A cell-based drug delivery platform for treating central nervous system inflammation.

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are promising candidates for the development of cell-based drug delivery systems for autoimmune inflammatory diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Here, we investigated the effect of Ro-31-8425, an ATP-competitive kinase inhibitor, on the therapeutic properties of MSCs. Upon a simple pretreatment procedure, MSCs spontaneously took up and then gradually released significant amounts of Ro-31-8425.

Therapeutic administration of a recombinant human monoclonal antibody reduces the severity of chikungunya virus disease in rhesus macaques.

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a mosquito-borne virus that causes a febrile syndrome in humans associated with acute and chronic debilitating joint and muscle pain. Currently no licensed vaccines or therapeutics are available to prevent or treat CHIKV infections. We recently isolated a panel of potently neutralizing human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), one (4N12) of which exhibited prophylactic and post-exposure therapeutic activity against CHIKV in immunocompromised mice.

A small-molecule screen for enhanced homing of systemically infused cells.

Poor homing of systemically infused cells to disease sites may limit the success of exogenous cell-based therapy. In this study, we screened 9,000 signal-transduction modulators to identify hits that increase mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) surface expression of homing ligands that bind to intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1), such as CD11a. Pretreatment of MSCs with Ro-31-8425, an identified hit from this screen, increased MSC firm adhesion to an ICAM-1-coated substrate in vitro and enabled targeted delivery of systemically administered MSCs to inflamed sites in vivo in a CD11a- (and other ICAM-1-binding domains)-dependent manner.

Transcriptional profiling in C. elegans suggests DNA damage dependent apoptosis as an ancient function of the p53 family.

Background: In contrast to the three mammalian p53 family members, p53, which is generally involved in DNA damage responses, and p63 and p73 which are primarily needed for developmental regulation, cep-1 encodes for the single C. elegans p53-like gene. cep-1 acts as a transcription activator in a primordial p53 pathway that involves CEP-1 activation and the CEP-1 dependent transcriptional induction of the worm BH3 only domain encoding genes egl-1 and ced-13 to induce germ cell apoptosis.