Purification and characterization of a Shigella conjugate vaccine, produced by glycoengineering Escherichia coli.

Shigellosis remains a major cause of diarrheal disease in developing countries and causes substantial morbidity and mortality in children. Glycoconjugate vaccines consisting of bacterial surface polysaccharides conjugated to carrier proteins are the most effective vaccines for controlling invasive bacterial infections. Nevertheless, the development of a multivalent conjugate vaccine to prevent Shigellosis has been hampered by the complex manufacturing process as the surface polysaccharide for each strain requires extraction, hydrolysis, chemical activation and conjugation to a carrier protein.

Added value of online satellite data transmission for flood forecasting: warning systems in medium-size catchments.

The present paper deals with the implementation of online data transferred via LEO satellite communication in a flood forecasting system. Although the project is ongoing, it is already recognised that the information chain: "measurement-transmission-forecast-alert" can be shortened, i.e.

Structure of a VEGF-VEGF receptor complex determined by electron microscopy.

Receptor tyrosine kinases are activated upon ligand-induced dimerization. Here we show that the monomeric extracellular domain of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptor-2 (VEGFR-2) has a flexible structure. Binding of VEGF to membrane-distal immunoglobulin-like domains causes receptor dimerization and promotes further interaction between receptor monomers through the membrane-proximal immunoglobulin-like domain 7.

Crystal structure of the Orf virus NZ2 variant of vascular endothelial growth factor-E. Implications for receptor specificity.

Mammalian vascular endothelial growth factors constitute a family of polypeptides, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A, -B, -C, -D and placenta growth factor (PlGF), that regulate blood and lymphatic vessel development. VEGFs bind to three types of receptor tyrosine kinases, VEGF receptors 1, 2, and 3, that are predominantly expressed on endothelial and some hematopoietic cells. Pox viruses of the Orf family encode highly related proteins called VEGF-E that show only 25-35% amino acid identity with VEGF-A but bind with comparable affinity to VEGFR-2.

Targeting human cancer cells with VEGF receptor-2-directed liposomes.

Antibodies are among the most versatile tools used today to characterize and target molecules in cells and in biological tissues. The development of phage display libraries encoding a large repertoire of single chain antibodies, scFv, allows the rapid and efficient isolation of antibodies specific for almost any type of molecule. A great advantage of such recombinant antibodies is the possibility to functionalize them by introducing new amino acid sequences.