Intraabdominal hypertension is less common than it used to be: A pilot step wedge trial.

Objective: This is a pilot study to determine the feasibility of a multicentre stepped wedge cluster randomized trial of implementing the 2013 World Society of the Intraabdominal Compartment Syndrome (WSACS) guidelines as an intervention to treat intraabdominal hypertension (IAH) and abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS) in critically ill patients.

Design: Single-centre before-and-after trial, with an observation / baseline period of 3 months followed by a 9-month intervention period.

Setting: A 35 bed medical-surgical-trauma intensive care unit in a tertiary level, Canadian hospital.

Sleep need driven oscillation of glutamate synaptic phenotype.

Sleep loss increases AMPA-synaptic strength and number in the neocortex. However, this is only part of the synaptic sleep loss response. We report an increased AMPA/NMDA EPSC ratio in frontal-cortical pyramidal neurons of layers 2-3.

Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia.

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a rare disorder that typically presents in childhood. Affected female infants are most often discovered at birth due to virilized external genitalia, while male infants are diagnosed after newborn screening or, when none is available, during adrenal crisis. CAH is an autosomal recessive disorder with impaired cortisol, and often aldosterone, production, requiring lifelong hormone replacement.

The texture-taste connection: Multimodal sensory neurons in fly larvae.

Eating is a multisensory experience: food's smell, look, and texture are as important as taste. A new study in PLOS Biology shows that fly larvae respond to food texture and integrate information from different modalities within a single gustatory neuron.

Microenvironment actuated CAR T cells improve solid tumor efficacy without toxicity.

A major limiting factor in the success of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for the treatment of solid tumors is targeting tumor antigens also found on normal tissues. CAR T cells against GD2 induced rapid, fatal neurotoxicity because of CAR recognition of GD2 normal mouse brain tissue. To improve the selectivity of the CAR T cell, we engineered a synthetic Notch receptor that selectively expresses the CAR upon binding to P-selectin, a cell adhesion protein overexpressed in tumor neovasculature.