Laser induced surface acoustic wave combined with phase sensitive optical coherence tomography for superficial tissue characterization:a solution for practical application

Mechanical properties are important parameters that can be used to assess the physiologic conditions of biologic tissue. Measurements and mapping of tissue mechanical properties can aid in the diagnosis, characterisation and treatment of diseases. As a non-invasive, non-destructive and non-contact method, laser induced surface acoustic waves (SAWs) have potential to accurately characterise tissue elastic properties. However, challenge still exists when the laser is directly applied to the tissue because of potential heat generation due to laser energy deposition. This paper focuses on the thermal effect of the laser induced SAW on the tissue target and provides an alternate solution to facilitate its application in clinic environment. The solution proposed is to apply a thin agar membrane as surface shield to protect the tissue. Transient thermal analysis is developed and verified by experiments to study the effects of the high energy Nd:YAG laser pulse on the surface shield. The approach is then verified by measuring the mechanical property of skin in a Thiel mouse model. The results demonstrate a useful step toward the practical application of laser induced SAW method for measuring real elasticity of normal and diseased tissues in dermatology and other surface epithelia

Quantitative elasticity measurement of urinary bladder wall using laser-induced surface acoustic waves

The maintenance of urinary bladder elasticity is essential to its functions, including the storage and voiding phases of the micturition cycle. The bladder stiffness can be changed by various pathophysiological conditions. Quantitative measurement of bladder elasticity is an essential step toward understanding various urinary bladder disease processes and improving patient care. As a nondestructive, and noncontact method, laser-induced surface acoustic waves (SAWs) can accurately characterize the elastic properties of different layers of organs such as the urinary bladder. This initial investigation evaluates the feasibility of a noncontact, all-optical method of generating and measuring the elasticity of the urinary bladder. Quantitative elasticity measurements of ex vivo porcine urinary bladder were made using the laser-induced SAW technique. A pulsed laser was used to excite SAWs that propagated on the bladder wall surface. A dedicated phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PhS-OCT) system remotely recorded the SAWs, from which the elasticity properties of different layers of the bladder were estimated. During the experiments, series of measurements were performed under five precisely controlled bladder volumes using water to estimate changes in the elasticity in relation to various urinary bladder contents. The results, validated by optical coherence elastography, show that the laser-induced SAW technique combined with PhS-OCT can be a feasible method of quantitative estimation of biomechanical properties

CAR T-Cell Immunotherapy in Human and Veterinary Oncology: Changing the Odds Against Hematological Malignancies

International audienceThe advent of the genome editing era brings forth the promise of adoptive cell transfer usingengineered chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells for targeted cancer therapy. CAR T-cellimmunotherapy is probably one of the most encouraging developments for the treatment ofhematological malignancies. In 2017, two CAR T-cell therapies were approved by the U. S Food andDrug Administration; one for the treatment of pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), the otherfor adult patients with advanced lymphomas. However, despite significant progress in the area, CART-cell therapy is still in its early days and faces significant challenges, including the complexity andcosts associated with the technology. B-cell lymphoma is the most common hematopoietic cancer indogs, with an incidence approaching 0.1% and a total of 20-100 cases per 100,000 individuals. It is awidely accepted naturally occurring model for human non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Current treatment iswith combination chemotherapy protocols, which prolong life for less than a year in canines and areassociated with severe dose-limiting side effects, such as gastrointestinal and bone marrow toxicity.To date, one canine study generated CAR T-cells by transfection of mRNA for CAR domainexpression. While this was shown to provide a transient anti-tumor activity, results were modest,indicating that stable, genomic integration of CAR modules is required in order to achieve lastingtherapeutic benefit. This Commentary summarizes the current state of knowledge on CAR T-cellimmunotherapy in human medicine and its potential applications in animal health, while discussingthe potential of the canine model as a translational system for immuno-oncology research

Recent developments in immunotherapy of acute myeloid leukemia

The advent of new immunotherapeutic agents in clinical practice has revolutionized cancer treatment in the past decade, both in oncology and hematology. The transfer of the immunotherapeutic concepts to the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is hampered by various characteristics of the disease, including non-leukemia-restricted target antigen expression profile, low endogenous immune responses, and intrinsic resistance mechanisms of the leukemic blasts against immune responses. However, considerable progress has been made in this field in the past few years. Within this manuscript, we review the recent developments and the current status of the five currently most prominent immunotherapeutic concepts: (1) antibody-drug conjugates, (2) T cell-recruiting antibody constructs, (3) chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, (4) checkpoint inhibitors, and (5) dendritic cell vaccination. We focus on the clinical data that has been published so far, both for newly diagnosed and refractory/relapsed AML, but omitting immunotherapeutic concepts in conjunction with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Besides, we have included important clinical trials that are currently running or have recently been completed but are still lacking full publication of their results. While each of the concepts has its particular merits and inherent problems, the field of immunotherapy of AML seems to have taken some significant steps forward. Results of currently running trials will reveal the direction of further development including approaches combining two or more of these concepts

Prison to prison: the prison novels of Hagop Oshagan and Armenian penological literature

The prison novels (Haji Murat, Haji Abdullah and Süleyman Effendi) of Western Armenian writer Hagop Oshagan (1883 – 1948) articulate two unprecedented sociocultural critiques of Armenian experience. Like much of Oshagan’s works, these novels, comprising the cycle Haryur Mék Tarvan [101 Years’ Imprisonment] (1933), have scarcely been studied. The task of this study is to reveal the nature of Oshagan’s critique, and to revise two chief Armenian literary critical trends: that of either de-contextualizing or instrumentalizing these novels’ nationalist preoccupations; that is, either overlooking their contextual relevance as responses to contemporaneous nationalist dogmas, or distorting them to seem ideologically sympathetic. Oshagan’s novels rather deploy the prison trope to foreground and question the aesthetic and ideological influence of late 19th century Armenian nationalist-revolutionary movements. They moreover undermine the persisting paradigm borne of nationalist-revolutionary rhetoric that collectively represents Armenians and Turks as victims and victimizers respectively. The present study reads Oshagan in the wider context of Armenian penological literature, and locates his engagement with nationalist-revolutionary ideology as an overtly critical, rather than sympathetic project. It provides an unprecedented appraisal of such political movements’ primarily negative impact upon late 19th and early 20th century Western Armenian literature, a tradition that has presented “Armenianness” through an almost exclusive narrative of subjection. This literary historical background allows Oshagan’s singularity to appear. He is the first to recognize the prison trope as the preferred nationalist-revolutionary literary convention, a trope he then reconfigures in order to formulate an alternative, a literary mode of nationalism – namely, mystic nationalism – informed by his readings of Dostoevsky’s novels. Oshagan imagines and articulates anew the Armenian-Turk relationship in terms that complicate, subvert and transcend the normative master/slave model instituted by nationalist-revolutionary rhetoric. In the process, he elaborates a conception of these movements as inadvertently complicit in the discursive – and, ultimately, also political – (self)-subjection of Armenians culminating as experiences of absolute subjection. After Oshagan, this study constitutes the first comprehensive analysis of literary renderings of both Armenian-Turk relations and nationalist-revolutionary ideology.</p

RTD com

La crise sanitaire de la Covid-19, qui a conduit le gouvernement à ordonner la fermeture au public de tous les commerces non essentiels, a eu une incidence majeure sur les baux commerciaux. Se pose la question de savoir quel est le sort du paiement des loyers afférents à la période de fermeture administrative des locaux. Il convient de se demander s'il existe dans le nouveau droit commun des contrats et obligations de 2016-2018, des outils permettant aux preneurs de s'exonérer du paiement de ces loyers. L'article fait apparaître que si le droit commun connaît des mécanismes pouvant être sollicités (force majeure, imprévision, exception d'inexécution, réduction du prix), ceux-ci sont difficilement applicables à la situation et/ou inadaptés à celle-ci. En l'absence de solution certaine dans le droit commun des contrats, le droit civil spécial des baux de 1804, qui envisage une possibilité de diminution du prix en cas de perte de la chose louée par cas fortuit, pourrait être une alternative. Mais la voie à privilégier est certainement celle de la négociation, sur le fondement de la bonne foi contractuelle, pour tenter de régler à l'amiable le sort des loyers de la période de fermeture