Incell Corporation (United States)

The colonization of the infant gut microbiome during the critical window of 0-3 years is influenced by a multitude of prenatal, environmental and host factors, and may be crucial for life-long health. The infant gut microbiome is highly dynamic, with bifidobacteria-dominance generally established during birth and lactation, followed by transition to a more stable and adult-like composition reached around 3 years of age. Bifidobacteria-dominance in infancy is considered protective as they not only display both anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects but also foster the establishment of other beneficial species via cross-feeding interactions. As predominance of bifidobacteria is considered the marker of a healthy breastfed infant, the use of bifidobacteria-based probiotics for the prevention of gut dysbiosis and related conditions has been investigated. This clinically oriented summary highlights the unmet research needs of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis, BB-12® (BB-12), a well-studied probiotic added to baby formulas, dietary supplements, and fermented milk products; several potentially beneficial attributes, including acid and bile tolerance, strong adherence properties, pathogen inhibition, and immune modulation are considered. Clinical studies have demonstrated the safety and beneficial effects of BB-12 in infants and children across multiple disorders and highlight the need for improved clinical and regulatory guidelines.

T cell fratricide in T cell antigen-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapies remains a critical barrier to achieving optimal antitumor efficacy. To address this challenge, we explored modulation of antigen-binding affinity as a simple yet effective strategy to mitigate fratricide. To this end, we aimed to develop low-affinity CD5-specific CAR-T cells and to test the hypothesis that low-affinity CD5 CAR-T cells can evade T cell fratricide, thereby alleviating T cell exhaustion and enhancing sustained antitumor activity. Our results demonstrate that CD5 CAR-T cells engineered with low-affinity monoclonal antibodies exhibit significantly reduced fratricide and diminished T cell exhaustion in the infusion product compared to high-affinity counterparts such as the standard H65 and A2 clones, which is assumed to correlate with improved long-term antitumor responses. These findings establish antigen-binding affinity modulation as a promising alternative to extensive gene editing approaches, potentially simplifying CD5 CAR-T cell manufacturing while improving therapeutic outcomes.

The study was being carried out in Gambella town, south-western Ethiopia. This work was explored the influence of community participation; community capacity building and the practice of monitoring and evaluation on viability of environmental conservation projects executed by CSOs. Many civil society organizations are involved in areas of development, environmental conservation, and poverty alleviation through a spectrum of activities to deliver services. However, viability of the project outcomes usually faces a myriad of challenges. The general objective of the research was to assess the viability of CSOs based environmental conservation projects execution in Gambella town, South-Western Ethiopia. This research addresses the influence of Community participation; community capacity building and monitoring & evaluation on project sustainability. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to pick 87 project beneficiaries of different projects, and the collected data was analysed by the use of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Correlation was used to measure the strength of influence of the independent variables on project sustainability. The findings of this research work revealed that community participation showed the strongest influence on project sustainability with a coefficient of 0.95 followed by community capacity building and monitoring and evaluation, recorded a coefficient of 0.825 and 0.635 respectively. A Regression model was used to determine the relationship between sustainability and the independent variables and the Regression results explained 78 % as the sustainability of projects implemented. Regression model gave a constant of 2.064 with community participation, capacity building and practice of monitoring and evaluation having 1.956, 0.647 and 0.128 coefficients respectively. The researcher established that there was a significant positive relationship (r = .635, p < .05) between monitoring and evaluation and the sustainability of projects. It was concluded that community participation, capacity building and the findings suggest that strengthening community participation, systematically building local capacity, and institutionalizing monitoring and evaluation are critical for enhancing the sustainability of CSO‑led environmental conservation projects.

Introduction: Intraocular lens (IOL) mislabeling is an exceptionally rare yet consequential manufacturing error. In this case, it was identified as the cause of a significant postoperative myopic shift. The diagnostic approach, integrating anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) and ex vivo lens analysis, proved essential in reconciling the discrepancy between predicted and observed refractive outcomes. Patient and Clinical Findings: A 57-year-old highly myopic patient with a history of retinal detachment in the right eye underwent uneventful cataract surgery with the implantation of a +6.00 diopters (D) enhanced monofocal IOL (TECNIS Eyhance) in the right eye. Postoperatively, the patient exhibited an unexpected refraction of −13.00 D. Diagnosis, Intervention, and Outcomes: Surgical records confirmed correct IOL selection and implantation. AS-OCT imaging revealed a steeper optic profile than that expected for a low-diopter lens. Optical modeling estimated the lens power to be +18.43 D. The lens was explanted, and ex vivo lensometry confirmed its true power to be +21.00 D. Implantation of a correctly labeled +6.00 D IOL restored the intended refractive target, achieving a corrected distance visual acuity of logMAR 0.0. Conclusions: Although this case involved an extreme refractive surprise, IOL mislabeling should be considered in any unexpected postoperative refractive outcome, particularly when clinical findings and surgical records do not align. Advanced imaging and optical analyses may be key to confirming the diagnosis.

Background: High social support is easily assessed and associated with a healthier lifestyle, including vaccination adherence. Similarly, immunization is a widely available public health statistic associated with healthier behaviors. However, the link between the hepatitis immunization status and social support needs to be explored. Methods: We assessed the association between levels of social support and hepatitis immunization status using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a cross-sectional multidisciplinary database publicly available for researchers. With 2005–2006 data, 2997 participants were included. Statistical analyses were conducted using STATA18.5v software, including the odds ratio of both univariable logistic regression and multivariable logistic regression. After adjusting for clinically relevant confounders, two distinct models were designed: 1) full immunization, and 2) incomplete immunization. Results: Multivariable analysis revealed significantly greater odds of high social support for participants fully or partially immunized against both hepatitis A and B: 3.15 (95% CI 1.03–9.66,p=0.04) and 3.35 (95% CI 1.15–9.75,p=0.03), respectively. Conclusion: Our findings show an association between vaccination and social support in both adjusted models. Individuals not vaccinated at all may behave differently from those willing to be, at least partially, immunized. It seems that a similar behavior that may lead to vaccination may also lead to increased social support. Therefore, our study suggests that hepatitis vaccination could perhaps be a surrogate marker for public-health-related outcomes.

We present an overview of the performance and improvements of the Occultation Detection neural Network framework: ODNet, a convolutional neural network for asteroid occultation detection (Cazeneuve+ 2023). ODNet is the backbone of the occultation detection program of the Unistellar network; an expanding network of 15,000+ smart telescopes distributed around the world that allows citizen scientists to join various observational campaigns and provide invaluable data for multitude of scientific projects.The original ODNet was built using the TensorFlow architecture and was trained on mostly synthetic data. The purpose of ODNet is to provide an independent and reproducible measure of the likelihood of the occultation event in the observed data set (a set of individual image frames), remove any influence of human analysis, and to allow a fully autonomous detection of occultations in all Unistellar observations in the occultations campaign.The original results were promising. ODNet was able to analyze raw data from occultation events in minutes with very high precision (91%) and recall (87%). This enabled a completely automated pipeline that is able to handle multiple occultation events per day from multiple locations and observers. However, as more observations were made and different observing configurations, conditions, and telescope models appeared the efficiency and precision of the original model was not satisfactory.Here, we present improvements to the original ODNet framework by increasing its precision and recall to >95%, ability to handle very short occultation events (

T cell malignancies, such as T cell lymphoma and leukemia (T-NHL/T-ALL), present substantial challenges to conventional first-line therapies, highlighting an urgent need for novel therapeutic approaches. CAR-T therapies targeting T-cell-specific antigens have emerged as promising strategies against these cancers. However, the risk of tumor contamination by patient-derived T cells underscores the necessity for developing allogeneic, blast-free CAR-T therapies. Healthy donor-derived γδ T cells are attractive candidates for allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy due to their blast-free nature and the minimal risk of inducing Graft-versus-Host Disease (GvHD). Nevertheless, the difficulties in large-scale expansion and limited in vivo efficacy remain substantial obstacles to clinical application. To overcome these limitations, we aimed to enhance both the expansion and in vivo efficacy of anti-CD5 γδ CAR-T (γδCAR5) cells by incorporating “signal-3” supplement. A membrane-bound cytokine approach was employed to ensure targeted “signal 3” supplement specifically to CAR-T cells, promoting controlled expansion and activation. Among various cytokines engineered in membrane-bound forms (IL-2, IL-12, IL-15, IL-18, IL-21, and IL-36γ), only membrane-bound IL-18 (mbIL-18) induced a more than 10-fold increase in γδCAR5 cell expansion in vitro and demonstrated robust anti-tumor efficacy in a T-ALL xenograft model. Furthermore, knockdown of CD5 and PD-1, which are associated with fratricide and immunosuppression, respectively, further maximized the anti-tumor activity of γδCAR5-mbIL-18. Consequently, this multi-armoring strategy, which integrates enhanced proliferative capacity, fratricide resistance, and immune checkpoint evasion, represents an innovative approach to maximizing the therapeutic efficacy of allogeneic cell therapies for T cell malignancies. This study provides a promising framework for the advancement of more effective CAR-T therapies against challenging T cell cancers. Citation Format: Yu Ri Seo, Hyeong Ji Lee, Seung Rok Yu, Hyo Bhin Lee, Je Ho Lee, Hyung Cheol Kim, Youngho Lee. Multi-armored allogeneic CD5 γδ CAR T cells enhance anti-tumor efficacy in T cell malignancies [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2025; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2025 Apr 25-30; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2025;85(8_Suppl_1):Abstract nr 4813.