Quality of life assessment in companion animals: what, why, who, when and how

Quality of life is a commonly used phrase in veterinary medicine. It describes a complex evaluation that may be difficult for animals to perform, and the phrase “happiness” may be a more crude but useful approximation. Quality of life assessments should ideally be an integral part of our decision making, and should encompass evaluation of aspects of a pet’s life beyond just its health. Assessments should aim both to evaluate an animal’s quality of life, and to look for ways in which it might be improved. This article will discuss the challenges of assessing quality of life in companion animals, and will review the range of different methods available for assessment of quality of life in cats and dogs

Membrane-Bound IL-21 Promotes Sustained Ex Vivo Proliferation of Human Natural Killer Cells

NK cells have therapeutic potential for a wide variety of human malignancies. However, because NK cells expand poorly in vitro, have limited life spans in vivo, and represent a small fraction of peripheral white blood cells, obtaining sufficient cell numbers is the major obstacle for NK-cell immunotherapy. Genetically-engineered artificial antigen-presenting cells (aAPCs) expressing membrane-bound IL-15 (mbIL15) have been used to propagate clinical-grade NK cells for human trials of adoptive immunotherapy, but ex vivo proliferation has been limited by telomere shortening. We developed K562-based aAPCs with membrane-bound IL-21 (mbIL21) and assessed their ability to support human NK-cell proliferation. In contrast to mbIL15, mbIL21-expressing aAPCs promoted log-phase NK cell expansion without evidence of senescence for up to 6 weeks of culture. By day 21, parallel expansion of NK cells from 22 donors demonstrated a mean 47,967-fold expansion (median 31,747) when co-cultured with aAPCs expressing mbIL21 compared to 825-fold expansion (median 325) with mbIL15. Despite the significant increase in proliferation, mbIL21-expanded NK cells also showed a significant increase in telomere length compared to freshly obtained NK cells, suggesting a possible mechanism for their sustained proliferation. NK cells expanded with mbIL21 were similar in phenotype and cytotoxicity to those expanded with mbIL15, with retained donor KIR repertoires and high expression of NCRs, CD16, and NKG2D, but had superior cytokine secretion. The mbIL21-expanded NK cells showed increased transcription of the activating receptor CD160, but otherwise had remarkably similar mRNA expression profiles of the 96 genes assessed. mbIL21-expanded NK cells had significant cytotoxicity against all tumor cell lines tested, retained responsiveness to inhibitory KIR ligands, and demonstrated enhanced killing via antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity. Thus, aAPCs expressing mbIL21 promote improved proliferation of human NK cells with longer telomeres and less senescence, supporting their clinical use in propagating NK cells for adoptive immunotherapy

Biofuel production using thermochemical conversion of heavy metal-contaminated biomass (HMCB) harvested from phytoextraction process

Over the past few decades, bioenergy production from heavy metal-contaminated biomasses (HMCBs) has been drawing increasing attention from scientists in diverse disciplines and countries owing to their potential roles in addressing both energy crisis and environmental challenges. In this review, bioenergy recovery from HMCBs, i.e. contaminated plants and energy crops, using thermochemical processes (pyrolysis, gasification, combustion, and liquefaction) has been scrutinized. Furthermore, the necessity of the implementation of practical strategies towards sustainable phytoextraction and metal-free biofuels production has been critically discussed. To meet this aim, the paper firstly delivers the fundamental concepts regarding the remediation of the brownfields using phytoremediation approach, and then, reviews recent literature on sustainable phytoextraction of heavy metals from polluted soils. Thereafter, to find out the possibility of the cost-efficient production of metal-free biofuels from HMCBs using thermochemical methods, the impacts of various influential factors, such as the type of feedstock and metals contents, the reactor type and operating conditions, and the role of probable pre-/post-treatment on the fate of heavy metals and the quality of products, have also been discussed. Finally, based on relevant empirical results and techno-economic assessment (TEA) studies, the present paper sheds light on pyrolysis as the most promising thermochemical technique for large-scale electricity and heat recovery from HMCBs