Combined surgical and immunotherapeutic treatment of patients with fourth stage colon cancer.

Sixty-five patients with the fourth stage colon cancer were subjected to the combined surgical and immunotherapy. The following conclusions are made: (1) surgical elimination of the bulk of tumor mass is a necessary prerequisite for effective immunotherapy; (2) vaccination with autological tumor cells accompanied with bacille bilié de Calmette-Guérin (BCG) as the adjuvant and with interleukin-2 as the immunostimulator effectively prevents metastasizing after successful surgery; (3) the vaccine must necessary contain living tumor cells adequately presenting tumor antigens; and (4) in some cases, immunotherapy causes undesirable autoimmune complications. They can be registered by corresponding inflammation control methods.

[Genotyping of Shigella flexneri 2a strains isolated from patients with acute dysentery in St. Petersburg].

Polymerase chain reaction with universal primers (UP-PCR) was used for the genotyping of 76 S.flexneri 2a cultures isolated from patients with acute dysentery in infectious and psychoneurological hospitals of St. Petersburg.

[The prospects for using the genetically engineered surface antigen of the hepatitis B virus (HBsAg) expressed by recombinant poxvirus strains as the basis for vaccines against hepatitis B].

The use of a recombinant poxvirus (RPV) strain, expressing HBsAg in the process of reproduction in different bioreactor systems under stationary and bioreactor conditions of cultivation, made it possible to obtain highly purified HBsAg. The identity and purity of HBsAg was confirmed by the analysis of its amino acid composition, SDS electrophoresis in polyacrylamide gel, electron microscopy and high-performance liquid chromatography. Good prospects of the use of RPV-expressed gene engineering HBsAg as the basis vaccines against hepatitis B was demonstrated in 10 experimental batches of vaccine.

[The virus-inhibiting activity of a preparation obtained from a mussel hydrolysate].

Antiviral properties were found with a preparation obtained from mussel meat by acid hydrolysis. In the experiments in vitro this mussel hydrolysate reduced the infectious activity of influenza viruses in neutralization tests by 3-6 log. Applications of the preparation to mice infected with a toxigenic influenza virus strain protected from death 66-84% of the animals, the survival rate in controls being from 9 to 16%.

[Expert research on sera yielding false-positive results for HIV antibodies during screening].

The significance of different serological methods and assay systems for the verification of false positive cases of HIV infection has been analyzed on the basis of materials obtained in arbitration studies. As demonstrated by this analysis, the use of such highly specific and sensitive systems as Huma-Lab, Enzygnost, Serodia and Erythrorecombinant has made it possible to obtain a reliable result as early as at the first stage of expert diagnosis in the enzyme immunoassay and the agglutination test. The methods of radioimmunoprecipitation and indirect immunofluorescence have permitted a more precise differentiation of doubtful results than that achieved by immune blotting.