ACGT: advancing clinico-genomic trials on cancer - four years of experience.

The challenges regarding seamless integration of distributed, heterogeneous and multilevel data arising in the context of contemporary, post-genomic clinical trials cannot be effectively addressed with current methodologies. An urgent need exists to access data in a uniform manner, to share information among different clinical and research centers, and to store data in secure repositories assuring the privacy of patients. Advancing Clinico-Genomic Trials (ACGT) was a European Commission funded Integrated Project that aimed at providing tools and methods to enhance the efficiency of clinical trials in the -omics era. The project, now completed after four years of work, involved the development of both a set of methodological approaches as well as tools and services and its testing in the context of real-world clinico-genomic scenarios. This paper describes the main experiences using the ACGT platform and its tools within one such scenario and highlights the very promising results obtained.

Strength and stiffness of repaired tendons

Rotator cuff tears of the shoulder are a common cause of pain and disability. Although surgery is frequently beneficial, re-tearing of the tendons is likely to re-occur. In many cases even if the reparation is successful it will still generate discomfort, problems with mobility, as well as a sharp pain. This project is funded in the cooperation with the Hospital Clinico San Carlos de Madrid. The purpose of this work is to analyze the effect of the surgical repair and the application of different therapies, including mesenchymal stem cell therapy on the biomechanical properties (strength and stiffness) of the repaired tendon. An animal model of rotator cuff tendon reparations has been developed on laboratory rats.To obtain the mechanical response of the healthy and repaired tendons, it was necessary to develop an experimental set up to reproduce the in-vivo working conditions of the tendons (37 ºC, immersed in physiological serum), and especially the load transfer. The biomechanical properties (maximum load and stiffness) have been measured in healthy and repaired tendons. A total of 70 rats are used in this particular study. It has been found that the repaired tendon is stronger than the original on. However, the repaired tendons demonstrate less flexibility than the healthy (original) ones prior to the damage

Aparcamiento subterráneo en el Hospital Clínico San Carlos de Madrid

El presente documento tiene por objetivo la explicacion y justificacion de todos aquellos elementos que conforman el proyecto de construccion del Aparcamiento subterraneo en el Hospital Clinico San Carlos. En primer lugar se ha realizado el Estudio Previo de Soluciones, en el que se han estudiado distintas alternativas posibles para la realizacion del aparcamiento subterraneo. Tras haberlas disenado, descrito, y contrastado, se escogio la que conllevaba el mejor compendio de virtudes segun los parametros o conceptos establecidos. Una vez escogida la solucion, en la fase de estudios que nos ocupa, se procedio a redactar el proyecto de construccion propiamente dicho. Esto implica desarrollar la solucion a fondo, definiendo todos sus elementos. Para ello, se preciso de unos estudios con gran nivel de detalle que sirvieron de base para los el diseno, los calculos, y el desarrollo tecnico que ello conlleva.