New approach for hair keratin characterization: Use of the confocal Raman spectroscopy to assess the effect of thermal stress on human hair fibre.

Objective: The objective of our research was to investigate the heat-protecting effect of a product ex vivo and in vivo on human hair fibres.

Methods: A preparatory study was carried out in order to determine an optimal threshold of thermal stress. For this, the structure of cross-sections of the hair fibre was observed by optical microscopy.

Induced secretion of beta-hexosaminidase by human brain endothelial cells: a novel approach in Sandhoff disease?

Sandhoff disease is an autosomal recessive lysosomal disorder due to mutations in the beta-hexosaminidase beta-chain gene, resulting in beta-hexosaminidases A (alphabeta) and B (betabeta) deficiency and GM2 ganglioside accumulation in the brain. In this study, our aim was to demonstrate that transduction of cerebral endothelial cells cultured in two-chamber culture inserts with a lentiviral vector encoding the hexosaminidases alpha and beta chains could induce a vectorial secretion of hexosaminidases. Therefore, the human cerebral endothelial cell line hCMEC/D3 was infected with the bicistronic vector from the apical compartment, and beta-hexosaminidase activity was measured in transduced cells and in deficient fibroblasts co-cultured in the basal (i.