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"Biotechnology Cuba."
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Socialism and the Knowledge Economy: Cuban Biotechnology
As authoritatively stated in an editorial in Nature, vol. 436, issue 7049 (July 2005), \"Cuba has developed a considerable (scientific] research capability -- perhaps more so than any other developing country outside of Southeast Asia.\" Cuba has been especially successful in establishing a biotechnology industry that has effectively introduced drugs & vaccines of its own, along with a nascent pharmaceutical industry that has achieved considerable success in exports. Its agriculture & health sectors have been strong beneficiaries of its scientific research. As Nature observed: \"It is worth asking how Cuba did it, & what lessons other countries might draw from it.\" Indeed, the Cuban case is all the more surprising since it is not only a poor country, but one that has been confronted for decades by a ruthless embargo imposed by the United States, which has been extended to scientific knowledge. Moreover; much of Cuba's scientific progress has occurred in the decade & a half since the fall of the Soviet Union, which previously had aided it economically & technologically. According to Nature, Cuba's remarkable success can be partly explained by heavy investments in education at all levels, including the promotion of literacy & numeracy in its population as a whole. But more distinctive even than this is the fact that Cuba's science is \"ruthlessly applied,\" aimed at addressing social problems. \"Cuba's state sponsored science is structured like a corporate research laboratory, except that its output consists of social outcomes, rather than commercial products.\" Free from the commercial constraints that capitalism places on scientific development, Cuba has promoted a different organization of science for different ends, & therein has constituted its advantage. The following article by Dr. Agustin Lage Davila, the director of the Center for Molecular Immunology in Havana, explains the way in which socialism in the knowledge economy has revolutionized Cuban science, accounting for some of its most important achievements. Adapted from the source document.
Journal Article
Immune responses after fractional doses of inactivated poliovirus vaccine using newly developed intradermal jet injectors: A randomized controlled trial in Cuba
The World Health Organization recommends that, as part of the new polio endgame, a dose of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) be introduced by the end of 2015 in all countries using only oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV). Administration of fractional dose (1/5th of full dose) IPV (fIPV) intradermally may reduce costs, but its administration is cumbersome with BCG needle and syringe. We evaluated performance of two newly developed intradermal-only jet injectors and compared the immune response induced by fIPV with that induced by full-dose IPV.
Children between 12 and 20 months of age, who had previously received two doses of OPV, were enrolled in Camaguey, Cuba. Subjects received a single dose of IPV (either full-dose IPV intramuscularly with needle and syringe or fIPV intradermally administered with one of two new injectors or with BCG needle or a conventional needle-free injector). Serum was tested for presence of poliovirus neutralizing antibodies on day 0 (pre-IPV) and on days 3, 7 and 21 (post-vaccination).
Complete data were available from 74.2% (728/981) subjects. Baseline median antibody titers were 713, 284, and 113 for poliovirus types 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Seroprevalence at study end were similar across the intervention groups (≥94.8%). The immune response induced with one new injector was similar to BCG needle and to the conventional injector; and superior to the other new injector. fIPV induced significantly lower boosting response compared to full-dose IPV. No safety concerns were identified.
One of the two new injectors demonstrated its ability to streamline intradermal fIPV administration, however, further investigations are needed to assess the potential contribution of fIPV in the polio endgame plan.
Journal Article
ECOLOGICAL OPPORTUNITY AND THE RATE OF MORPHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION IN THE DIVERSIFICATION OF GREATER ANTILLEAN ANOLES
The pace of phenotypic diversification during adaptive radiation should decrease as ecological opportunity declines. We test this prediction using phylogenetic comparative analyses of a wide range of morphological traits in Greater Antillean Anolis lizards. We find that the rate of diversification along two important axes of Anolis radiation—body size and limb dimensions—decreased as opportunity declined, with opportunity quantified either as time elapsed in the radiation or as the diversity of competing anole lineages inferred to have been present on an island at different times in the past. Most previous studies of the ecological opportunity hypothesis have focused on the rate of species diversification; our results provide a complementary perspective, indicating that the rate of phenotypic diversification declines with decreasing opportunity in an adaptive radiation.
Journal Article
Artificial neural network and decision tree–based models for prediction and validation of in vitro organogenesis of two hydrophytes—Hemianthus callitrichoides and Riccia fluitans
The application of plant tissue culture protocols for aquatic plants has been widely adopted in recent years to produce cost-effective plants for aquarium industry.
In vitro
regeneration protocol for the two different hydrophytes
Hemianthus callitrichoides
(Cuba) and
Riccia fluitans
were optimized for appropriate basal medium, sucrose, agar, and plant growth regulator concentration. The MS No:3B and SH + MSVit basal medium yielded a maximum clump diameter of 5.53 cm for
H. callitrichoides
and 3.65 cm for
R. fluitans
. The application of 20 g/L sucrose was found appropriate for yielding larger clumps in both species. Solidification of the medium with 1 g/L agar was optimized for inducing larger clumps with rooting for both species. Provision of basal medium with any concentration of 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) and α-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) was found detrimental for inducing larger clumps for both species. The largest clumps of
H. callitrichoides
(5.51 cm) and
R. fluitans
(4.59 cm) were obtained on basal medium without any plant growth regulators. The attained data was also predicted and validated by employing multilayer perceptron (MLP), random forest (RF), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) algorithms. The performance of the models was tested with three different performance metrics, namely, coefficient of regression (
R
2
), means square error (MSE), and mean absolute error (MAE). Results revealed that MLP and RF models performed better than the XGBoost model. The protocols developed in this study have shown promising outcomes and the findings can irrefutably assist to produce
H. callitrichoides
and
R. fluitans
on a large scale for the local aquarium industry.
Graphical Abstract
Journal Article
Cuba: the collapse of a healthcare system. An appeal to the medical community and international institutions.
Historically a model of excellence and international cooperation, the Cuban healthcare system is now in a state of documented collapse. With a density of 8.4 doctors per thousand inhabitants, the island is facing an unprecedented crisis: survival rates for childhood cancers have fallen from 80% to 65%, and nearly 100,000 people are on surgical waiting lists due to shortages of medicines, oxygen and anaesthetics. The structural causes lie in the tightening of the embargo, the effects of the pandemic and the recent cut-off of Venezuelan energy supplies, which is forcing hospitals to endure power cuts of up to twenty hours a day. The crisis also threatens public biotechnology innovation, a pillar of regional health sovereignty. The appeal urges the global medical community to break the silence, calling for the immediate suspension of sanctions on essential goods, the establishment of humanitarian corridors and the recognition of restrictions on care as a violation of fundamental human rights.
Journal Article
Priming after a Fractional Dose of Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine
Post-polio eradication planning is under way. In this randomized trial, a fractional dose (one fifth) of the inactivated polio vaccine given intradermally in 4-month-old infants in Cuba induced priming and seroconversion in more than 90% of infants.
In 1988, the World Health Assembly resolved to eradicate poliomyelitis globally by the year 2000.
1
Although substantial progress toward the eradication goal has been achieved, by the end of 2010,
2
poliovirus types 1 and 3 continued to circulate in four countries in which poliomyelitis is endemic, and periodic importations led to epidemic spread in more than 20 countries in 2009 and 2010.
3
–
5
Concurrently, progress in India suggested that interruption of transmission might be feasible in 2011,
6
and indeed, no cases of infection with wild-type poliovirus have been reported in India since January 13, 2011.
7
In tandem with these eradication . . .
Journal Article
Population-wide weight loss and regain in relation to diabetes burden and cardiovascular mortality in Cuba 1980-2010: repeated cross sectional surveys and ecological comparison of secular trends
Objective To evaluate the associations between population-wide loss and gain in weight with diabetes prevalence, incidence, and mortality, as well as cardiovascular and cancer mortality trends, in Cuba over a 30 year interval. Design Repeated cross sectional surveys and ecological comparison of secular trends. Setting Cuba and the province of Cienfuegos, from 1980 to 2010. Participants Measurements in Cienfuegos included a representative sample of 1657, 1351, 1667, and 1492 adults in 1991, 1995, 2001, and 2010, respectively. National surveys included a representative sample of 14 304, 22 851, and 8031 participants in 1995, 2001, and 2010, respectively. Main outcome measures Changes in smoking, daily energy intake, physical activity, and body weight were tracked from 1980 to 2010 using national and regional surveys. Data for diabetes prevalence and incidence were obtained from national population based registries. Mortality trends were modelled using national vital statistics. Results Rapid declines in diabetes and heart disease accompanied an average population-wide loss of 5.5 kg in weight, driven by an economic crisis in the mid-1990s. A rebound in population weight followed in 1995 (33.5% prevalence of overweight and obesity) and exceeded pre-crisis levels by 2010 (52.9% prevalence). The population-wide increase in weight was immediately followed by a 116% increase in diabetes prevalence and 140% increase in diabetes incidence. Six years into the weight rebound phase, diabetes mortality increased by 49% (from 9.3 deaths per 10 000 people in 2002 to 13.9 deaths per 10 000 people in 2010). A deceleration in the rate of decline in mortality from coronary heart disease was also observed. Conclusions In relation to the Cuban experience in 1980-2010, there is an association at the population level between weight reduction and death from diabetes and cardiovascular disease; the opposite effect on the diabetes and cardiovascular burden was seen on population-wide weight gain.
Journal Article
Properties and clinical performance of vaccines containing outer membrane vesicles from Neisseria meningitidis
Meningococcal outer membrane proteins have been used for over 20 years in more than 80 million doses; either as carrier protein in a Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) polysaccharide conjugate vaccine or as vesicle vaccine formulations against meningococcal disease. Conventional wild-type outer membrane vesicle (wtOMV) vaccines are the only formulations that have shown efficacy against serogroup B meningococcal disease. This has been demonstrated in Cuba, Norway and New Zealand; where epidemics, dominated by one particular strain or clone, were causing high rates of disease and wtOMV vaccines have been used for epidemic control. The most significant limitation for widespread use of wtOMV is that the immune response is strain-specific in infants, mostly directed against the immuno-dominant porin protein, PorA. The natural orientation of surface-exposed membrane antigens and the preservation of good physico-chemical stability are key features of OMV vaccines. The efficacy, tolerability and safety of wtOMV vaccines have been well proven. The most recent experience from New Zealand demonstrated a vaccine effectiveness of 80% for children less than 5 years of age, over a period of 24 months. Such results are encouraging for the further use of “tailor-made” OMV vaccines for epidemic control. Moreover, it provides opportunities for development of OMV vaccines with various additional cross-protective potential. There is good reason to believe that in the coming few years the “OMV-concept” will be exploited further and that a number of cross-protective “universal” antigens will be included in vaccines against serogroup B meningococcal disease. The desire to have a global vaccine strategy that enables susceptible individuals to be protected against all the relevant serogroups of meningococcal disease may become a reality.
Journal Article