Clinical value of bioelectrical properties of cancerous tissue in advanced epithelial ovarian cancer patients

Currently, there are no valid pre-operatively established biomarkers or algorithms that can accurately predict surgical and clinical outcome for patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). In this study, we suggest that profiling of tumour parameters such as bioelectrical-potential and metabolites, detectable by electronic sensors, could facilitate the future development of devices to better monitor disease and predict surgical and treatment outcomes. Biopotential was recorded, using a potentiometric measurement system, in ex vivo paired non-cancerous and cancerous omental tissues from advanced stage EOC (n = 36), and lysates collected for metabolite measurement by microdialysis. Consistently different biopotential values were detected in cancerous tissue versus non-cancerous tissue across all cases (p < 0.001). High tumour biopotential levels correlated with advanced tumour stage (p = 0.048) and tumour load, and negatively correlated with stroma. Within our EOC cohort and specifically the high-grade serous subtype, low biopotential levels associated with poorer progression-free survival (p = 0.0179, p = 0.0143 respectively). Changes in biopotential levels significantly correlated with common apoptosis related pathways. Lactate and glucose levels measured in paired tissues showed significantly higher lactate/glucose ratio in tissues with low biopotential (p < 0.01, n = 12). Our study proposes the feasibility of biopotential and metabolite monitoring as a biomarker modality profiling EOC to predict surgical and clinical outcomes

A topic detection and visualisation system on social media posts

Comunicació presentada a: Internet Science. 4th International Conference, INSCI 2017 celebrada del 22 al 24 de novembre de 2017 a Thessaloniki, Grècia.Large amounts of social media posts are produced on a daily basis and monitoring all of them is a challenging task. In this direction we demonstrate a topic detection and visualisation tool in Twitter data, which filters Twitter posts by topic or keyword, in two different languages; German and Turkish. The system is based on state-of-the-art news clustering methods and the tool has been created to handle streams of recent news information in a fast and user-friendly way. The user interface and user-system interaction examples are presented in detail.This work was supported by the EC-funded projects H2020-645012 (KRISTINA) and H2020-700475 (beAWARE)

Organic Electrochemical Transistor Common‐Source Amplifier for Electrophysiological Measurements

The portability of physiological monitoring has necessitated the biocompatibility of components used in circuitry local to biological environments. A key component in processing circuitry is the linear amplifier. Amplifier circuit topologies utilize transistors, and recent advances in bioelectronics have focused on organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). OECTs have shown the capability to transduce physiological signals at high signal-to-noise ratios. In this study high-performance interdigitated electrode OECTs are implemented in a common source linear amplifier topology. Under the constraints of OECT operation, stable circuit component parameters are found, and OECT geometries are varied to determine the best amplifier performance. An equation is formulated which approximates transistor behavior in the linear, nonlinear, and saturation regimes. This equation is used to simulate the amplifier response of the circuits with the best performing OECT geometries. The amplifier figures of merit, including distortion characterizations, are then calculated using physical and simulation measurements. Based on the figures of merit, prerecorded electrophysiological signals from spreading depolarizations, electrocorticography, and electromyography fasciculations are inputted into an OECT linear amplifier. Using frequency filtering, the primary features of events in the bioelectric signals are resolved and amplified, demonstrating the capability of OECT amplifiers in bioelectronics