Search results for "cement"

Physical Methods of Gene Delivery

2017

Gene therapy can be defined as the use of nucleic acids (NAs) as medicines with the aim of correcting a deficient gene expression, introducing new functions in the cell, repairing mutations and modulating the gene expression. Two main classes of vectors, viral and nonviral, have been used for gene delivery in order to avoid the NAs hydrolysis by tissue nucleases and improve their cellular uptake. The ideal gene delivery vector should offer high transfection efficacy, cell specificity and low toxicity. However, the immunogenic and mutagenic side effects of viral vector as well as toxicity and low efficacy of nonviral carriers are limiting their application. In this respect, naked NAs deliver…

2019

As rats learn to search for multiple sources of food or water in a complex environment, they generate increasingly efficient trajectories between reward sites. Such spatial navigation capacity involves the replay of hippocampal place-cells during awake states, generating small sequences of spatially related place-cell activity that we call "snippets". These snippets occur primarily during sharp-wave-ripples (SWRs). Here we focus on the role of such replay events, as the animal is learning a traveling salesperson task (TSP) across multiple trials. We hypothesize that snippet replay generates synthetic data that can substantially expand and restructure the experience available and make learni…

Optimal doses of caspofungin during continuous venovenous hemodiafiltration in critically ill patients

2017

A time based objective evaluation of the erosive effects of various beverages on enamel and cementum of deciduous and permanent teeth

2019

Background Erosion of the teeth is a chronic irreversible process leading to loss of surface enamel and even the dentin, in turn causing sensitivity and pain. Increased consumption of carbonated beverages remains a major cause for dental erosion. However, many of the so called safe beverages that are consumed may also have sufficiently low pH to cause dental erosion. One of the parameters to measure the dental erosion is estimation of hardness and surface roughness. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the difference in hardness and surface roughness of enamel and cementum using three beverages namely (carbonated drink, lime soda, lime juice) in deciduous and permanent teeth. Material and Meth…

Non-primate lentiviral vectors and their applications in gene therapy for ocular disorders

2018

Lentiviruses have a number of molecular features in common, starting with the ability to integrate their genetic material into the genome of non-dividing infected cells. A peculiar property of non-primate lentiviruses consists in their incapability to infect and induce diseases in humans, thus providing the main rationale for deriving biologically safe lentiviral vectors for gene therapy applications. In this review, we first give an overview of non-primate lentiviruses, highlighting their common and distinctive molecular characteristics together with key concepts in the molecular biology of lentiviruses. We next examine the bioengineering strategies leading to the conversion of lentiviruse…

Reconstructing the deep population history of Central and South America

2018

We report genome-wide ancient DNA from 49 individuals forming four parallel time transects in Belize, Brazil, the Central Andes, and the Southern Cone, each dating to at least ∼9,000 years ago. The common ancestral population radiated rapidly from just one of the two early branches that contributed to Native Americans today. We document two previously unappreciated streams of gene flow between North and South America. One affected the Central Andes by ∼4,200 years ago, while the other explains an affinity between the oldest North American genome associated with the Clovis culture and the oldest Central and South Americans from Chile, Brazil, and Belize. However, this was not the primary sou…

Genetics and Gene Therapy of Anderson-Fabry Disease.

2018

Fabry's disease is a genetic disorder of X-linked inheritance caused by mutations in the alpha galactosidase A gene resulting in deficiency of this lysosomal enzyme. The progressive accumulation of glycosphingolipids, caused by the inadequate enzymatic activity, is responsible of organ dysfunction and thus of clinical manifestations. In the presence of a high clinical suspicion, a careful physical examination and specific laboratory tests are required, finally diagnosis of Fabry's disease is confirmed by the demonstration of absence or reduced alpha-galactosidase A enzyme activity in hemizygous men and gene typing in heterozygous females; in fact the performance of enzymatic activity assay …

Treatment strategies for lysosomal storage disorders.

2017

Over the past several years the number of treatments available for patients with lysosomal storage disorders has rapidly increased. Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation, enzyme replacement therapy, substrate reduction, and chaperone therapies are currently available, and gene therapies and other treatments are rapidly advancing. Despite remarkable advances, the efficacy of most of these therapies is limited, particularly because the treatments are usually initiated when organ damage has already occurred. To circumvent this limitation, screening in newborn infants for lysosomal storage disorders has been introduced in many countries. However, this screening is complicated by the broad cl…

MiR-144 overexpression as a promising therapeutic strategy to overcome glioblastoma cell invasiveness and resistance to chemotherapy

2019

Abstract Glioblastoma (GB) is the most aggressive and common form of primary brain tumor, characterized by fast proliferation, high invasion, and resistance to current standard treatment. The average survival rate post-diagnosis is only of 14.6 months, despite the aggressive standard post-surgery treatment approaches of radiotherapy concomitant with chemotherapy with temozolomide. Altered cell metabolism has been identified as an emerging cancer hallmark, including in GB, thus offering a new target for cancer therapies. On the other hand, abnormal expression levels of miRNAs, key regulators of multiple molecular pathways, have been correlated with pathological manifestations of cancer, such…

Efficacy of hydrodynamic interleukin 10 gene transfer in human liver segments with interest in transplantation.

2016

Different diseases lead, during their advanced stages, to chronic or acute liver failure, whose unique treatment consists in organ transplantation. The success of intervention is limited by host immune response and graft rejection. The use of immunosuppressant drugs generally improve organ transplantation, but they cannot completely solve the problem. Also, their management is delicate, especially during the early stages of treatment. Thus, new tools to set an efficient modulation of immune response are required. The local expression of interleukin (IL) 10 protein in transplanted livers mediated by hydrodynamic gene transfer could improve the organ acceptance by the host because it presents…