Purpose -There is growing political interest in new forms of precarious self-employment located in a "grey area" between employment and self-employment. A wide range of concepts has been used to debate this issue, and this paper aims to clarify these debates through the concept of involuntary self-employment. Design/methodology/approach -The paper reviews the empirical, conceptual and legal-policy approaches to involuntary self-employment via three country case studies in Finland, Germany and the UK. A range of relevant domestic academic literature, articles in the media, selected key expert interviews, and policy and legal documents are employed. Findings -Conceptual clarity regarding involuntary self-employment is achieved through a discussion of two aspects of the phenomenon: the characteristics of involuntariness from a motives-based perspective, and the legal/economic perspectives and policy issues. The motives-based analysis argues that involuntariness as such does not seem to have severe implications on the individuals' well being, given that the individual earns a satisfactory livelihood from her or his business activities. The discussion of the characteristics of and regulation related to working arrangements in the "grey area" between employment and self-employment, where the self-employed individual is strongly dependent on the principal, shows that it is very difficult to regulate quasi self-employment without harming "voluntary" forms of enterprise and inter-firm cooperation at the same time. Originality/value -The key contribution of the paper is to facilitate a foundation for subsequent empirical research and policy development.

BackgroundGraft-versus-host disease (GvHD) is a major challenge after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation but treatment options for patients are still limited. In many cases first-line treatment with glucocorticoids is not successful. Among second-line therapies the extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) is frequently performed, due to induction of selective tolerance instead of general immunosuppression. However, for some patients with severe acute GvHD the leukapheresis step of the ECP procedure is physically exhausting and limits the number of ECP cycles.MethodsWe hypothesized that leukocytes from healthy cell donors could be used as a replacement for ECP leukocytes gained from the GvHD patient. For this purpose we used a well established mouse model of acute GvHD. The ECP therapy was based on cells with the genetic background of the initial donor of the stem cell transplantation. As a precondition we developed a protocol representing conventional ECP in mice equivalent to clinical used ECP setup.ResultsWe could demonstrate that conventional, clinically derived ECP setup is able to alleviate acute GvHD. By using leukocytes obtained from healthy mice with the bone marrow donor’s genetic background we could not observe a statistically significant therapeutic effect.ConclusionsConventional human ECP setup is effective in the mouse model of severe acute GvHD. In addition we could not prove that ECP cells from healthy mice with bone marrow donor’s genetic background are as effective as ECP cells derived from GvHD mice. Based on our findings, new questions arise for further studies, in which the cellular characteristics for ECP mediated immune tolerance are a matter of investigation.

Proteins of the BTB-kelch family are known to be involved in multiple biological processes such as migration, cytoskeleton arrangement, regulation of cell morphology, protein ubiquitination and gene expression. KBTBD8 is a new member of this family. The gene was found in a comparative transcriptome analysis of pluripotent stem cells and was therefore suggested to play a role in the regulation of pluripotency. Comparative analysis of the gene and protein sequences revealed a high conservation throughout evolution especially in the characteristic domains of BTB, BACK and kelch. We identified the Golgi apparatus as the subcellular localization of the KBTBD8 protein in non-dividing cells and could show that KBTBD8 co-localizes with α-tubulin on the spindle apparatus of mitotic cells suggesting a role in cell proliferation. In conclusion, KBTBD8 is a new member of the BTB-kelch superfamily that is located in the Golgi apparatus and translocates to the spindle apparatus during mitosis.

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