The EU-supported EuroFlow Consortium aimed at innovation and standardization of immunophenotyping for diagnosis and classification of hematological malignancies by introducing 8-color flow cytometry with fully standardized laboratory procedures and antibody panels in order to achieve maximally comparable results among different laboratories. This required the selection of optimal combinations of compatible fluorochromes and the design and evaluation of adequate standard operating procedures (SOPs) for instrument setup, fluorescence compensation and sample preparation. Additionally, we developed software tools for the evaluation of individual antibody reagents and antibody panels. Each section describes what has been evaluated experimentally versus adopted based on existing data and experience. Multicentric evaluation demonstrated high levels of reproducibility based on strict implementation of the EuroFlow SOPs and antibody panels. Overall, the 6 years of extensive collaborative experiments and the analysis of hundreds of cell samples of patients and healthy controls in the EuroFlow centers have provided for the first time laboratory protocols and software tools for fully standardized 8-color flow cytometric immunophenotyping of normal and malignant leukocytes in bone marrow and blood; this has yielded highly comparable data sets, which can be integrated in a single database.

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Abstract. We provide new perspectives on the semantics of logic programs with constraints. To this end we introduce several notions of computation and propose to use the results of computations as answer sets of programs with constraints. We discuss the rationale behind different classes of computations and study the relationships among them and among the corresponding concepts of answer sets. The proposed semantics generalize the answer set semantics for programs with monotone, convex and/or arbitrary constraints described in the literature.

Germline mutations in cell cycle checkpoint kinase 2 (CHEK2) have been associated with a range of cancer types, in particular of the breast and prostate. Protein-truncating mutations in CHEK2 have been reported to confer higher risks of cancer of the breast and the prostate than the missense I157T variant. In order to estimate the risks of colorectal cancer associated with truncating and missense CHEK2 mutations, we genotyped 1085 unselected colorectal cancer cases and 5496 controls for four CHEK2 founder mutations present in Poland. We observed an increased risk of colorectal cancer in association with the missense I157T mutation (odds ratios (OR) ¼ 1.5; 95% CI 1.2 -2.0; P ¼ 0.002) but not with truncating mutations (OR ¼ 1.0; 95% CI 0.5 -1.8; P ¼ 0.9); however the difference in the two OR was not statistically significant (P ¼ 0.2). We conclude that the I157T mutation increases the risk of colorectal cancer in the population, but that truncating mutations may confer a lower risk or no increase in risk. It is important that other studies of CHEK2 mutation carriers be conducted to confirm this hypothesis.

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