Purpose of Review Novel 3D organoid culture techniques have enabled long-term expansion of pancreatic tissue. This review comprehensively summarizes and evaluates the applications of primary tissue... Show morePurpose of Review Novel 3D organoid culture techniques have enabled long-term expansion of pancreatic tissue. This review comprehensively summarizes and evaluates the applications of primary tissue-derived pancreatic organoids in regenerative studies, disease modelling, and personalized medicine.Recent Findings Organoids derived from human fetal and adult pancreatic tissue have been used to study pancreas development and repair. Generated adult human pancreatic organoids harbor the capacity for clonal expansion and endocrine cell formation. In addition, organoids have been generated from human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in order to study tumor behavior and assess drug responses.Summary Pancreatic organoids constitute an important translational bridge between in vitro and in vivo models, enhancing our understanding of pancreatic cell biology. Current applications for pancreatic organoid technology include studies on tissue regeneration, disease modelling, and drug screening. Show less
Several studies have highlighted the uniqueness of the human immune system in early life. Due to the scarceness of human fetal tissues and technical limitations, a system-wide and detailed... Show moreSeveral studies have highlighted the uniqueness of the human immune system in early life. Due to the scarceness of human fetal tissues and technical limitations, a system-wide and detailed phenotypical characterization of the composition and development of the human fetal immune system was lacking. Here, I delineate the composition and development of the human fetal immune system using an array of advanced high-throughput technologies. First, mass cytometry analysis of the innate lymphoid cells revealed a previously unrecognized subset named int-ILC in the fetal intestine, which can give rise to NK cells and ILC3s. Moreover, by combining the acquired datasets from (imaging-) mass cytometry, single-cell RNA-sequencing and TCR sequencing with advanced computational analysis tools and functional analysis this revealed that memory-like CD4+ T cells were already generated in the developing human fetal intestine, indicative of in utero exposure to foreign antigens. Additionally, (imaging-) mass cytometry analysis of the immune cells in the fetal intestine, spleen and liver revealed an early-life immune compartmentalization in these different fetal tissues. Overall, our results deepens the understanding of prenatal immunity and may ultimately be useful for the development of “early” intervention strategies to prevent the development of immune mediated diseases later in life. Show less
The workshop touched upon a multitude of topics. These can be subsumed under the following main headers:It included methodological considerations around doing comparative law and combining methods... Show moreThe workshop touched upon a multitude of topics. These can be subsumed under the following main headers:It included methodological considerations around doing comparative law and combining methods of comparative law with methods from other fields such as history, political science, sociology, computer science and accounting research.Empirically, it focused on understanding how a transplant process actually works and why it takes place, i.e. who the actors are that make a transplant happen. This included meso-level perspectives, focusing on actors such as bureaucracies, experts, lawmakers, companies, accounting firms and others, but also perspectives which focused more on states as a whole and their role as norm makers and takers. The analyses thereby drew from experiences from many different countries around the world and included a number of historical perspectives as well. The participants also discussed evidence on the extent to which convergence is occurring, using the example of the tax treaty system and the implementation of the BEPS standards.Theoretically, several key concepts were discussed such as the notion of “expertise”, “international standard”, the concept of “transplant” itself and possible alternative metaphors as well as the history of the idea. It was also examined how one can approach the empirical fact of transplants or international convergence of rules from a normative and philosophical point of view.This document reports the discussions that took place during the five days in a chronological manner. The last section contains an outline of possible topics and approaches for a follow-up workshop.The report does not systematically differentiate between individual opinions that not everyone might share and consensus. It rather reports which bits and pieces of the debates caught the attention of the reporters and other note takers. It may therefore rather be seen as something stimulating further discussion than a fixed document. Show less
Klapwijk, E.T.; Van de Kamp, F.; Meulen, M. van der; Peters, S.; Wierenga, L.M. 2019
Performing quality control to detect image artifacts and data-processing errors is crucial in structural magnetic resonance imaging, especially in developmental studies. Currently, many studies... Show morePerforming quality control to detect image artifacts and data-processing errors is crucial in structural magnetic resonance imaging, especially in developmental studies. Currently, many studies rely on visual inspection by trained raters for quality control. The subjectivity of these manual procedures lessens comparability between studies, and with growing study sizes quality control is increasingly time consuming. In addition, both inter-rater as well as intra-rater variability of manual quality control is high and may lead to inclusion of poor quality scans and exclusion of scans of usable quality. In the current study we present the Qoala-T tool, which is an easy and free to use supervised-learning model to reduce rater bias and misclassification in manual quality control procedures using FreeSurfer-processed scans. First, we manually rated quality of N = 784 FreeSurfer-processed T1-weighted scans acquired in three different waves in a longitudinal study. Different supervised-learning models were then compared to predict manual quality ratings using FreeSurfer segmented output data. Results show that the Qoala-T tool using random forests is able to predict scan quality with both high sensitivity and specificity (mean area under the curve (AUC) = 0.98). In addition, the Qoala-T tool was also able to adequately predict the quality of two novel unseen datasets (total N = 872). Finally, analyses of age effects showed that younger participants were more likely to have lower scan quality, underlining that scan quality might confound findings attributed to age effects. These outcomes indicate that this procedure could further help to reduce variability related to manual quality control, thereby benefiting the comparability of data quality between studies. Show less
