Canine rabies DNA vaccination: a single-dose intradermal injection into ear pinnae elicits elevated and persistent levels of neutralizing antibody.

Rabid dog exposures cause >99% of human rabies deaths world-wide. In developing countries, where dogs are the viral reservoir, the 30-50% vaccination coverage of dog populations is insufficient to break the disease transmission cycle. In addition, many vaccines currently used in developing countries fail to maintain detectable levels of neutralizing antibody.

Videoendoscopic techniques for collection of multiple, serial intra-abdominal biopsy specimens in HIV-negative and HIV-positive pigtail macaques (Macaca nemestrina).

Tissue biopsy sampling by laparotomy is considered major surgery, which precludes serial sampling. This increases variability and requires a larger n value for pathogenesis studies. To address this problem, a study was conducted to develop and validate the feasibility of performing multiple, serial biopsy sampling by laparoscopy in pigtail macaques.

Videoendoscopy: an effective and efficient way to perform multiple visceral biopsies in small animals.

Because major surgery is usually required to obtain biopsies of abdominal organs, regulations tend to limit the number of procedures on individual animals to one. This study was conducted to develop a more humane, minor, comparatively cost-effective, minimally invasive surgical procedure, which reduces surgical trauma and the number of animals used. Biopsy techniques were developed in two nonsurvival rabbit surgeries.

Prolonged allogeneic and xenogeneic microchimerism in unmatched primates without immunosuppression by intrathymic implantation of CD34+ donor marrow cells.

Engraftment of stem cell-enriched donor marrow implanted in the thymus of a foreign host might facilitate acceptance of donor-specific organ or tissue grafts. To test this hypothesis, allogeneic and xenogeneic CD34+ marrow cells from unrelated adult male baboons and humans were injected intrathymically in eight infant female baboons, both with and without standard cyclosporine-based immunosuppression. In allogeneic experiments, male (donor) cells, of both T- and B-cell lineages, were detected by PCR in the peripheral blood of all six recipients and persisted for at least 15 months in 2/4 recipients studied longtutudinally.

Uterine epithelioid leiomyosarcoma in a pig-tailed macaque.

During ultrasonographic examination following spontaneous abortion, an approximately 6-cm diameter mass of mixed echogenicity is detected in the uterine wall of a mature pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina). Grossly, the mass is associated with the uterine fundus, multilobulate and tan with red-black mottled foci on cut surface. Microscopically, the invasive mass is composed of poorly differentiated round cells arranged in sheets and bundles supported by a fine fibrous stroma.