Cancers primitifs invasifs de la vulve: expérience de l’Institut National d’Oncologie de Rabat

Les cancers invasifs de la vulve sont peu fréquents, représentant moins de 5% des cancers gynécologiques. Ils surviennent le plus souvent chez des femmes âgées. L’objectif de ce travail était d’évaluer le profil épidémiologique, clinique, histologique et thérapeutique d’une série de patientes porteuses d’un cancer de la vulve. Il s’agissait d’une étude analytique rétrospective portant sur une série de 83 patientes, traitées pour cancer de la vulve dans le service de cancérologie-radiothérapie du CHU de Rabat durant la période allant de janvier 2007 au janvier 2008. Sur le plan thérapeutique: 49.8% des patientes ont bénéficié d’une chirurgie type vulvectomie totale et partielle chez 5% des patients. Le curage inguinal bilatéral est réalisé chez 32% des patientes, unilatéral dans 28%. Les complications post-chirurgie sont dominées par les lymphoedèmes retrouvés chez 12% des cas, le lâchage des sutures dans 4% des cas. La radiothérapie était indiquée chez 55% des patientes, elle était en préopératoire chez 23.2 % des cas, 25% es cas en postopératoire et exclusive chez 7.4% des cas. A visée palliative chez 9 patientes et curative chez les autres. La curiethérapie n’était utilisée chez aucune patiente. Après une durée moyenne de suivi de 27 mois (14 mois-40 mois), on a enregistré des récidives chez 13% des cas avec un délai moyen après la fin du traitement de 8 mois et 3 décès. 40% des patientes sont en bon contrôle général et 25% sont perdues de vue. Les cancers vulvaires sont des tumeurs rares mais avec un pronostic souvent réservé vu les métastases ganglionnaires précoces et leur diagnostic le plus souvent à un stade localement avancé. Le traitement doit être personnalisé en fonction du stade clinique de la tumeur afin de diminuer les conséquences fonctionnelles et psychologiques du traitement qui reste essentiellement chirurgical et doit être réservé à des centres spécialisés.Key words: vulve, cancer, diagnostic tardif, chirurgie, radiothérapi

Structure and function of a broad-specificity chitin deacetylase from <i>Aspergillus nidulans </i>FGSC A4

publishedVersio

A nontoxic polypeptide oligomer with a fungicide potency under agricultural conditions which is equal or greater than that of their chemical counterparts

Research ArticleThere are literally hundreds of polypeptides described in the literature which exhibit fungicide activity. Tens of them have had attempted protection by patent applications but none, as far as we are aware, have found application under real agricultural conditions. The reasons behind may be multiple where the sensitivity to the Sun UV radiation can come in first place. Here we describe a multifunctional glyco-oligomer with 210 kDa which is mainly composed by a 20 kDa polypeptide termed Blad that has been previously shown to be a stable intermediary product of β-conglutin catabolism. This oligomer accumulates exclusively in the cotyledons of Lupinus species, between days 4 and 12 after the onset of germination. Blad-oligomer reveals a plethora of biochemical properties, like lectin and catalytic activities, which are not unusual per si, but are remarkable when found to coexist in the same protein molecule. With this vast range of chemical characteristics, antifungal activity arises almost as a natural consequence. The biological significance and potential technological applications of Blad-oligomer as a plant fungicide to agriculture, its uniqueness stems from being of polypeptidic in nature, and with efficacies which are either equal or greater than the top fungicides currently in the market are addressedinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The genome of the emerging barley pathogen Ramularia collo-cygni

Background Ramularia collo-cygni is a newly important, foliar fungal pathogen of barley that causes the disease Ramularia leaf spot. The fungus exhibits a prolonged endophytic growth stage before switching life habit to become an aggressive, necrotrophic pathogen that causes significant losses to green leaf area and hence grain yield and quality. Results The R. collo-cygni genome was sequenced using a combination of Illumina and Roche 454 technologies. The draft assembly of 30.3 Mb contained 11,617 predicted gene models. Our phylogenomic analysis confirmed the classification of this ascomycete fungus within the family Mycosphaerellaceae, order Capnodiales of the class Dothideomycetes. A predicted secretome comprising 1053 proteins included redox-related enzymes and carbohydrate-modifying enzymes and proteases. The relative paucity of plant cell wall degrading enzyme genes may be associated with the stealth pathogenesis characteristic of plant pathogens from the Mycosphaerellaceae. A large number of genes associated with secondary metabolite production, including homologs of toxin biosynthesis genes found in other Dothideomycete plant pathogens, were identified. Conclusions The genome sequence of R. collo-cygni provides a framework for understanding the genetic basis of pathogenesis in this important emerging pathogen. The reduced complement of carbohydrate-degrading enzyme genes is likely to reflect a strategy to avoid detection by host defences during its prolonged asymptomatic growth. Of particular interest will be the analysis of R. collo-cygni gene expression during interactions with the host barley, to understand what triggers this fungus to switch from being a benign endophyte to an aggressive necrotroph

PySAP: Python Sparse Data Analysis Package for multidisciplinary image processing

International audienceWe present the open-source image processing software package PySAP (Python Sparse data Analysis Package) developed for the COmpressed Sensing for Magnetic resonance Imaging and Cosmology (COSMIC) project. This package provides a set of flexible tools that can be applied to a variety of compressed sensing and image reconstruction problems in various research domains. In particular, PySAP offers fast wavelet transforms and a range of integrated optimisation algorithms. In this paper we present the features available in PySAP and provide practical demonstrations on astrophysical and magnetic resonance imaging data

Experimental and bioinformatic characterization of a recombinant polygalacturonase-inhibitor protein from pearl millet and its interaction with fungal polygalacturonases

Polygalacturonases (PGs) are hydrolytic enzymes employed by several phytopathogens to weaken the plant cell wall by degrading homopolygalacturonan, a major constituent of pectin. Plants fight back by employing polygalacturonase-inhibitor proteins (PGIPs). The present study compared the inhibition potential of pearl millet PGIP (Pennisetum glaucum; PglPGIP1) with the known inhibition of Phaseolus vulgaris PGIP (PvPGIP2) against two PGs, the PG-II isoform from Aspergillus niger (AnPGII) and the PG-III isoform from Fusarium moniliforme (FmPGIII). The key rationale was to elucidate the relationship between the extent of sequence similarity of the PGIPs and the corresponding PG inhibition potential. First, a pearl millet pgip gene (Pglpgip1) was isolated and phylogenetically placed among monocot PGIPs alongside foxtail millet (Setaria italica). Upstream sequence analysis of Pglpgip1 identified important cis-elements responsive to light, plant stress hormones, and anoxic stress. PglPGIP1, heterologously produced in Escherichia coli, partially inhibited AnPGII non-competitively with a pH optimum between 4.0 and 4.5, and showed no inhibition against FmPGIII. Docking analysis showed that the concave surface of PglPGIP1 interacted strongly with the N-terminal region of AnPGII away from the active site, whereas it weakly interacted with the C-terminus of FmPGIII. Interestingly, PglPGIP1 and PvPGIP2 employed similar motif regions with few identical amino acids for interaction with AnPGII at non-substrate-binding sites; however, they engaged different regions of AnPGII. Computational mutagenesis predicted D126 (PglPGIP1)-K39 (AnPGII) to be the most significant binding contact in the PglPGIP1-AnPGII complex. Such protein-protein interaction studies are crucial in the future generation of designer host proteins for improved resistance against everevolving pathogen virulence factors