Biopreserving Pathogens: Promise & Peril.

The development of technologies for the biopreservation of infectious organisms requires careful analysis of benefits and risks. This article reviews the regulatory landscape and oversight responsibilities in the United States in respect to pathogen biopreservation. Focused on two globally significant pathogens, and , the article explores advantages and potential risks of biopreservation concerning biosafety, biosecurity and biocontainment.

Cryogenic enrichment of Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes from spiked whole blood.

Each individual cell type typically requires a unique set of conditions for optimal cryopreservation outcome, which relates to its specific response to cryoprotective agent (CPA) toxicity, osmotic behavior and sensitivity to ice crystallization. Cryopreservation of heterogenous cell populations is therefore exceedingly difficult as it requires separate and often conflicting conditions for each cell type. Conversely, these contrasting conditions could be utilized to favor cryogenic preference of a single cell population within a heterogenous sample, leading to its enrichment by elimination of remaining cells.

Enteric pharmacokinetics of monomeric and multimeric camelid nanobody single-domain antibodies.

Single-domain antibodies (sdAbs) derived from Camelidae heavy-chain-only antibodies (also called nanobodies or VHHs) have advantages over conventional antibodies in terms of their small size and stability to pH and temperature extremes, their ability to express well in microbial hosts, and to be functionally multimerized for enhanced properties. For these reasons, VHHs are showing promise as enteric disease therapeutics, yet little is known as to their pharmacokinetics (PK) within the digestive tract. To improve understanding of enteric VHH PK, we investigated the functional and structural stability of monomeric and multimeric camelid VHH-agents following in vitro incubation with intestinal extracts (chyme) from rabbits and pigs or fecal extracts from human sources, and in vivo in rabbits.

A highly antigenic fragment within the zoonotic Cryptosporidium parvum Gp900 glycoprotein (Domain 3) is absent in human restricted Cryptosporidium species.

We identified a fragment (Domain 3-D3) of the immunodominant sporozoite surface glycoprotein of the zoonotic parasite Cryptosporidium gp900, which is absent C. hominis and C. parvum anthroponosum.