Accuracy of POC testing systems for HPV screening: the importance of disease prevalence and characteristics of the screened population.

Infectious Agents and Cancer journal has recently launched a new collection of papers about "Point-of-Care (POC) for HPV-related genital cancers" putting together some interesting works on the accuracy of HPV tests for screening. This editorial initiative gave us the opportunity to reflect on the relations between accuracy measures, prevalence and characteristics of the tested population in the case of HPV-based screening. In screening test evaluation, we look at the clinical accuracy of the test as an intrinsic characteristic of the assay, which interacts with the characteristics of the population, the result being the screening performance.

Extended HPV genotyping by the BD Onclarity assay: concordance with screening HPV-DNA assays, triage biomarkers, and histopathology in women from the NTCC2 study.

Unlabelled: The use of clinically validated human papillomavirus (HPV) assays is recommended in cervical cancer screening, and extended genotyping is getting attention as a triage biomarker because of the different oncogenic risk of the high-risk HPV genotypes. We compared the results of the Becton & Dickinson (BD) Onclarity HPV assay, on the residual baseline cervico-vaginal specimens of the NTCC2 trial, to those of the screening HPV-DNA assay (Cobas 4800 or HC2) and to cytology, p16/ki67 and E6/E7 mRNA triage results. We genotyped virtually all HPV-positive women and a consecutive sample of HPV-negatives.

A source of entangled photons based on a cavity-enhanced and strain-tuned GaAs quantum dot.

Unlabelled: A quantum-light source that delivers photons with a high brightness and a high degree of entanglement is fundamental for the development of efficient entanglement-based quantum-key distribution systems. Among all possible candidates, epitaxial quantum dots are currently emerging as one of the brightest sources of highly entangled photons. However, the optimization of both brightness and entanglement currently requires different technologies that are difficult to combine in a scalable manner.

Signatures of the Optical Stark Effect on Entangled Photon Pairs from Resonantly Pumped Quantum Dots.

Two-photon resonant excitation of the biexciton-exciton cascade in a quantum dot generates highly polarization-entangled photon pairs in a near-deterministic way. However, the ultimate level of achievable entanglement is still debated. Here, we observe the impact of the laser-induced ac-Stark effect on the quantum dot emission spectra and on entanglement.