New Genomic Techniques applied to food cultures: a powerful contribution to innovative, safe, and sustainable food products

Nontransgenic New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) have emerged as a promising tool for food industries, allowing food cultures to contribute to an innovative, safe, and more sustainable food system. NGTs have the potential to be applied to microorganisms, delivering on challenging performance traits like texture, flavour, and an increase of nutritional value. This paper brings insights on how nontransgenic NGTs applied to food cultures could be beneficial to the sector, enabling food industries to generate innovative, safe, and sustainable products for European consumers. Microorganisms derived from NGTs have the potentials of becoming an important contribution to achieve the ambitious targets set by the European 'Green Deal' and 'Farm to Fork' policies. To encourage the development of NGT-derived microorganisms, the current EU regulatory framework should be adapted. These technologies allow the introduction of a precise, minimal DNA modification in microbial genomes resulting in optimized products carrying features that could also be achieved by spontaneous natural genetic evolution. The possibility to use NGTs as a tool to improve food safety, sustainability, and quality is the bottleneck in food culture developments, as it currently relies on lengthy natural evolution strategies or on untargeted random mutagenesis.

Live Biotherapeutic Products, A Road Map for Safety Assessment

Recent developments in the understanding of the relationship between the microbiota and its host have provided evidence regarding the therapeutic potential of selected microorganisms to prevent or treat disease. According to Directive 2001/83/EC, in the European Union (EU), any product intended to prevent or treat disease is defined as a medicinal product and requires a marketing authorization by competent authorities prior to commercialization. Even if the pharmaceutical regulatory framework is harmonized at the EU level, obtaining marketing authorisations for medicinal products remains very challenging for Live Biotherapeutic Products (LBPs). Compared to other medicinal products currently on the market, safety assessment of LBPs represents a real challenge because of their specific characteristics and mode of action. Indeed, LBPs are not intended to reach the systemic circulation targeting distant organs, tissues, or receptors, but rather exert their effect through direct interactions with the complex native microbiota and/or the modulation of complex host-microbiota relation, indirectly leading to distant biological effects within the host. Hence, developers must rely on a thorough risk analysis, and pharmaceutical guidelines for other biological products should be taken into account in order to design relevant non-clinical and clinical development programmes. Here we aim at providing a roadmap for a risk analysis that takes into account the specificities of LBPs. We describe the different risks associated with these products and their interactions with the patient. Then, from that risk assessment, we propose solutions to design non-clinical programmes and First in Human (FIH) early clinical trials appropriate to assess LBP safety.

Design of a modified uniform redundant-array mask for portable gamma cameras

Uniform redundant-array masks have been reported as good lenses to form the image of gamma sources, with the correlation between the mask-aperture matrix and the shadows projected on a static position-sensitive detector. We present a modified uniform redundant-array configuration suitable for portable and small-size gamma cameras; its ability to reconstruct the image of several sources is analyzed. We have carried out a Montecarlo simulation of the gamma interactions in the mask, defining the expected response of the correlation process and comparing it with that achieved with the usual uniform redundant-array configurations.

[Experimental model for hemodynamic and metabolic studies of extracorporeal circulation. Apropos of 14 cases]

The authors present an homogeneous and stable experimental model, the basic characteristics of which are: 14 extracorporeal bypass with: total bypass; normothermia; total haemodilution; beating heart; continuous flow in dogs anesthetised with chloralose. Three methods were employed: continuous recording of the venous lactate concentration; invasive electromagnetic measurement of the arterial blood flow; measurement of the tissular capillary blood flow with radioactive labelled microspheres. The statistic treatment of the informations gathered confirms that those experimentations took place in normothermia and constant: pH, venous and arterial pressure, cardiac pacing and arterial carotid blood flow. We noticed no modification of the body electrolytic repartition; blood gas variations do not modify haemodynamic conditions. Increase of the lactate concentration, as noticed in the literature, is in relation with a catecholamine hypersecretion and not with an anaerobic tissular function. Tissular capillary blood flow is constant if reported to cardiac index. This model will allow us to compare those results with new series where only one of the basic elements will be modified.

[Contribution to the scintigraphic diagnosis of malignant endothoracic tumors by 57Co labeled Bleomycin (author's transl)]

The authors report the results of the exploration by 57Co Bleomycin scinitigraphy in 97 thoracic tumors. The Bleo-57Co scintigraphy detects primary and secondary malignant tumors underevaluated by classical tests. In the thorax, the radioactive focus are easily detected on account of the light physiological fixation of the Bleo-57Co. It is particularly interesting in the mediastinal tumors where the picture is not covered by cardiovascular interference. Mediastinal, pleural and costal tumors have been explored. Pulmonary tumors give the best results, they fixe in 93% of the case. All the mediastinal tumors have capted the bleomycin but the authors insist on the fact that the fixation was very light even when the tumor was a large one. The exploration of pleural and costal tumors was less interesting. In conclusion, the Bleo-57Co scintigraphy, gives indications about the volume of the tumor and its spread in the organism. By this method, we can diagnose malignancy in tumor. It can be used to survey cancer patients which have been treated. Nevertheless the long half-life (270 days) and the lack of specificity of the Bleo-57Co for the malignant tumors, justify discussion about indications and the results of such an exploration.

[Influence of inaccuracy of certain parameters on dose distribution in telecobalt therapy (author's transl)]

Progress in dosimetry and in radiobiology together with the evolution of radiation generators led to adopt very elaborated radiotherapy protocols. However, the therapist should have confidence in these protocols on condition that irradiation parameters are strictly respected. For obvious reasons, this is impossible despite the meticulous rules. In this, paper, we therefore intend to study the role of the angle of incidence on the actual distribution of doses; we also study the inaccuracy of certain parameters recorded during preparation for the therapy or shown during successive irradiation courses. In this paper we retain only errors which can be easily quantified. These are errors concerning the irradiation apparatus (source to skin distance, angle of the rays, field dimension) and those due to factors related to the patient treated: contour measurement, entrance point of rays and positional changes of the patient. The different errors can be associated in various ways for a given therapy protocol. For the same reason, an isodose of a given nominal value will have several curves. All these tracings are lined by two curves which we call "superior and inferior envelops": these border the "incertitude area". It can be said that at the end of the treatment, the given isodose lies in this area; it is however impossible to define its form or exact position. A few examples in the text illustrate these results and show the possible practical angles of incidence. If we assume that errors during successive irradiations are distributed at random, a certain compensation is noted and the "areas of incertitude" decrease. But if the errors are constantly on the same side, as is sometimes the case, the dose distribution can be very different from that predicted in the dosimetric protocol.