Author Correction: Cross-ancestry genome-wide association analysis of corneal thickness strengthens link between complex and Mendelian eye diseases

Emmanuelle Souzeau, who contributed to analysis of data, was inadvertently omitted from the author list in the originally published version of this Article. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article

Differentiation of human adipose-derived stem cells into neuron/motoneuron-like cells for cell replacement therapy of spinal cord injury

Human adipose-derived stem cells (hADSCs) are increasingly presumed to be a prospective stem cell source for cell replacement therapy in various degenerative and/or traumatic diseases. The potential of trans-differentiating hADSCs into motor neuron cells indisputably provides an alternative way for spinal cord injury (SCI) treatment. In the present study, a stepwise and efficient hADSC trans-differentiation protocol with retinoic acid (RA), sonic hedgehog (SHH), and neurotrophic factors were developed. With this protocol hADSCs could be converted into electrophysiologically active motoneuron-like cells (hADSC-MNs), which expressed both a cohort of pan neuronal markers and motor neuron specific markers. Moreover, after being primed for neuronal differentiation with RA/SHH, hADSCs were transplanted into SCI mouse model and they survived, migrated, and integrated into injured site and led to partial functional recovery of SCI mice. When ablating the transplanted hADSC-MNs harboring HSV-TK-mCherry overexpression system with antivirial Ganciclovir (GCV), functional relapse was detected by motor-evoked potential (MEP) and BMS assays, implying that transplanted hADSC-MNs participated in rebuilding the neural circuits, which was further confirmed by retrograde neuronal tracing system (WGA). GFP-labeled hADSC-MNs were subjected to whole-cell patch-clamp recording in acute spinal cord slice preparation and both action potentials and synaptic activities were recorded, which further confirmed that those pre-conditioned hADSCs indeed became functionally active neurons in vivo. As well, transplanted hADSC-MNs largely prevented the formation of injury-induced cavities and exerted obvious immune-suppression effect as revealed by preventing astrocyte reactivation and favoring the secretion of a spectrum of anti-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Our work suggests that hADSCs can be readily transformed into MNs in vitro, and stay viable in spinal cord of the SCI mouse and exert multi-therapeutic effects by rebuilding the broken circuitry and optimizing the microenvironment through immunosuppression

Methodology of high accuracy, sensitivity and specificity in the counts of erythrocytes and leukocytes in blood smear images

The evaluation of human blood is an important diagnostic method for the detection of diseases. The analysis of the erythrocytes contained in the blood contributes to the detection of anemia and leukemia, whereas the leukocyte analysis allows the diagnosis of inflammation and/or infections. The blood is analyzed through of the complete blood count test (CBC), which is dependent on automated and/or manual methodologies. The dependence of medical areas on new technologies leads the present study to the goal of developing an image segmentation algorithm that meets the criteria of efficiency and reliability for detection and counting of blood cells. The algorithm was developed through the Matlab software, being the image processing methodology based on the union of the Watershed transform and Morphological Operations, originating the WT-MO methodology. For the simulations, 30 blood smear images containing erythrocytes and leukocytes were used in a non-pathological state. The results showed that the WT-MO methodology presents high sensitivity (99%), specificity (96%) and accuracy (98,3%) when compared with the manual methodology. Therefore, the WT-MO methodology is an accurate, reliable and low-cost technique and can be applied as a third more accessible methodology to perform of the complete blood count test (CBC) in populations of underdeveloped and developing countries1407990BTSym 2018 : Proceedings of the 4th Brazilian Technology Symposium (BTSym'18)2018Blood cells Watershed transform Morphological operations Blood smear Image processing Algorith