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The major causes of death of combat casualties in austere environments are related to hemorrhage and occur early after injury. The implementation of a walking blood bank may overcome the logistical issues raised using blood component therapy. Nonetheless, it is important to ensure that this buddy transfusion is not going to compromise the mission success by altering the donor's performance. The results available so far cannot rule out this issue with certainty. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the immediate effect of a 450-ml blood donation on the performances of elite soldiers in laboratory and field environments. This double-blind, randomized controlled study included two experiments. For both experiments, subjects were randomly assigned either to a control group (n = n = 7) or to a 450-ml-blood-bag donation group (n = 7 and n = 8). All participants underwent before and after a potential blood donation a multifactorial assessment including adapted physical tasks, hematological variables, vigilance parameters, and subjective assessments. No significant results were evidenced in this study. There was no impact of blood donation on the participants' performances in both the hospital and the combat-like environments. From a donor's point of view, a 450-ml blood donation has no impact on the required abilities of our elite soldiers to fulfill a demanding tactical mission. Thus, the results of this study support the fact that buddy transfusions could be part of the operational clinical armamentarium in austere environments for elite soldiers when no blood components are available.

More than a year after the first identification of severe acute respiratory syndrome coron-avirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) as the causative agent of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in China, the emergence and spread of genomic variants of this virus through travel raise concerns regarding the introduction of lineages in previously unaffected regions, requiring adequate containment strate-gies. Concomitantly, such introductions fuel worries about a possible increase in transmissibility and disease severity, as well as a possible decrease in vaccine efficacy. Military personnel are frequently deployed on missions around the world. As part of a COVID-19 risk mitigation strategy, Belgian Armed Forces that engaged in missions and operations abroad were screened (7683 RT-qPCR tests), pre-and post-mission, for the presence of SARS-CoV-2, including the identification of viral lineages. Nine distinct viral genotypes were identified in soldiers returning from operations in Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, and Mali. The SARS-CoV-2 variants belonged to major clades 19B, 20A, and 20B (Nextstrain nomenclature), and included “variant of interest” B.1.525, “variant under monitoring” A.27, as well as lineages B.1.214, B.1, B.1.1.254, and A (pangolin nomenclature), some of which are internationally monitored due to the specific mutations they har-bor. Through contact tracing and phylogenetic analysis, we show that isolation and testing policies implemented by the Belgian military command appear to have been successful in containing the influx and transmission of these distinct SARS-CoV-2 variants into military and civilian populations., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Erm, a member of the PEA3 group within the Ets family of transcription factors, is expressed in murine and human lymphocytes. Here, we show that in the human Molt4 lymphoblastic cell line, the erm gene expression is regulated by the conventional PKC (cPKC) pathway. To better characterize the molecular mechanism by which cPKC regulates Erm transcription in Molt4 cells, we tested proximal promoter deletions of the human gene, and identified a specific cPKC-regulated region between positions -420 and -115 upstream of the first exon., Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't, SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

L’expression d’un gène donné est généralement le résultat de la dualité qui existe entre l’activation et la répression transcriptionnelle de ce gène. Au laboratoire, nous tentons de mieux comprendre la régulation de la transcription génique, et c’est dans ce cadre que nous étudions certaines protéines qui appartiennent à la famille de facteurs de transcription Ets.Ces derniers sont caractérisés par un domaine de liaison à l’ADN hautement conservé, le domaine ETS, qui se lie sur les promoteurs de leurs gènes cibles au niveau de sites comportant le motif central 5’- GGAA/T -3’. Certaines de ces protéines ont été montrées comme étant impliquées dans des processus du développement normal et cancéreux. Dans la première partie de ce travail, nous avons étudié le facteur transcriptionnel Fev dont l’expression est restreinte au noyau du raphé dans le cerveau, à la prostate et à l’intestin grêle. Nous avons participé à la caractérisation fonctionnelle de ce facteur permettant de le définir comme répresseur transcriptionnel. Plus particulièrement, nous avons identifié la partie carboxy-terminale riche en résidus alanine comme étant impliquée dans la répression. Afin de mieux comprendre le mécanisme moléculaire qui régit la répression induite par Fev, nous avons tenté d’identifier les partenaires protéiques impliqués dans ce processus transcriptionnel. Dans un premier temps, nous avons montré que Fev interagit physiquement avec les co-répresseurs transcriptionnels à activité histone désacétylase HDAC1 et HDAC3. Aussi, nous proposons de définir le rôle biologique de cette interaction. Par la suite, nous avons utilisé le système de criblage de banques par « double hybride en levures ». En utilisant comme appât soit Fev, soit sa partie carboxy-terminale, nous avons isolé plusieurs candidats interacteurs, dont la protéine DP103 qui est impliquée dans la régulation transcriptionnelle induite par d’autres facteurs de transcription de la famille Ets. Après avoir montré pa, Doctorat en sciences biomédicales, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished