Safety and Efficacy of Biologic Agents for the Management of Inflammatory Bowel Disease After Liver Transplantation

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141779/1/phar2036.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141779/2/phar2036_am.pd

PI(4,5)P2 concentration at the APC side of the Immunological Synapse is Required for Effector T cell Function

Little is known about the signaling that occurs in an antigen presenting cell (APC) during contact with a T cell. Here we report the concentration of the signaling lipid, PI(4,5)P2, at the APC side of the immunological synapse. In both human and mouse cells, a PI(4,5)P2-specific fluorescent reporter, PH-GFP, detected an antigen-dependent enrichment of PI(4,5)P2 at the synapse between antigen- specific T cells and APC. When PIP(4,5)P2 was sequestered by a high concentration of PH-GFP reporter, cells were less susceptible to CTL-mediated lysis than control cells. These findings suggest a new regulatory target for modulating immune function that may be exploited for immune escape by pathogens and tumors. Originally published Journal of Immunology, Vol. 182, No. 9, May 200

Fixational eye movement waveforms in amblyopia: Characteristics of fast and slow eye movements

Fixational eye movements comprise of fast microsaccades alternating with slow inter-saccadic drifts. These physiologic eye movements play an important role in visual perception.  Amblyopic patients are known to have fixation instability, particularly of the amblyopic eye. We examined eye movement abnormalities that contribute to this instability. We found that fixation stability is affected by the presence of fusion maldevelopment nystagmus (FMN). However, some amblyopes can have nystagmus without nasally directed slow phases and reversal in direction of the quick phase on ocular occlusion, features seen in FMN. In patients without nystagmus, we found increased amplitude of fixational saccades and inter-saccadic drifts. We categorized amblyopia patients by type (anisometropic, strabismic, or mixed) and eye movement waveform (no nystagmus, nystagmus without FMN, and FMN). We found specific fast and slow eye movement abnormalities of the fellow and amblyopic eye during fellow, amblyopic and both eyes viewing conditions across eye movement waveforms and types of amblyopia. These eye movement abnormalities can serve as biomarkers that can predict the impact of amblyopia as measured by visual acuity and stereopsis. Evaluation of fixational eye movements in amblyopia could be important to diagnose these common eye diseases and predict treatment effectiveness.&nbsp

The Immersive Placement Experience: Sink Or Swim?

To excel in their respective engineering fields, engineering students need to be equipped with a combination of technical and interpersonal skills. Central to excellent interpersonal skills is good communication. The aim of the study is to evaluate how well-prepared mechanical and design engineering students felt entering into their industrial placements, using a UK university as a pilot case study. For the study interviews were carried out with final year students who had previously completed an industrial placement year, focussing on communication, workplace diversity, technical working methods and university teaching styles. Reponses were anonymised, coded and analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods. Nine engineering students were interviewed regarding their placement experience and were asked to rate how well they thought their engineering programmes helped in developing these skills. Two key findings were: 1) students on average spent 60 % or more of their placement work using their communication skills and 2) students felt more could be done to prepare them for individual presentations and individual projects before placement. On average the students felt marginally more prepared with the interpersonal skills element compared to the technical skills element. The survey also highlighted that the students' understanding of what falls under the umbrella of workplace diversity was narrow, and they did not classify skill differences as a component of diversity. The student's honest feedback allowed a collation of proposed recommendations for both the mechanical and design engineering courses

The clinical Transferability of Raman Micro-Spectroscopic Systems for Cervical Cytopathology

The clinical potential for Raman microscopic systems is well established for early diagnosis via cytology. Although Raman systems offer a complementary diagnostic tool providing molecular information, it is not yet utilised substantially in clinics. A few challenges for the clinical implementation of Raman spectroscopy are system and user variability. In this study, we asked how much variability occurs due to different Raman systems or users. To address these questions, we measured the same set of cells using two different Raman microscopes and by two different users. And classification models were generated using multivariate partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and analysed for clinical implementation. Raman spectra were measured from single exfoliated cells (n=400) from ThinPrep samples with negative cytology (n=10) and high-grade cytology (n=10). Raman spectra were acquired from the same set of cells via two identical HORIBA Jobin Yvon XploRATM systems (Villeneuve d\u27Ascq, France), as well as two different users. The Raman data was subjected to PLS-DA and cross-validated via leave-one-patient out. The study\u27s findings suggest that the data acquired from the two Raman systems are 99% identical. However, the observed classification accuracy for the data obtained by user-1 was 92%, whereas by user-2 was 99%