What constitutes meaningful benefit of cancer drugs in the context of LMICs? A mixed-methods study of oncologists' perceptions on endpoints, benefit, price, and value of cancer drugs.

Background: The importance of surrogate endpoints, magnitude of clinical benefit of cancer drugs, and their prices have often been debated in the oncology world. No study, however, has systemically explored oncologists' perception regarding these issues.

Methods: We conducted a mixed-methods study including in-depth qualitative interviews of medical oncologists prescribing cancer drug therapy in India.

A Brief Report on Pre-Transfusion Testing in Patients Receiving the Anti-CD38 Monoclonal Antibody for Hematological Disorders in India.

Unlabelled: The aim of this study is to analyze the profile of patients receiving daratumumab and their presentation to the transfusion laboratory by looking at the different pre-transfusion policies and the risk of erythrocyte alloimmunization. Patients receiving daratumumab from 2018 to 2023 were reviewed. They were divided into two groups: Group I, presented before administration of daratumumab, and Group II, presented after drug administration.

Data-driven discovery of chemotactic migration of bacteria via coordinate-invariant machine learning.

Background: E. coli chemotactic motion in the presence of a chemonutrient field can be studied using wet laboratory experiments or macroscale-level partial differential equations (PDEs) (among others). Bridging experimental measurements and chemotactic Partial Differential Equations requires knowledge of the evolution of all underlying fields, initial and boundary conditions, and often necessitates strong assumptions.

Harnessing an elastic flow instability to improve the kinetic performance of chromatographic columns.

Despite decades of research and development, the optimal efficiency of slurry-packed HPLC columns is still hindered by inherent long-range flow heterogeneity from the wall to the central bulk region of these columns. Here, we show an example of how this issue can be addressed through the straightforward addition of a semidilute amount (500 ppm) of a large, flexible, synthetic polymer (18 MDa partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide, HPAM) to the mobile phase (1% NaCl aqueous solution, hereafter referred to as "brine") during operation of a 4.6 mm × 300 mm column packed with 10μm BEH 125 Å particles.

Soft matter physics of the ground beneath our feet.

The soft part of the Earth's surface - the ground beneath our feet - constitutes the basis for life and natural resources, yet a general physical understanding of the ground is still lacking. In this critical time of climate change, cross-pollination of scientific approaches is urgently needed to better understand the behavior of our planet's surface. The major topics in current research in this area cross different disciplines, spanning geosciences, and various aspects of engineering, material sciences, physics, chemistry, and biology.

Harnessing elastic instabilities for enhanced mixing and reaction kinetics in porous media.

Turbulent flows have been used for millennia to mix solutes; a familiar example is stirring cream into coffee. However, many energy, environmental, and industrial processes rely on the mixing of solutes in porous media where confinement suppresses inertial turbulence. As a result, mixing is drastically hindered, requiring fluid to permeate long distances for appreciable mixing and introducing additional steps to drive mixing that can be expensive and environmentally harmful.

A novel syphilis Treponema pallidum lipoprotein peptide antigen diagnostic assay using red cell kodecytes in routine blood centre column agglutination testing platforms.

Background And Objectives: The detection of treponemal antibodies, which are used to make a diagnosis of syphilis, is important both for diagnostic purposes and as a mandatory blood donor test in most countries. We evaluated the feasibility of using Kode Technology to make syphilis peptide red cell kodecytes for use in column agglutination serologic platforms.

Materials And Methods: Candidate Kode Technology function-spacer-lipid (FSL) constructs were made for the Treponema pallidum lipoprotein (TmpA) of T.

Progress and Challenges in Measles and Rubella Elimination in the WHO European Region.

The elimination of both measles and rubella remains a priority for all 53 Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region. To provide an update on the epidemiological status of measles and rubella in the Region, we reviewed surveillance data on both diseases for 2023 submitted monthly by national surveillance institutions. We analyzed the cases of measles and rubella for 2023 by age group, case classification, vaccination, hospitalization, and importation status and report on measles-related deaths.

A national survey of current immunohematologic testing practices for the diagnosis of autoimmune hemolytic anemia in India.

Autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) is a common term for several disorders that differ from one another in terms of etiology, pathogenesis, clinical features, and treatment. Management of patients with AIHA has become increasingly evidence-based in recent years. While this development has resulted in therapeutic improvements, it also carries increased requirements for optimal diagnosis using more advanced laboratory tests.

Influence of bacterial swimming and hydrodynamics on attachment of phages.

Bacteriophages ("phages") are viruses that infect bacteria. Since they do not actively self-propel, phages rely on thermal diffusion to find target cells-but can also be advected by fluid flows, such as those generated by motile bacteria themselves in bulk fluids. How does the flow field generated by a swimming bacterium influence how it encounters phages? Here, we address this question using coupled molecular dynamics and lattice Boltzmann simulations of flagellated bacteria swimming through a bulk fluid containing uniformly-dispersed phages.

Morphogenesis of bacterial colonies in polymeric environments.

Many bacteria live in polymeric fluids, such as mucus, environmental polysaccharides, and extracellular polymers in biofilms. However, lab studies typically focus on cells in polymer-free fluids. Here, we show that interactions with polymers shape a fundamental feature of bacterial life-how they proliferate in space in multicellular colonies.

Management of autoimmune haemolytic anaemia in low-to-middle income countries: current challenges and the way forward.

Autoimmune haemolytic anaemia (AIHA) is a common term for several disorders that differ from one another in terms of aetiology, pathogenesis, clinical features, and treatment. Therapy is becoming increasingly differentiated and evidence-based, and several new established and investigational therapeutic approaches have appeared during recent years. While this development has resulted in therapeutic improvements, it also carries increased medical and financial requirements for optimal diagnosis, subgrouping, and individualization of therapy, including the use of more advanced laboratory tests and expensive drugs.

Interplay between environmental yielding and dynamic forcing modulates bacterial growth.

Many bacterial habitats-ranging from gels and tissues in the body to cell-secreted exopolysaccharides in biofilms-are rheologically complex, undergo dynamic external forcing, and have unevenly distributed nutrients. How do these features jointly influence how the resident cells grow and proliferate? Here, we address this question by studying the growth of Escherichia coli dispersed in granular hydrogel matrices with defined and highly tunable structural and rheological properties, under different amounts of external forcing imposed by mechanical shaking, and in both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Our experiments establish a general principle: that the balance between the yield stress of the environment that the cells inhabit, σ, and the external stress imposed on the environment, σ, modulates bacterial growth by altering transport of essential nutrients to the cells.

Conference report: Introducing oncology to undergraduate medical and allied health sciences students: reflections from 2nd cancer TMC Oncology Congress 2023 at Kolkata, India.

Despite the high cancer burden in low-middle-income-countries, medical students often have inadequate exposure to oncology. This may contribute to reduced interest in pursuing training in the field. The second ecancer TMC Oncology Congress at Kolkata on 30th September and 1st October 2023 was planned primarily to introduce undergraduate medical and allied health science students to oncology.

Evaluating the hepatitis B vaccination impact in the Republic of Moldova: A nationwide representative serosurvey of children born in 2013.

Objectives: The WHO European Region set targets for the control of hepatitis B through immunization, including prevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) at ≤0.5% in vaccinated cohorts. The Republic of Moldova implemented universal hepatitis B vaccination since 1995.

3D Printing Bacteria to Study Motility and Growth in Complex 3D Porous Media.

Bacteria are ubiquitous in complex three-dimensional (3D) porous environments, such as biological tissues and gels, and subsurface soils and sediments. However, the majority of previous work has focused on studies of cells in bulk liquids or at flat surfaces, which do not fully recapitulate the complexity of many natural bacterial habitats. Here, this gap in knowledge is addressed by describing the development of a method to 3D-print dense colonies of bacteria into jammed granular hydrogel matrices.

Molecular basis of DEL phenotype in the Indian population: Insights from next-generation sequencing analysis of two cases.

The DEL phenotype represents an intriguing and challenging aspect of blood group serology. This condition is characterized by an extremely weak expression of the D antigen on red blood cells, to the extent that it often eludes detection through routine serological methods. Identifying the DEL phenotype necessitates more specialized techniques, such as adsorption and elution tests, to reveal the presence of the D antigen.

Obstructed swelling and fracture of hydrogels.

Obstructions influence the growth and expansion of bodies in a wide range of settings-but isolating and understanding their impact can be difficult in complex environments. Here, we study obstructed growth/expansion in a model system accessible to experiments, simulations, and theory: hydrogels swelling around fixed cylindrical obstacles with varying geometries. When the obstacles are large and widely-spaced, hydrogels swell around them and remain intact.

Using Social Constructivist Learning Theory to Unpack General Practitioners' Learning Preferences of End-of-Life Care: A Systematically Constructed Narrative Review.

General practitioners play a vital role in providing community-based palliative care to patients reaching end of life. In order for GPs to upgrade their skills at end-of-life care delivery, it is imperative that training programs be aligned to their learning needs and preferences. A narrative review was conducted using the electronic databases PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane from 01/01/1990 to 31/05/2021.

Interfacial morphodynamics of proliferating microbial communities.

In microbial communities, various cell types often coexist by occupying distinct spatial domains. What determines the shape of the interface between such domains-which in turn influences the interactions between cells and overall community function? Here, we address this question by developing a continuum model of a 2D spatially-structured microbial community with two distinct cell types. We find that, depending on the balance of the different cell proliferation rates and substrate friction coefficients, the interface between domains is either stable and smooth, or unstable and develops finger-like protrusions.

Tough and Recyclable Phase-Separated Supramolecular Gels via a Dehydration-Hydration Cycle.

Hydrogels are compelling materials for emerging applications including soft robotics and autonomous sensing. Mechanical stability over an extensive range of environmental conditions and considerations of sustainability, both environmentally benign processing and end-of-life use, are enduring challenges. To make progress on these challenges, we designed a dehydration-hydration approach to transform soft and weak hydrogels into tough and recyclable supramolecular phase-separated gels (PSGs) using water as the only solvent.