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Health information grows exponentially (doubling every 5 years), thus generating a sort of inflation of science, i.e. the generation of more knowledge than we can leverage. In an unprecedented data-driven shift, today doctors have no longer time to keep updated. This fact explains why only one in every five medical decisions is based strictly on evidence, which inevitably leads to variability. A good solution lies on clinical decision support systems, based on big data analysis. As the processing of large amounts of information gains relevance, automatic approaches become increasingly capable to see and correlate information further and better than the human mind can. In this context, healthcare professionals are increasingly counting on a new set of tools in order to deal with the growing information that becomes available to them on a daily basis. By allowing the grouping of collective knowledge and prioritizing “mindlines” against “guidelines”, these support systems are among the most promising applications of big data in health. In this demo paper we introduce Savana, an AI-enabled system based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Neural Networks, capable of, for instance, the automatic expansion of medical terminologies, thus enabling the re-use of information expressed in natural language in clinical reports. This automatized and precise digital extraction allows the generation of a real time information engine, which is currently being deployed in healthcare institutions, as well as clinical research and management.

To perform a systematic review to analyze the association between occupational exposure to wood dust and cancer.A systematic literature search of entries made in the MEDLINE-PubMed database between 1957 and 2013 was conducted to identify studies that had assessed the relationship between occupational exposure to wood dust and different types of cancer. A meta-analysis of selected case-control and cohort studies was subsequently performed.A total of 114 studies were identified and 70 were selected for review. Of these, 42 studies focused on the relationship between wood dust and nasal cancer (n = 22), lung cancer (n = 11), and other types of cancer (n = 9). Low-to-moderate quality evidence that wood dust acts as a carcinogen was obtained, and a stronger association between wood dust and nasal adenocarcinoma was observed. A lesser association between wood dust exposure and lung cancer was also observed. Several studies suggested that there is a relationship between wood dust and the onset of other cancers, although there was no evidence to establish an association. A meta-analysis that included four case-controls studies showed that workers exposed to wood dust exhibited higher rates of nasal adenocarcinoma than other workers (odds ratio = 10.28; 95% confidence interval: 5.92 and 17.85; P

Drugs production is a highly demanding industry because of the high rigor of current regulations and standards which apply to manufacturing facilities. They are also required in the research and development stage. Our national biotechnological industry is developing and producing important drugs for national and international market to treat diseases like cancer. The Isotope Centre is an institution supporting such a development by means of a work platform to carry out researches in the field of pharmacokinetic and biodistribution in experimental models. Accumulated experience allows us to contribute to research and development of different kind of products (i.e. biotechnological), what represents a move towards the development of new technologies and the incorporation of appropriate methodologies to current standards. Radiolabeling is still a convenient choice to obtain images of drug distribution and kinetics. With the techniques currently available and those to be used in a near future, we can undertake to the most important researches required.

En la víspera de la posible redefinición de cuatro de las siete unidades de base del Sistema Internacional de Unidades (SI): kilogramo, ampere, kelvin, y mol1 correspondientes a las siguientes magnitudes de base: masa, corriente eléctrica, temperatura termodinámica, y cantidad de sustancia, se hace necesario mencionar, objeto de este trabajo, los avances en la posible nueva definición de la unidad de masa, el kilogramo.

En la víspera de la posible redefinición de cuatro de las siete unidades de base del Sistema Internacional de Unidades (SI): kilogramo, ampere, kelvin, y mol1 correspondientes a las siguientes magnitudes de base: masa, corriente eléctrica, temperatura termodinámica, y cantidad de sustancia, se hace necesario mencionar, objeto de este trabajo, los avances en la posible nueva definición de la unidad de masa, el kilogramo.

The present paper shows the design, optimization, quality control for testing radiochemical purity, biological quality and realtime stability studies of a preparation of macroaggregated albumin from the controlled denaturation of HSA. An experimental design with a factorial plan was carried out in order to determine the ideal conditions for the preparation. The results showed that variations of albumin concentrations within the range of 515 mg/mL were irrelevant, however, the final pH of the mixture and the stirring speed were significant variables, as well as their interaction. Formulations with particles of diameter between 11 and 80 µ were obtained with the conditions selected in the experimental design which met the internationally established criteria for radiochemical purity, sterility and apyrogenicity. The biodistribution in experimental animals showed good quality lung images. The produced lots maintained physical, radiochemical, biological and microbiological stability during 90 days of storage at 4°C.

Objetivo: evaluar la calidad de la muestra procesada en medio líquido en comparación al método convencional. Métodos: se realizó un análisis observacional descriptivo en el cual fueron estudiadas 32 citologías cérvico vaginales (CCV) de pacientes que acudieron a la campaña realizada en la institución Fundafidro, el día 24 de Junio del año 2003; se procesaron las muestras de manera convencional, los cepillos y espátulas utilizadas para la toma se llevaron al medio líquido para obtener 32 muestras adicionales, las cuales se procesaron en doble lámina, cada una con un botón celular obtenido por medio del Cytospin del Instituto Nacional de Cancerología (INC). Resultados: se tomaron 40 CCV de las cuales 32 cumplieron con los criterios de inclusión, en las cuales se realizó el citodiagnóstico de manera independiente para cada una de las técnicas. Conclusiones: se demuestra que el método citológico en medio líquido mejora la calidad de la muestra, pero e

Analyzing gene expression data helps the identification of significant biological relationships in genes. With a growing number of open biological datasets available, it is paramount to use reliable and innovative methods to perform in-depth analyses of biological data and ensure that informed decisions are made based on accurate information. Evolutionary algorithms have been successful in the analysis of biological datasets. However, there is still room for improvement, and further analysis should be conducted. In this work, we propose Online-Adjusted EVOlutionary Biclustering algorithm (OAEVOB), a novel evolutionary-based biclustering algorithm that efficiently handles vast gene expression data. OAEVOB incorporates an online-adjustment feature that efficiently identifies significant groups by updating the mutation probability and crossover parameters. We utilize measurements such as Pearson correlation, distance correlation, biweight midcorrelation, and mutual information to assess the similarity of genes in the biclusters. Algorithms in the specialized literature do not address generalization to diverse gene expression sources. Therefore, to evaluate OAEVOB's performance, we analyzed six gene expression datasets obtained from diverse sequencing data sources, specifically Deoxyribonucleic Acid microarray, Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) sequencing, and single-cell RNA sequencing, which are subject to a thorough examination. OAEVOB identified significant broad gene expression biclusters with correlations greater than |$0.5$| across all similarity measurements employed. Additionally, when biclusters are evaluated by functional enrichment analysis, they exhibit biological functions, suggesting that OAEVOB effectively identifies biclusters with specific cancer and tissue-related genes in the analyzed datasets. We compared the OAEVOB's performance with state-of-the-art methods and outperformed them showing robustness to noise, overlapping, sequencing data sources, and gene coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expression and production of pharmaceutical, industrial and veterinary proteins in plants is an attractive approach. These expression hosts bear an enormous production potential in terms of volume, easy processing of the starting material, and safety of the final product due to the lack of pathogens able to infect animal and human cells. Antibodies are among the most frequently proteins expressed in plants, subsequently called plantibodies. However, plantibodies are differently glycosylated in plant cells, with oligosaccharide residues being added which may them immunogenic in the final organism. For that reason, several strategies have been developed to genetically modify host plants to mimic the N-glycosylation patterns typical in animal cells. This work was aimed at developing a strategy to obtain a aglycosylated plantibody version of nimotuzumab, the first antibody registered as a product in Cuba for cancer immunotherapy. The strategy comprised the genetic modification of the heavy chain glycosylation site of nimotuzumab, and its expression as an aglycosylated protein in tobacco leaves, by means of developing a transient expression system using Agrobacterium infiltration into tobacco leaves for the initial characterization of the plantibody. It was demonstrated that transgenic plants were capable of producing a plant-derived nimotuzumab antibody which retained the antitumor activity in vitro and in vivo, compared to its glycosylated counterpart produced in mammalian cells. This work demonstrates the potential of transgenic plants to produce aglycosylated therapeutic antibodies for cancer treatment, and won the National Award of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba in 2012.