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Glycosylation is a critical post-translational modification that plays a pivotal role in several biological processes, such as the immune response. Alterations in glycosylation can modulate the course of various pathologies, such as the case of congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDG), a group of more than 160 rare and complex genetic diseases. Although the link between glycosylation and immune dysfunction has already been recognized, the immune involvement in most CDG remains largely unexplored and poorly understood. In this study, we provide an update on the immune dysfunction and clinical manifestations of the 12 CDG with major immune involvement, organized into 6 categories of inborn errors of immunity according to the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). The immune involvement in phosphomannomutase 2 (PMM2)-CDG - the most frequent CDG - was comprehensively reviewed, highlighting a higher prevalence of immune issues during infancy and childhood and in R141H-bearing genotypes. Finally, using PMM2-CDG as a model, we point to links between abnormal glycosylation patterns in host cells and possibly favored interactions with microorganisms that may explain the higher susceptibility to infection. Further characterizing immunopathology and unusual host-pathogen adhesion in CDG can not only improve immunological standards of care but also pave the way for innovative preventive measures and targeted glycan-based therapies that may improve quality of life for people living with CDG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of practical laboratories is a key in engineering education in order to provide our students with the resources needed to acquire practical skills. This is specially true in the case of distance education, where no physical interactions between lecturers and students take place, so virtual or remote laboratories must be used. UNED has developed a system to create and manage virtual remote laboratories, aimed at improving the way how practical exercises are conducted. This system is based on cloud computing and virtualization concepts. These "Virtual Remote Laboratories" (VRLabs) combine features of traditional virtual and remote laboratories but with clear differences over them, among others, VRLabs do not necessarily access real physical devices but are not based on simulations either. Each student is provided with a virtual remote laboratory based on virtualization that he/she will access through the Internet and will use to implement his/her practical assignments. We present details on how these laboratories are implemented for a subject in a post-degree program in our University. Furthermore, we also present an evaluation of the system used on such subject aiming at assessing the quality of the system regarding three different concepts, namely perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived interaction. This evaluation is twofold, first, we have conducted a survey over the students of the subject, and second, we have performed another survey over the teaching team of the subject, both have been performed for the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 academic years.

Simple Summary: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is aggressive, highly metastatic, and associated with poor patient prognosis. Sialyl-Lewis X and A (sLeX/A) are sugars with important roles in cell signalling and metastasis. We aimed to describe the relevance of sLeX/A in TNBC patients and its association with other biomarkers. We identified that sLeX/A negatively correlated with cytokeratins, structural proteins present at the cell cytoskeleton, and are involved in cell attachment, by using patient tissues, cell lines, and datasets. Our data suggests that sLeX/A is decorating proteins such as integrin alpha 6, deregulating cell signalling responsible for hemidesmosome formation, impacting cell adhesion, and promoting metastatic behaviour. This work highlights sLeX/A as an important biomarker behind TNBC malignancy to target and treat this breast cancer type. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) encompasses multiple entities and is generally highly aggressive and metastatic. We aimed to determine the clinical and biological relevance of Sialyl-Lewis X and A (sLeX/A)—a fucosylated glycan involved in metastasis—in TNBC. Here, we studied tissues from 50 TNBC patients, transcripts from a TNBC dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, and a primary breast cancer cell line. All 50 TNBC tissue samples analysed expressed sLeX/A. Patients with high expression of sLeX/A had 3 years less disease-free survival than patients with lower expression. In tissue, sLeX/A negatively correlated with cytokeratins 5/6 (CK5/6, which was corroborated by the inverse correlation between fucosyltransferases and CK5/6 genes. Our observations were confirmed in vitro when inhibition of sLeX/A remarkably increased expression of CK5/6, followed by a decreased proliferation and invasion capacity. Among the reported glycoproteins bearing sLeX/A and based on the STRING tool, α6 integrin showed the highest interaction score with CK5/6. This is the first report on the sLeX/A expression in TNBC, highlighting its association with lower disease-free survival and its inverse crosstalk with CK5/6 with α6 integrin as a mediator. All in all, sLeX/A is critical for TNBC malignancy and a potential prognosis biomarker and therapeutic target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]