Implementation of an Immunoassay Based on the MVA-T7pol-Expression System for Rapid Identification of Immunogenic SARS-CoV-2 Antigens: A Proof-of-Concept Study.

The emergence of hitherto unknown viral pathogens presents a great challenge for researchers to develop effective therapeutics and vaccines within a short time to avoid an uncontrolled global spread, as seen during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Therefore, rapid and simple methods to identify immunogenic antigens as potential therapeutical targets are urgently needed for a better pandemic preparedness. To address this problem, we chose the well-characterized Modified Vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA)-T7pol expression system to establish a workflow to identify immunogens when a new pathogen emerges, generate candidate vaccines, and test their immunogenicity in an animal model.

Fast Building Instance Proxy Reconstruction for Large Urban Scenes.

Digitalization of large-scale urban scenes (in particular buildings) has been a long-standing open problem, which attributes to the challenges in data acquisition, such as incomplete scene coverage, lack of semantics, low efficiency, and low reliability in path planning. In this paper, we address these challenges in urban building reconstruction from aerial images, and we propose an effective workflow and a few novel algorithms for efficient 3D building instance proxy reconstruction for large urban scenes. Specifically, we propose a novel learning-based approach to instance segmentation of urban buildings from aerial images followed by a voting-based algorithm to fuse the multi-view instance information to a sparse point cloud (reconstructed using a standard Structure from Motion pipeline).

PathNet: Path-Selective Point Cloud Denoising.

Current point cloud denoising (PCD) models optimize single networks, trying to make their parameters adaptive to each point in a large pool of point clouds. Such a denoising network paradigm neglects that different points are often corrupted by different levels of noise and they may convey different geometric structures. Thus, the intricacy of both noise and geometry poses side effects including remnant noise, wrongly-smoothed edges, and distorted shape after denoising.

CSDN: Cross-Modal Shape-Transfer Dual-Refinement Network for Point Cloud Completion.

How will you repair a physical object with some missings? You may imagine its original shape from previously captured images, recover its overall (global) but coarse shape first, and then refine its local details. We are motivated to imitate the physical repair procedure to address point cloud completion. To this end, we propose a cross-modal shape-transfer dual-refinement network (termed CSDN), a coarse-to-fine paradigm with images of full-cycle participation, for quality point cloud completion.

Immunogenicity and efficacy of the COVID-19 candidate vector vaccine MVA-SARS-2-S in preclinical vaccination.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has emerged as the infectious agent causing the pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with dramatic consequences for global human health and economics. Previously, we reached clinical evaluation with our vector vaccine based on modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) against the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which causes an infection in humans similar to SARS and COVID-19. Here, we describe the construction and preclinical characterization of a recombinant MVA expressing full-length SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein (MVA-SARS-2-S).

Discriminating the eight genotypes of the porcine circovirus type 2 with TaqMan-based real-time PCR.

Background: The porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) is divided into eight genotypes including the previously described genotypes PCV2a to PCV2f and the two new genotypes PCV2g and PCV2h. PCV2 genotyping has become an important task in molecular epidemiology and to advance research on the prophylaxis and pathogenesis of PCV2 associated diseases. Standard genotyping of PCV2 is based on the sequencing of the viral genome or at least of the open reading frame 2.

Isolation and characterization of endothelial progenitor cells from canine bone marrow.

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) are located predominantly in the bone marrow. These cells are useful for treating human vascular diseases; they also are a possible target for restricting blood vessel growth for tumors. Little is known about canine EPC.

Testosterone propionate can promote effects of acellular nerve allograft-seeded bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells on repairing canine sciatic nerve.

Peripheral human nerves fail to regenerate across long tube implants (>2 cm), and tissue-engineered nerve grafts represent a promising treatment alternative. The present study aims to investigate the testosterone propionate (TP) repair effect of acellular nerve allograft (ANA) seeded with allogeneic bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) on 3-cm canine sciatic nerve defect. ANA cellularized with allogeneic BMSCs was implanted to the defect, and TP was injected into the lateral crus of the defected leg.

Trigger factor assisted self-assembly of canine parvovirus VP2 protein into virus-like particles in Escherichia coli with high immunogenicity.

Canine parvovirus (CPV) has been considered to be an important pathogen, which can cause acute infectious disease in canids. Although current vaccines are effective in preventing CPV infection, safety problems still remain unsolved. In this study, a subunit vaccine against CPV based on virus-like particles (VLPs) with good safety and immunogenicity is reported.

Transplantation of Amniotic Scaffold-Seeded Mesenchymal Stem Cells and/or Endothelial Progenitor Cells From Bone Marrow to Efficiently Repair 3-cm Circumferential Urethral Defect in Model Dogs.

The treatment options for patients with a urethral defect are limited by the availability of autologous tissues. We hypothesized that transplantation of decellularized human amniotic scaffolds (dHAS) seeded with allogeneic bone marrow mesenchymal cells (BMSCs) and/or endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) may serve as a promising repair strategy for long segment of circumferential urethral defect. To verify the hypothesis, with urinary catheterization, a 3-cm segment of whole urethra in 25 male mongrel dogs was excised and replaced by dHAS seeded with allogeneic BMSCs and/or EPCs.

Automatic Constraint Detection for 2D Layout Regularization.

In this paper, we address the problem of constraint detection for layout regularization. The layout we consider is a set of two-dimensional elements where each element is represented by its bounding box. Layout regularization is important in digitizing plans or images, such as floor plans and facade images, and in the improvement of user-created contents, such as architectural drawings and slide layouts.