Correlation between COVID-19 and hepatitis B: A systematic review.

Background: There is growing evidence that patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) frequently present with liver impairment. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) remains a major public health threat in current society. Both severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and HBV can cause liver damage, and current findings on whether HBV infection increases disease severity in COVID-19 patients are inconsistent, and whether SARS-CoV-2 infection accelerates hepatitis B progression or leads to a worse prognosis in hepatitis B patients has not been adequately elucidated.

Syngeneic homograft of framework regions enhances the affinity of the mouse anti-human epidermal receptor 2 single-chain antibody e23sFv.

e23sFv is a HER2-targeted single-chain variable fragment (scFV) that was characterized as the targeting portion of a HER2-targeted tumour proapoptotic molecule in our previous study. antibody affinity maturation is a method to enhance antibody affinity either by complementarity-determining region (CDR) mutagenesis or by framework region (FR) engraftment. In the present study, the affinity of e23sFv was enhanced using two strategies.

The effect of direct translocation across endosomes on the cytotoxicity of the recombinant protein e23sFv-Fdt-casp6 to HER2 positive gastric cancer cells.

HER2-positive cancers represent a class of malignancies with high metastasis and poor prognosis. We previously generated the e23sFv-PEA II-casp6 recombinant, which contains an anti-HER2 single-chain antibody (e23sFv), a Pseudomonas exotoxin A translocation domain (PEA II), and a constitutively active caspase-6 (casp6), and demonstrated its potent selective anti-tumor activities. In this study, we generated a smaller-sized recombinant e23sFv-Fdt-casp6, in which the PEA II domain was replaced with the furin cleavage sequence from diphtheria toxin (Fdt), and explored its translocation pathway and specific killing mechanism.

[Expression of a chimeric gene containing poly-arginine as the protein transduction domain and its killing activity against HER2 positive gastric cancer SGC-7901 cells].

Aim: To construct a eukaryotic expression vector for chimeric gene containing poly-arginine as the protein transduction domain(PTD) and transiently transfect this vector into HER2 positive SGC-7901 cells and HER2 negative HeLa cells to examine its effect on cell growth.

Methods: PCR amplication was used to obtain the gene of active form caspase-3 fused with nonaarginine, and then fusion gene was cloned into eukaryotic expression vector containing e23sFv DNA fragment. After this chimeric gene transfected into SGC-7901 cells and HeLa cells by Lipofectamine 2000™; reagent, indirect immunofluorescence and cell counting were used to examine the expression in these two cells and the effect on cell growth.

Enhanced treatment of articular cartilage defect of the knee by intra-articular injection of Bcl-xL-engineered mesenchymal stem cells in rabbit model.

Direct intra-articular injection of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has been proposed as a potential cell therapy for cartilage defects. This cell therapy relies on the survival of the implanted MSCs. However, the arduous local environment may limit cell viability after implantation, which would restrict the cells' regenerative capacity.

Recombinant immunoproapoptotic proteins with furin site can translocate and kill HER2-positive cancer cells.

We previously reported the selective killing of HER2-positive tumor cells by a class of immunoproapoptotic proteins containing single-chain antibody, translocation domain of Pseudomonas exotoxin A (domain II; PEA II), and constitutively active human apoptotic molecules. In this study, a novel class of antitumor immunoproapoptotic proteins was explored to mediate tumor-specific apoptosis both in vitro and in vivo. Three furin cleavage sequences, including a synthetic polyarginine tract, and two furin cleavable sequences from PEA and diphtheria toxin were respectively used to replace PEA II in the previously constructed immunoproapoptotic protein.

[Study on apoptosis of human cervical carcinoma HeLa cells with RNA interference targeting hTERT].

Aim: To study the induction of tumor cell apoptosis by RNA interference-mediated inhibition of the expression of telomerase in cancer cells.

Methods: HeLa cells were transfected with the successfully established siRNA(small interfering RNA) expression vectors targeting hTERT (human telomerase reverse transcriptase). By electronic microscopy, Western blot and FCM (flow cytometry), the apoptosis of HeLa cells was tested.