los datos de la empresa se obtuvieron a través de la entrevista y el análisis documental. Se realizó el diagnóstico inicial mediante las metodologías: Análisis FODA, 5 Fuerzas de Porter, Análisis PESTEL, Matrices EFE-EFI, Diagrama de Ishikawa y Diagrama de Pareto. Se diseñó el plan de mejora incluyendo las herramientas relacionadas a la Gestión de la producción y Gestión del mantenimiento: Pronóstico de la demanda, MRP, Plan de Mantenimiento Preventivo, Optimización de redes de transporte, SRM y Estandarización de Procesos. Se simuló el plan de mejora en el software ProModel 2016, usando datos de producción proyectados derivados del desarrollo de las herramientas propuestas. Los resultados obtenidos fueron: eliminación de la tasa de horas de parada de planta no programadas, disminución en 14% y 9% de la tasa de producción no alcanzada por la máquina “Mesa Paddy” y de la tasa de capacidad no utilizada respectivamente; obteniendo una reducción total del 54.65% de los costos operativos analizados. Se demostró la rentabilidad del plan de mejora con un VAN de S/87,052.97 y una TIR de 69%

Chilean Gastric Cancer Task Force: a study protocol to obtain a clinical and molecular classification of a cohort of gastric cancer patients

Gastric cancer (GC) is the world’s second-leading cause of neoplastic mortality. Genetic alterations, response to treatments, and mortality rates are highly heterogeneous across different regions. Within Latin America, GC is the leading cause of cancer death in Chile, affecting 17.6 per 100,000 people and causing >3000 deaths/y. Clinical outcomes and response to “one size fits all” therapies are highly heterogeneous and thus a better stratification of patients may aid cancer treatment and response. The Gastric Cancer Task Force is a Chilean collaborative, noninterventional study that seeks to stratify gastric adenocarcinomas using clinical outcomes and genomic, epigenomic, and protein alterations in a cohort of 200 patients. Tumor samples from the Pathology Department and the Cancer Center at UC-Christus healthcare network, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile will be analyzed using a panel of 143 known cancer genes (Oncomine Comprehensive Assay) at the Center of Excellence in Precision Medicine in Santiago, Chile. In addition, promoter methylation for selected genes will be performed along with tissue microarray for clinically relevant proteins (e.g., PD-L1, Erb-2, VEGFR2, among others) and Helicobacter pylori and Epstein–Barr virus status. Obtained data will be correlated to 120 clinical parameters retrieve from medical records, including general patient information, cancer history, laboratory studies, comorbidity index, chemotherapy, targeted therapies, efficacy, and follow-up. The development of a clinically meaningful classification that encompasses comprehensive clinical and molecular parameters may improve patient treatment, predict clinical outcomes, aid patient selection/stratification for clinical trials and may offer insights into future preventive and/or therapeutic strategies in patients from Latin America region. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03158571, Registered on May 18, 2017

High proportion of potential candidates for immunotherapy in a Chilean cohort of gastric cancer patients: results of the FORCE1 study

Gastric cancer (GC) is a heterogeneous disease. This heterogeneity applies not only to morphological and phenotypic features but also to geographical variations in incidence and mortality rates. As Chile has one of the highest mortality rates within South America, we sought to define a molecular profile of Chilean GCs (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03158571/(FORCE1)). Solid tumor samples and clinical data were obtained from 224 patients, with subsets analyzed by tissue microarray (TMA; n = 90) and next generation sequencing (NGS; n = 101). Most demographic and clinical data were in line with previous reports. TMA data indicated that 60% of patients displayed potentially actionable alterations. Furthermore, 20.5% were categorized as having a high tumor mutational burden, and 13% possessed micro-satellite instability (MSI). Results also confirmed previous studies reporting high Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) positivity (13%) in Chilean-derived GC samples suggesting a high proportion of patients could benefit from immunotherapy. As expected, TP53 and PIK3CA were the most frequently altered genes. However, NGS demonstrated the presence of TP53, NRAS, and BRAF variants previously unreported in current GC databases. Finally, using the Kendall method, we report a significant correlation between EBV+ status and programmed death ligand-1 (PDL1)+ and an inverse correlation between p53 mutational status and MSI. Our results suggest that in this Chilean cohort, a high proportion of patients are potential candidates for immunotherapy treatment. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first in South America to assess the prevalence of actionable targets and to examine a molecular profile of GC patients

Reproducibility of fluorescent expression from engineered biological constructs in E. coli

We present results of the first large-scale interlaboratory study carried out in synthetic biology, as part of the 2014 and 2015 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competitions. Participants at 88 institutions around the world measured fluorescence from three engineered constitutive constructs in E. coli. Few participants were able to measure absolute fluorescence, so data was analyzed in terms of ratios. Precision was strongly related to fluorescent strength, ranging from 1.54-fold standard deviation for the ratio between strong promoters to 5.75-fold for the ratio between the strongest and weakest promoter, and while host strain did not affect expression ratios, choice of instrument did. This result shows that high quantitative precision and reproducibility of results is possible, while at the same time indicating areas needing improved laboratory practices.Peer reviewe