Identifying proxies and mapping heavy metals concentrations in city road dusts: A case study in the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium.

This paper investigates the spatial distribution of heavy metals (HMs) concentrations in road dusts over a part of the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR), with the aim of identifying the most relevant factors impacting these concentrations and subsequently mapping them over all road segments. For this goal, a set of 128 samples of road dusts was collected over a three years time span in the Anderlecht municipality, that covers about a tenth of the BCR area. The concentrations of Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn have been measured in the finest fraction ( ⌀ < 250 µm) using ICP-OES. In parallel, continuous and categorical-valued proxies have been collected over all road segments. Using a multivariate linear modeling (MLR) approach, the most influential proxies that have been identified are the distance to the center of the BCR, land use, road hierarchy and roadside parking occupation. The performance of the MLR models remains however limited, with adjusted R 2 values around 0.5 for all HMs. From a spatial analysis of the regression residuals, it is likely that some useful proxies could have been overlooked. Although these models have clear limitations for reliably predicting HMs concentrations at specific locations, the corresponding maps drawn over all road segments provide a useful overview and help designing sound monitoring policies as well appropriate implementation of mitigation measures at places where road dust pollutants tend to concentrate. Further studies are needed to confirm this, but it is expected that our models will perform reasonably well over a large part of the BCR. It is believed too that our findings are relevant for modeling road dusts pollution in other cities as well.

A lactosylated steroid contributes in vivo therapeutic benefits in experimental models of mouse lymphoma and human glioblastoma.

Various mono- and disaccharides were grafted onto a steroid backbone. Whereas in vitro these glycosylated steroids had no cytotoxic effects on six different human cancer cell lines, several of the glycosylated steroids under study did significantly modify the levels of in vitro migration of the human U373 glioblastoma, the A549 non-small-cell-lung cancer (NSCLC), and the PC-3 prostate cancer cells, with more pronounced effects in the case of a monosubstituted beta-L-fucopyranosyl-steroid (19), a monosubstituted beta-D-isomaltosyl-steroid (22), and a monosubstituted beta-D-lactosyl-steroid (24). These three compounds significantly increased the survival of conventional mice grafted subcutaneously with the P388 lymphoma, a lymphoma that metastasizes toward the liver. In vivo, the monosubstituted beta-D-lactosyl-steroid (24) also increased the antitumor effectiveness of cisplatin, a cytotoxic pro-apoptotic drug, in the case of the P388 lymphoma model. This compound also increased the survival of immunodeficient mice into whose brains human U373 glioblastoma cells had been orthotopically grafted.