Development, clinical evaluation, and post-licensure impact of RotaTeq, a pentavalent rotavirus vaccine.

Rotavirus gastroenteritis (RVGE) is the leading cause of severe diarrhea in children worldwide. This paper provides an overview of the development, clinical evaluation, and postlicensure impact of RotaTeq™(Rotavirus Vaccine, Live, Oral, Pentavalent, Merck & Co., Inc.

Tissue assembly guided via substrate biophysics: applications to hepatocellular engineering.

The biophysical nature of the cellular microenvironment, in combination with its biochemical properties, can critically modulate the outcome of three-dimensional (3-D) multicellular morphogenesis. This phenomenon is particularly relevant for the design of materials suitable for supporting hepatocellular cultures, where cellular morphology is known to be intimately linked to the functional output of the cells. This review summarizes recent work describing biophysical regulation of hepatocellular morphogenesis and function and focuses on the manner by which biochemical cues can concomitantly augment this responsiveness.

Fluid mechanics, cell distribution, and environment in CellCube bioreactors.

Cultivation of MRC-5 cells and attenuated hepatitis A virus (HAV) for the production of VAQTA, an inactivated HAV vaccine (1), is performed in the CellCube reactor, a laminar flow fixed-bed bioreactor with an unusual diamond-shaped, diverging-converging flow geometry. These disposable bioreactors have found some popularity for the production of cells and gene therapy vectors at intermediate scales of operation (2, 3). Early testing of the CellCube revealed that the fluid mechanical environment played a significant role in nonuniform cell distribution patterns generated during the cell growth phase.