Curricula customization with the readerbench Framework

Providing customized curricula tailored to learner's needs became a stringent problem while relating to the increasing number of people attending Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and eLearning platforms because the same content is provided to all students. This study presents a Moodle plugin created on top of an eLearning course that enables curricula customization based on the learning needs of a high number of participants. With the help of the Mass Customization approach, two categories of attendees were identified in a previous research and imposed multiple filtering criteria, out of which the first one refers to participants� profession. The second criterion, topics of interest, allows learners to select keywords of interest from a predefined two-level word list, but also to enumerate their own terms using natural language. With the support of ReaderBench, an advanced Natural Language Processing framework, the most relevant lessons are retrieved in descending order of semantic relatedness. Third, an additional specific parameter allows participants to establish what kind of learning materials they require - i.e., theoretical and background oriented, practice and counseling documents, or guidelines. Our collection of documents is composed of lessons with a short description and their title, together with lists of pre- and post-requisite lessons. Our tool provides a comprehensive list of recommended lessons that best match the input criteria, corroborated with the list of related pre- and post-requisite lessons. Moreover, we provide information in terms of the duration of each lesson, as well as potential Continuous Medical Education points gained after finishing all selected lessons.<br/

Recipient BCL2 inhibition and NK cell ablation form part of a reduced intensity conditioning regime that improves allo-bone marrow transplantation outcomes

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) is used to treat over 15,000 patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) per year. Donor graft-versus-leukemia (GVL) effect can prevent AML relapse; however, alloSCT is limited by significant toxicity related to conditioning intensity, immunosuppression, opportunistic infections, and graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Reducing the intensity of conditioning regimens prior to alloSCT has improved their tolerability, but does not alter the pattern of GVHD and has been associated with increased rates of graft rejection and relapse. Here, using a murine pre-clinical model, we describe a novel recipient conditioning approach combining reduced intensity conditioning with either genetic or pharmacological inhibition of NK cell numbers that permits efficient donor engraftment and promotes GVL without inducing GVHD. We show that NK cell-specific deletion of Bcl2 or Mcl1 in mice, or pharmacological inhibition of BCL2 impairs radio-resistant NK cell-mediated rejection of allogeneic engraftment and allows reduction of conditioning intensity below that associated with GVHD priming. The combination of reduced intensity conditioning and NK cell targeting in mice allowed successful donor T cell engraftment and protective immunity against AML while avoiding GVHD. These findings suggest that reduced conditioning in combination with targeted therapies against recipient NK cells may allow the delivery of effective alloSCT against AML while reducing the toxicities associated with more intensive conditioning including GVHD.Yuhao Jiao, Joanne E. Davis, Jai Rautela, Emma M. Carrington, Mandy J. Ludford-Menting ... Benjamin T. Kile ... et al