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Background Carbohydrate-specific IgE antibodies present on nonprimate mammalian proteins were incriminated recently in delayed meat anaphylaxis. The aim of this study was to explore whether anaphylaxis to mammalian kidney is also associated with galactose-α-1,3-galactose (αGal)-specific IgE. Methods Fourteen patients with anaphylaxis to pork or beef kidney underwent prick tests to meat and kidney. Some patients also underwent skin tests to Erbitux® (cetuximab). IgE antibodies to αGal, swine urine proteins, beef and pork meat, serum albumin proteins, cat, and rFel d 1 were measured by ImmunoCAP®. The αGal levels were estimated in meats and kidney by ELISA inhibition assay. Cross-reactivity between αGal and pork kidney was studied with the ImmunoCAP® inhibition assay. Results Among the 14 patients, 12 presented with anaphylactic shock. Reactions occurred within 2 h from exposure in 67% of patients. Associated risk factors were observed in 10 cases, and alcohol was the main cofactor. Three patients underwent an oral challenge to pork kidney, and anaphylaxis occurred after ingestion of small quantities (1–2 g). Prick tests to kidney were positive in 54% of patients. All tested patients showed positive skin tests to Erbitux®. All patients tested positive for IgE to αGal, with levels ranging from 0.4 to 294 kU/l. IgE binding to αGal was inhibited by raw pork kidney extract (mean, 77%; range, 55–87%), which showed a high amount of αGal determinants. Conclusions Pork or beef kidney anaphylaxis is related to αGal IgE. Its peculiar severity could be due to an elevated content of αGal epitopes in kidney.

International audience; OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the understanding of health professionals involved in first-trimester ultrasound screening of the ethical stakes involved by addressing three questions regarding: how much these professionals know about Down syndrome screening by nuchal translucency thickness measurement; their personal opinion with respect to this screening test; and their attitude with respect to their patients, in order to answer the question: 'Are ethical principles respected when women are proposed ultrasound screening during the first trimester of pregnancy?' METHODS: We studied the medical population in the east part of France by sending a questionnaire to each of 460 medical correspondents. This questionnaire attempted to evaluate the respondent's level of medical knowledge, their personal opinion with respect to first-trimester screening and their attitude towards their patients. We adapted the three-dimensional diagram designed by Marteau et al. to develop a measure of informed choice regarding screening. Only health professionals who were relatively well informed and adopted an autonomy-oriented approach were considered to be in a position to obtain true consent from their patients, respecting ethical principles in terms of competence and the autonomy of patients. RESULTS: We received 276 (60%) responses to the questionnaire. Only 31.9% of health professionals had an approach that facilitated obtaining true consent from their patients and respected the ethical principles of competence and patient autonomy; 46% were in favor of the screening test and adopted an autonomy-oriented approach but were poorly informed; and 15.4% had a directive-authoritarian approach combined with poor knowledge. Regression analysis showed that two independent factors (speciality (P = 0.031) and location of practice (P = 0.034)) affected the level of medical knowledge, and two independent factors (location of practice (P = 0.034) and the type of medical practice i.e. public or private (P < 0.05)) affected the opinion of health professionals about the screening test. Two independent factors (speciality (P < 0.001) and the age of the health professional (P = 0.02)) affected the attitudes of health professionals towards their patients. CONCLUSION: The answer to the question 'Are ethical principles respected when women are proposed ultrasound screening during the first trimester of pregnancy?' is clearly 'No'. Major effort is required to ensure that the decisions made by patients are based on a possibility of true choice.

International audience; Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and embryonic germ cells (EGCs) provide exciting models for understanding the underlying mechanisms that make a cell pluripotent. Indeed, such understanding would enable dedifferentiation and reprogrammation of any cell type from a patient needing a cell therapy treatment. Proteome analysis has emerged as an important technology for deciphering these biological processes and thereby ESC and EGC proteomes are increasingly studied. Nevertheless, their nuclear proteomes have only been poorly investigated up to now. In order to investigate signaling pathways potentially involved in pluripotency, proteomic analyses have been performed on mouse ESC and EGC nuclear proteins. Nuclei from ESCs and EGCs at undifferentiated stage were purified by subcellular fractionation. After 2-D separation, a subtractive strategy (subtracting culture environment contaminating spots) was applied and a comparison of ESC, (8.5 day post co?m (dpc))-EGC and (11.5 dpc)-EGC specific nuclear proteomes was performed. A total of 33 ESC, 53 (8.5 dpc)-EGC, and 36 (11.5 dpc)-EGC spots were identified by MALDI-TOF-MS and/or nano-LC-MS/MS. This approach led to the identification of two isoforms (with and without N-terminal acetylation) of a known pluripotency marker, namely developmental pluripotency associated 5 (DPPA5), which has never been identified before in 2-D gel-MS studies of ESCs and EGCs. Furthermore, we demonstrated the efficiency of our subtracting strategy, in association with a nuclear subfractionation by the identification of a new protein (protein arginine N-methyltransferase 7; PRMT7) behaving as proteins involved in pluripotency.

The history of stem cell research is considered a recent one, yet, it began as early as the middle of the nineteenth century and is rich in questions, approaches, concepts, tools, methodologies and lines of thought. There are at least nine disciplines or research fields which have made major contributions: botany and horticulture; cell theory; evolutionary biology; embryology and developmental biology; haematology; cell and tissue culture; regeneration biology; teratology and teratogeny and cancer research. Moreover, as soon as efforts aimed at extracting and culturing pluripotent cells from human embryos proved successful in 1998, stem cells became objects of bioethical controversy. The moral status of the embryo will be discussed, together with proposed technical means to avoid its destruction, such as altered nuclear transfer, single blastomere biopsy, cytoplasmic hybrids and induced pluripotent stem cells, and the possible ethical problems associated with future medical uses of stem cells. Key Concepts: Far from being a simple technology or a commodity, the study of stem cells concerns a broad spectrum of issues lying at the heart of the phenomenon of life itself, and thus touches on questions that have been on the agenda of biological inquiry for a long time. Like most biological research fields, the history of stem cell research shows a constant weaving and unweaving of many concepts and tools, coming from different experimental settings, lines of thought and at least nine different biomedical areas. At some moments of its history, the ‘stem cell’ has become a more concrete and even manageable object, at other moments it was found difficult to localise the phenomenon of self-renewal in one or in a few cells. Recently, stem cell research is characterised by harsh bioethical controversy, mainly revolving around the issue of the moral status of human embryos. Scientists have proposed some technical ways for circumventing ethical problems, but other morally relevant issues still lie before stem cell research. In the future, medical innovation through stem cell-based regenerative medicine is likely to give rise to issues regarding safety, ethical oversight and distributive justice. Keywords: regeneration; embryo; bioethics; altered nuclear transfer (ANT); induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell; cybrid; distributive justice