Bioinformatics and Hardware Group

The cervical cancer is considered the second cancer type affecting women worldwide and the most important malignancy in women in developing countries. The molecular epidemiologic data showed in an unequivocal manner that the human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are the etiologic agent of this disease.
In this context the team of the Gene Engeneering Department from IVN with partners intend:

• to establish the prevalence and the incidence of the HPV genotypes circulating in Bucharest, in Moldova and in Oltenia, by molecular methods;
• to verify the accuracy of the cytologic diagnosis on thin layer preparations ( Thin Prep), as compared with classical techniques;
• to evaluate the consistency relation between the immunocytochemical determination of the Hr HPV L1 proteins and the PCR detection of the corresponding viral genome, in order to monitories the evolution;
• to quantify the expression of some cell and viral genes involved into the inter-individual variations of the immune response, in the viral persistence and in the progression of the genital lesions;
• to correlate the obtained results in order to improve the monitoring of the lesions and management of the viral infection.

In this project our team is implied in the elaboration of a relational databases which will allow the clinical inforamtions processing in correlatum with the experimental data obtained into the project.

Cancer is one of the disease models that present a great interest for the specialists in epigenetics, especially nowadays, when it became a major thread in European countries, including our country too. Epigenetic domain is therefore an exciting area of research linked with cancer diagnosis and treatment. It needs urgent standardization which is proposed for study by grouping experts in different fields of biology: biochemists, geneticists, cell and developmental biology, in order to gather a great amount of data explaining the link between the chromatin structure dynamics, altered gene expression and specific interactions with new anticancer drugs.

Our team cooperates in this project apply some techniques of advanced statistic processing of obtained data in the experimental determinations.

The Social Informatics Institute from Denmark has in progress a research direction concerning to Hospital Countagious Vigilance. At this moment y have received a proposal that our team to join to the achievement of this proposal for FP7 at the section HEALTH-2007-A-1.2.3.3-6: Development of pandemic influenza containment and mitigation strategies. The objective is to develop effective pandemic influenza containment strategies. The program should include the development of tools to identify biological and behavioural "super-spreaders", contact tracking tools and modelling the impact of public health measures (such as border closures, the role of public transport, schools and workplaces, household prophylaxis etc.) as well as research into the social acceptance of such measures.

This project followed the facilities offered by the Internet in correlation with the possibilities offered by the e-mail and the local network of computers with the goal to archive the gathering and teletransmission of some data regarding morbidity in respiratory viruses. According to the protocol and the elaboration forms (being achived in concordance and accordingly with the European standards) and a monitorized system of teletransmisssion in the regime (system) of information crypt data and processing data regarding morbidity obtained from 2 counties in Romania.

In this project we monitorized the parameters for the evaluation of influenza and others acute respiratory diseases. There have been registered cases of illness and hospitalizations with the codes C 230, C 231, C 232 from which there have been isolated 38 strains A (H3N2) similar to the subtype A (H3N2) Moskow/10/99 and 9 strains A (H1N1) similar to the subtype New Caledonia/20/99.

For the quantitative evaluation of the economical impact of the influenza it was drawn up a mathematical model and collected information for the proper calculus. There were presented a series of considerations regarding the socio/economical implications for the development of epidemic and the future pandemic of influenza. Resulting from the analysis of obtained results, we generally consider that permanent monitorization of acute superior respiratory tract illness and especially in influenza and the optimization of the processing systems of these information may bring an important and very useful contribution in the prevention activity and efficient control of these diseases.

Not only medical act improvement, but in general medical assistance and technologic progress and a rapid and extensive monitorization of a wide territory with a large number of epidemiologic parameters may reduce the impact of the following influenza pandemic. From the enlisted data and medical literature results that the following influenza pandemic may cause a significant number of death, hospitalization and medical consultations. The real values of these indications depend of a large variety of factors and it is very hard to improve the estimations accuracy in the already done estimations.

The probable estimation of the economical impact of an influenza pandemic (direct and indirect costs) is situated between 70 – 163 billions lei , at the level of a county with a population under 1, 2% from the total Romania’s population. In these evaluations are not taken into account the losses in the day to day activity, in trade, education, public institutions, etc.
The decision of the rational expenses quantum annually allocation for the planning, instruction and putting into practice the preventing measures for the next influenza pandemic, depends only of the probability if this pandemic may be possible to appear in the following period. The impact of the influenza pandemic is unpredictable.

The most important variations with impact on recoveries of the expenses with anti-influenza vaccination are death rate, vaccination costs for one dose and the attack rata. Priority for those first vaccinated anti-influenza are death risk, death percent, cost recovery for the influenza vaccine administration these must be discussed in a public debate criteria.

The project’s principal object is the achievement and setting the implementation of a support/set of informatical devices and telematic services as a support of an interactive cooperation in the field of health care, architectural collaborative model which allows the cooperation of the work teams and protected access to information, indifferently of the used platforms and their location. The project was focused on the architectural applications analyses distribute on Internet/Intranet. There had been analyzed 3 types of typical architectures namely the 2 level architecture, 3 level architecture and multiple level architecture, because the actual generation of applications executed by integrated computers in network tries to answer in an efficiency mode in this domain in a permanent dynamic.

Into the frame of Technologies, methods and instruments for the applications delivered on the Internet/Intranet there were presented Windows DNA architecture, components and transactions distributed in applications, technologies and instruments for the implementation of the presentation level (HTML, DHTML), ASP, CGI, PERL, the way in which is implemented the level of the services and the implementation of data level (ACCESS) etc. The project presented also Data Base Specifications, access function and communication supports and there were characterized the principal architectural components (calculus system), the data organization and administration, data in strict confidence assurance, system functions (user and administration) and communication support.

The research project had many objectives:

1. The determination of the dimension of the transmembrane stochastic pores. The effect of the lipid matrix on the transport through the membranes pores
2. Implementation of some facilities of dynamic molecular simulation on computers configuration to work in parallel. It was done a software plant for the dynamic molecular simulation with an application into the studies of some mechanisms which are responsible for the neuronal disorders like depression and anxiety. There have been developed new software facilities for the necessity of supplementary functions of molecular simulation.
3. Achievement of models of lipid bilayers with different hydrophobic catena analyze the stages in which interfere the structures of the membrane synapses into the normal and pathologic mechanisms of the neurotransmission. There were created specific program routines of some membrane lipid bilayers (MLB). It was achieved the plane lipid bilayer by dynamic molecular simulation
4. Studies regarding the analysis of the reabsorbtion channels of the neurotransmitters and of the binding phenomenon of some drugs. It was made the identification and the feature of some docking molecular receptor neurotransmitter or active pharmacologic receptor compound

The projects consist in the design and the development of an expert type tutorial system in the risk management domain for training of persons who work in different activities. Likewise the collection and processing of this knowledge will be performed with knowledge mining techniques. In the same context the study of the knowledge classes was performed pertaining to this system and also to the possibilities to be obtained from different domains. Other phases of the projects are included also the conception and the design of the training, instruction and testing subsystems. In the same manner will be approached the on-line and off-line updating subsystem and user interface.