Type I Interferon in Children with Viral or Bacterial Infections.

BACKGROUND: Fever is one of the leading causes of consultation in the pediatric emergency department for patients under the age of 3 years. Distinguishing between bacterial and viral infections etiologies in febrile patients remains challenging. We hypothesized that specific host biomarkers for viral infections, such as type I-interferon (IFN), could help clinicians' decisions and limit antibiotic overuse. METHODS: Paxgene tubes and serum were collected from febrile children (n = 101), age from 7 days to 36 months, with proven viral or bacterial infections, being treated at pediatric emergency departments in France. We assessed the performance of an IFN signature, which was based on quantification of expression of IFN-stimulated genes using the Nanostring® technology and plasma IFN-α quantified by digital ELISA technology. RESULTS: Serum concentrations of IFN-α were below the quantification threshold (30 fg/mL) for 2% (1/46) of children with proven viral infections and for 71% (39/55) of children with bacterial infections (P 0.91 for both) between viral and bacterial infection in febrile children, compared to C-reactive protein (0.83). CONCLUSIONS: IFN-α is increased in blood of febrile infants with viral infections. The discriminative performance of IFN-α femtomolar concentrations as well as blood transcriptional signatures could show a diagnostic benefit and potentially limit antibiotic overuse. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION: clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03163628)

Artificial membranes for membrane protein purification, functionality and structure studies.

Membrane proteins represent one of the most important targets for pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately, technical limitations have long been a major hindrance in our understanding of the function and structure of such proteins. Recent years have seen the refinement of classical approaches and the emergence of new technologies that have resulted in a significant step forward in the field of membrane protein research. This review summarizes some of the current techniques used for studying membrane proteins, with overall advantages and drawbacks for each method

(2009)" Un Nouveau Système d’Instrumentation en Ligne pour la Caractérisation et l’Adaptation Dynamique aux Variations

Résumé — Des dispositifs de surveillance embarqués du processus de fabrication et des paramètres environnementaux sont aujourd’hui indispensables à la lutte contre les effets de la variabilité. Ils permettent également une recherche du point de fonctionnement optimal qui permet de s’affranchir des marges conception, et autorise la baisse de la consommation par des systèmes d’adaptation dynamique. Ce papier présente un nouveau système de surveillance en ligne permettant d’anticiper en temps réel toute violation de temps en observant les variations des marges temporelles. Ce système est composé de structures spécifiques situées près des bascules, couplées avec un générateur de fenêtre de détection localisé sur l’arbre d’horloge. Validation et performances sont données en technologie 45 nm basse consommation et démontrent la faisabilité et l’efficacité de ce système. Mots clés — Variabilité, Surveillance en ligne, Marge temporelle, Compensation, Point de fonctionnement optimal, Basse consommation, adaptation dynamique

GaAs WET and Siconi Cleaning Sequences for an Efficient Oxide Removal

International audienceBefore metal deposit or epitaxial regrowth steps, efficient surface preparations are mandatory in order to remove both contaminants (C, F) and surface oxides. In this paper, we assess several cleaning sequences and compare their efficiency toward GaAs oxides removal. As III/V materials are very reactive in the air, in-situ surface preparation schemes (conducted for instance in a Siconi chamber) might be useful on GaAs surfaces. This way, the queue-time issues associated with wet surface preparations could be avoided. In this study, GaAs substrates were chemically oxidized to first characterize the oxide removal efficiency of HF, HCl and Siconi processes. Then, a new surface preparation strategy was proposed based on i) a wet chemical treatment followed by ii) a standard Siconi process. In situ Parallel Angle Resolved X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy was used to study the chemical composition of the native or chemical oxides and evaluate the impact of the various treatments on the GaAs surface. SIMS analyses were used to measure/quantify the efficiency of surface preparations on Carbon and Arsenic / Gallium oxides removal

Radiomics reflecting both tumor and host features improves outcome prediction in follicular lymphoma

International audienceIntroduction: To date, several indices widely based on simple clinical or biologic parameters have been proposed to refine prognosis of follicular lymphoma (FL). The prognostic value of 18F-FDG PET/CT parameters such as Total Metabolic Tumor Volume (TMTV) remains controversial. Here, we explored the prognostic impact of additional features obtained from 18F-FDG PET/CT images in patients included in the phase III RELEVANCE trial (Morschhauser, NEJM 2018, JCO 2022), which compared rituximab-chemotherapy (R-chemo) with rituximab-lenalidomide (R2) in patients with previously untreated, high tumor burden FL.Methods: Baseline 18F-FDG PET/CT scans and clinical information (ECOG, age, Ann Arbor stage, and FLIPI) were available for 351 follicular lymphoma patients. Lesions were segmented semi-automatically by expert physicians on the PET/CT scans. Deep learning tools (TotalSegmentator and MOOSE) were used to automatically segment organs from PET-registered CT scans. A total of 7437 PET and CT features were calculated, including tumor radiomics from segmented lesions and host radiomics from segmented organs and correlated to PFS and OS. To select predictive features, a permutation test was used to ensure that less than one false positive was selected. Highly correlated features were dropped to reduce feature redundancy and only features significantly predictive of both PFS and OS were selected. Finally, a Cox model was trained and evaluated in a 10x10 nested cross-validation with feature selection and hyperparameters tuning performed in the inner loop. Averaged time-dependent ROC-AUC (tAUC) was used to assess the prognostic value of the different features and models. Three models with different feature sets were built: basic (clinical features and TMTV), tumor (clinical features, TMTV, and tumor radiomics), and global (clinical features, TMTV, tumor radiomics, and host radiomics).Results: Median number of selected tumor features was 5, reflecting tumor metabolic activity, and tissue densities measured on CT in lesion surroundings. They had an average univariate tAUC of 0.56 ± 0.03 for PFS and 0.59 ± 0.01 for OS. Median number of selected organ features was 2 with an averaged tAUC of 0.56 ± 0.04 for PFS and 0.60±0.06 for OS. Selected features reflected FDG uptake magnitude in liver, lung and kidney density. The basic model reached a tAUC of 0.58±0.04 for PFS and 0.65±0.05 for OS. The tumor model led to tAUC of 0.59 ± 0.04 for PFS and 0.67 ± 0.06 for OS. The global model yielded to a tAUC of 0.63 ± 0.04 for PFS and 0.72 ± 0.05 for OS. Global model was significantly better than clinical on both PFS and OS (p < 0.01) while tumor model was significantly better than basic model on PFS (p < 0.01) but not on OS (p < 0.27).Conclusions: Our study suggests that radiomics features complementary to TMTV derived from baseline 18F-FDG PET/CT scans can improve outcome prediction for follicular lymphoma patients