New Open Access Agreement with Elsevier

Over the past few years, the most significant trend in academic publishing has arguably been in the introduction of so-called Transformative Agreements. These agreements aim to repurpose the funds paid out by libraries for subscription fees, instead redirecting them to cover the publishing fees required to make articles open-access and freely available to the public.

Earlier this month a new transformative agreement was signed between Elsevier and the Canadian Knowledge Resource Network (CRKN), a partnership of 85 libraries and research institutions across Canada. This means that corresponding authors at McGill will benefit from unlimited open access publishing at no cost in more than 1,800 Elsevier hybrid journals in this list; for these journals the article processing charge (APC) will be completely waived. For Gold Access journals there is a 20% reduction in the APC. The agreement will last three years, from January 1, 2024, to December 31, 2026 inclusive. When submitting an article, make sure that you use your McGill email in order to be eligible, and be sure to check out the detailed instructions before submitting.

We at the Library are very excited about this new agreement and we hope that it leads to many more McGill authors being able to publish their work without worrying about publishing fees, while also being able to more easily satisfy the Tri-Council Open Access Funding Policy.

If you’d like more help or information from us, you can get in touch with your liaison librarian, or with our Scholarly Communications Team. If you’d like more information about transformative agreements and this new deal with Elsevier, CRKN have published a press release as well as the text of the full agreement with Elsevier.

Trained Immunity: The Epigenetic Memory of Your Innate Immune System

Thank you very much to Cyril Kazan for letting us post his MIMM 214 assignment on The Turret. In this post, Cyril talks about an interesting aspect of our immune system.

Memory is an essential element of everyday life. Without it, learning would not be possible. Similarly, when it comes to your immune system, memory is priceless. Vaccines, for instance,would never work without your immunological memory. After being exposed to a pathogen, which is a term used to describe infectious agents like bacteria and viruses, your immune system will remember it. This way, the next time it encounters this same pathogen, it will eliminate it much faster. This concept, termed adaptive memory, has been well understood for decades. It is associated exclusively to a part of your immune system called adaptive immunity. The other part, innate immunity, has always been known to be non-specific and non-adaptive, meaning that it cannot remember a pathogen and will have the exact same response if it re-encounters it in the future.

Recently, a growing body of research is challenging what has always been thought of as true. Greater protection against re-infection has been reported in plants and invertebrates, which lack an adaptive immune system. Furthermore, certain infections and vaccinations can induce broad protection against other pathogens through innate immune mechanisms. This has led researchers to hypothesize the presence of an innate immune memory they coined “trained immunity”. In a review paper published in Nature, scientists explain what has recently been discovered about this intriguing mechanism.

How Trained Immunity Works
Unlike adaptive memory, which works by keeping a reserve of memory cells specific to the pathogen previously encountered; trained immunity is thought to function through epigenetic reprogramming, which is a change in the expression levels of genes. Adaptive memory and trained immunity are therefore fundamentally different mechanisms.

During a typical immune response, genes coding for proteins called cytokines are expressed. These proteins play a broad range of key roles in the immune response including inflammation and recruitment of immune cells. Research findings have shown that the expression of these genes leaves behind an “epigenetic scar”. This leads to an easier expression of these genes on the following infection, resulting in a greater and faster production of cytokines on the next contact with a pathogen, and to a more efficient immune response overall. Notice that it will lead to a more ample production of cytokines regardless of the identity of the pathogen. Trained immunity is therefore non-specific.

But it is not so simple. A reprogramming of the cell’s metabolism, the series of biochemical reactions occurring inside of it, also takes place and affects how efficiently cytokine genes will be expressed. It is also important to keep in mind that these are relatively recent discoveries and that the exact mechanism behind trained immunity is not yet fully understood.

Why It’s Important
Armed with this fair understanding of how trained immunity works, you may now be wondering why you should care. First of all, trained immunity plays a critical role in humans. Interestingly, more and more evidence is showing that live vaccines such as the smallpox vaccine, measles vaccine, and the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis, which normally provide specific immunity through adaptive immune cells actually have a broad beneficial effect against infection by other pathogens as well.

This occurs through non-specific activation of innate immune mechanisms. In addition, although trained immunity has evolved as a beneficial mechanism that makes our response to pathogens more effective, studies are pointing out the potential harmful effects it can have. These effects have been especially observed in the context of sterile inflammation, inflammation that does not result from a pathogen, but from food for example. It is becoming increasingly evident that sterile inflammation, boosted by trained immunity, in response to diet and lifestyle changes, forms the basis on which chronic inflammatory diseases develop. These augmented immune functions can lead to tissue damage in some instances.

Last but certainly not least, trained immunity can be critically important in the context of the interplay between innate immune cells and tumour cells. It can be either beneficial or detrimental. A stronger and more efficient innate immune response is helpful in the fight against cancer cells. Nonetheless, excessive or prolonged inflammatory responses can also contribute to the progression of the tumour. For instance, an increased cytokine release by innate immune cells that infiltrated the micro-environment of the tumour is associated with an enhanced growth of the tumour and its spread to other parts of the body.

References
Mihai G. Netea et al.. Defining trained immunity and its role in health and disease. Nature Reviews Immunology [Internet]. 2020 March 04. Available from: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-0285-6

Janeway CA Jr, Travers P, Walport M, et al. Immunological Memory. Immunobiology: the immune system in health and disease, 5th edition. [Internet]. New York, 2001. 10-21;10-24. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27158/

Molnar C, Gair J. Adaptive Immune Response. Concepts of Biology, 1st Canadian Edition [Internet]. 2012. 23.2. Available from: https://opentextbc.ca/biology/chapter/23-2-adaptive-immune-response/University of Pennsylvania.

By altering bone marrow, ‘training’ can prepare innate immune system for future challenges. Science Daily [Internet]. 2018 January 11. Available from:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180111141646.htm

Namrata Rana. Trained immunity: the immunologic memory that humans have always had. The McGill Tribune [Internet]. 2021 January 26. Available from: http://www.mcgilltribune.com/sci-tech/trained-immunity-the-immunologic-memory-that-humans-have-always-had-01262021/

Raspberry Pi’s and Arduinos come to Schulich

Launch of Raspberry Pi and Arduino lending program at Schulich - 21 Sept 2015We had a lot of fun this morning at Schulich launching our new Raspberry Pi and Arduino lending programme! These devices are two types of credit-card sized computer which are developing a rapidly growing following due to the ways they can be incorporated into a wide range of projects.

IMG_2108Schulich will start lending these items out later this week, for a loan period of two weeks, and will be monitoring the service over the next few weeks – the kits will be available on a first-come, first-served basis like all other library materials.  We’ll also be lending out a robotics unit and a wearable computing device.  Please come to the Schulich loans desk if you’d like to borrow a kit.

We’d love to hear about the creative ways these are used by the McGill community!  If you take out a kit, please spare us two minutes to give us your feedback using this form, and consider sending pictures of your project.

An alternative hive of activity at the Schulich Library

IMG_9328Most visitors to the Schulich Library are probably unaware that there are two thriving beehives on the roof of our building, maintained by the Urban Beekeeping Collective at Santropol Roulant of which I am a member.

IMG_9325Santropol Roulant is a local charity whose aim is to “…use food as a vehicle to break social and economic isolation between generations and cultures”. The Beekeeping Collective works towards this goal by promoting and fostering urban beekeeping, and by educating Montrealers about the importance of pollinators to the source of our food.

Collective members make regular visits to the hives to check on their health (these pictures are from last Sunday’s visit) – as well as to prevent uncontrolled swarming!  The good news is that both hives are doing very well and we’re quietly hopeful for a bumper crop of urban honey as Summer progresses.