Effects of guideline-based training on the quality of formal ontologies: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: The importance of ontologies in the biomedical domain is generally recognized. However, their quality is often too poor for large-scale use in critical applications, at least partially due to insufficient training of ontology developers.

Objective: To show the efficacy of guideline-based ontology development training on the performance of ontology developers.

Continuation-like semantics for modeling structural process anomalies.

Background: Biomedical ontologies usually encode knowledge that applies always or at least most of the time, that is in normal circumstances. But for some applications like phenotype ontologies it is becoming increasingly important to represent information about aberrations from a norm. These aberrations may be modifications of physiological structures, but also modifications of biological processes.

Proposed actions are no actions: re-modeling an ontology design pattern with a realist top-level ontology.

Background: Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs) are representational artifacts devised to offer solutions for recurring ontology design problems. They promise to enhance the ontology building process in terms of flexibility, re-usability and expansion, and to make the result of ontology engineering more predictable. In this paper, we analyze ODP repositories and investigate their relation with upper-level ontologies.

A sensitive noninvasive method for monitoring successful liver-directed gene transfer of the low-density lipoprotein receptor in Watanabe hyperlipidemic rabbits in vivo.

Noninvasive tools to quantitate transgene expression directly are a prerequisite for clinical gene therapy. We established a method to determine location, magnitude, and duration of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor (LDLR) transgene expression after adenoviral gene transfer into LDLR-deficient Watanabe hypercholesterolemic rabbits by following tissue uptake of intravenously injected (111)In-labeled LDL using a scintillation camera. Liver-specific tracer uptake was calculated by normalizing the counts measured over the liver to counts measured over the heart that represent the circulating blood pool of the tracer (liver/heart (L/H) ratio).

Intravenous administration of recombinant adenoviruses causes thrombocytopenia, anemia and erythroblastosis in rabbits.

Background: Recombinant adenoviruses are highly efficient gene transfer vehicles but their administration to mammals is accompanied by a strong inflammatory response. The present study reports additional side effects observed during adenoviral gene transfer studies in rabbits.

Methods: Hematological and serological parameters, the course of viremia and the organ distribution were analyzed after in vivo administration of E1-deleted adenoviruses in rabbits.