Plasma copeptin, a possible prognostic marker in cirrhosis.

Background & Aim: Copeptin, secreted stoichiometrically with vasopressin, demonstrated its prognostic role in various diseases other than cirrhosis.

Methods: We investigated the association between severity of cirrhosis and plasma concentrations of copeptin, and the prognostic value of copeptin in 95 non-septic cirrhotic patients (34 Child-Pugh A, 29 CP-B, 32 CP-C), 30 septic patients with a Child-Pugh >8 ('group D'), and 16 healthy volunteers. Patients were followed for at least 12 months to assess the composite endpoint death/liver transplantation.

DNA vaccines encoding retrovirus-based virus-like particles induce efficient immune responses without adjuvant.

Virus-like particle (VLP)-based vaccines have provided highly encouraging results in clinical trials while, in contrast, DNA vaccines expressing non-particulate proteins have proven less successful. Seeking to combine the immunogenicity of VLPs and the ease of production of plasmid DNA, we designed DNA vaccines expressing VLPs consisting of the MLV Gag and modified MLV Env proteins displaying T cell epitopes. We show here that such DNA vaccines are remarkably efficient immunogens for inducing cellular immune responses.

Replicative retroviral vectors for cancer gene therapy.

Poor efficiency of gene transfer into cancer cells constitutes the major bottleneck of current cancer gene therapy. We reasoned that because tumors are masses of rapidly dividing cells, they would be most efficiently transduced with vector systems allowing transgene propagation. We thus designed two replicative retrovirus-derived vector systems: one inherently replicative vector, and one defective vector propagated by a helper retrovirus.