A Teaching Strategy with a Focus on Argumentation to Improve Undergraduate Students' Ability to Read Research Articles.

The aim of this study is to evaluate a teaching strategy designed to teach first-year undergraduate life sciences students at a research university how to learn to read authentic research articles. Our approach-based on the work done in the field of genre analysis and argumentation theory-means that we teach students to read research articles by teaching them which rhetorical moves occur in research articles and how they can identify these. Because research articles are persuasive by their very nature, we focused on the rhetorical moves that play an important role in authors' arguments.

Long-term kidney graft survival by delayed T cell ablative treatment in rhesus monkeys.

Background: Tolerance to organ allografts in primates including man has been elusive, although in rodents and pigs tolerance can be achieved to organ allografts with relatively short courses of immunosuppressive treatment. In all varieties of graft acceptance that do not require full-dose maintenance immunosuppression, immunological engagement of donor and recipient and an early unstable period have been observed. On the basis of the hypothesis that elimination of aggressive T cell function should tip the balance in favor of an operationally tolerant state, experiments have been performed in monkeys allowing recipient-donor interaction before T-cell ablation and a short course of immunosuppression.

Blockade of CD40-CD154 at the time of donor-specific blood transfusion does not lead to prolonged kidney allograft survival in nonhuman primates.

Background: In rodents it has been demonstrated that blockade of the CD40-CD154 (CD40L) pathway at the time of donor-specific blood transfusion (DST) can result in indefinite graft survival. Because it has been reported in the past that DST in monkeys can have a favorable effect on graft outcome and that blockade of the CD40-CD154 pathway can lead to prolonged kidney graft survival in monkeys, we have combined anti-CD154 treatment with DST in a monkey kidney graft model. The aim of this study was to investigate the immunosuppressive potential of blocking the CD40-CD154 interaction at the time of a DST in rhesus monkeys.

Use of in Vitro Correlates for Selection of Candidate Immunosuppressive Antibodies Prior to a Primate Transplant Model.

The selection of possible candidate immunosuppressive antibodies to prevent graft rejection is performed in vitro. Additionally, due to the species specificity of these monoclonal antibodies (MABs), pre-clinical studies in non-human primates are necessary. If a positive correlation between the in vitro and in vivo findings would exist, these tests can act as a pre-screening before new reagents are tested in vivo.