Improving therapeutic potential of non-viral minimized DNA vectors.

The tragic deaths of three patients in a recent AAV-based X-linked myotubular myopathy clinical trial highlight once again the pressing need for safe and reliable gene delivery vectors. Non-viral minimized DNA vectors offer one possible way to meet this need. Recent pre-clinical results with minimized DNA vectors have yielded promising outcomes in cancer therapy, stem cell therapy, stem cell reprograming, and other uses.

[Results of laparoscopic cholecystectomy for acute cholecystitis in elderly patients].

Objectives: The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the feasibility and the morbidity of laparoscopic cholecystectomy for acute cholecystitis in elderly patients.

Methods: Among 891 consecutive patients who underwent cholecystectomy, 151 had acute cholecystitis. Fifty three patients of > or = 70 years of age (group 1) were compared to 98 younger patients (group 2).

[Conversion laparatomies during cholecystectomies under laparoscopy. Apropos of 285 consecutive cholecystectomies].

Retrospective analysis of a consecutive series of 285 cholecystectomies carried out by laparoscopy showed that 47 patients (17.5%) required conversion laparotomy. In 55% of these cases the conversion was due to difficulty in dissecting the gallbladder or cystic duct.

Different patterns of G/T and A/C mismatch repair in simian cells correspond to the specificity of a mismatch binding protein isolated from simian and HeLa cells.

The two transition mispairs G/T and A/C are corrected with different efficiencies and specificities in CV-1 African green monkey kidney cells. G/T mispairs are corrected with 99% efficiency and almost always in favor of guanine, while A/C mispairs exhibit a 31% uncorrected sector and are otherwise randomly corrected. The higher correction efficiency and bias for the G/T mispair can be correlated with the substrate specificity of a protein, found in HeLa and CV-1 cell extracts, that binds selectively to oligonucleotide duplexes containing G/T mispairs.

In situ activation of human erythrocyte prolidase: potential for enzyme replacement therapy in prolidase deficiency.

Deficiency of prolidase is frequently associated with skin lesions and mental retardation. Biochemically, the condition is marked by iminodipeptiduria. We have investigated the feasibility of using donor erythrocytes to replace the deficient enzyme.