Impact of suboptimal donor to suboptimal recipient kidney transplant on delayed graft function and outcome.

Introduction: The demographics of donor and recipient candidates for kidney transplantation (KT) have substantially changed. Recipients tend to be older and polymorbid and KT to suboptimal recipients is associated with delayed graft function (DGF), prolonged hospitalization, inferior long-term allograft function, and poorer patient survival. In parallel, donors are also older, suffer from several comorbidities, and donations coming from circulatory death (DCD) predominate, which in turn leads to early and late complications.

Digital skills for medical students - qualitative evaluation of the curriculum 4.0 "Medicine in the digital age".

The digital transformation has far-reaching implications for the qualification profile of medical students, which have not been addressed in medical studies so far. The competence-oriented blended learning curriculum "Medicine in the digital age" has been implemented at Mainz University Medical Centre since 2017. It represents a curricular reform project of the "Curriculum 4.

Medical and logistical challenges of trauma care in a 12-day cave rescue: A case report.

Aim: To describe the case of a patient with a severe head injury at a depth of about 1000 m from the cave entrance in Bavaria, Germany, who received pre-hospital trauma care for 12 days until evacuation.

Results: Search and rescue (SAR) operation involved 728 rescuers, 202 working directly in the cave (for a total of 9239 h) and 7 physicians from five countries. At 6-month follow-up, the patient had recovered completely and resumed his job.

Frequency of single nucleotide polymorphisms of some immune response genes in a population sample from São Paulo, Brazil.

Objective: To present the frequency of single nucleotide polymorphisms of a few immune response genes in a population sample from São Paulo City (SP), Brazil.

Methods: Data on allele frequencies of known polymorphisms of innate and acquired immunity genes were presented, the majority with proven impact on gene function. Data were gathered from a sample of healthy individuals, non-HLA identical siblings of bone marrow transplant recipients from the Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo, obtained between 1998 and 2005.

Polymorphisms in the gene for lymphotoxin-alpha predispose to chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy.

Background: Chagas disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi infection, displays clinical heterogeneity and may be attributable to differential genetic susceptibility. Chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy (CCC) develops only in a subset of T. cruzi-infected individuals and may lead to heart failure that has a worse clinical course and that leads to reduced life expectancy, compared with heart failure of other etiologies.

Scalable transient gene expression in Chinese hamster ovary cells in instrumented and non-instrumented cultivation systems.

Cell expansion, gene transfer and protein production were all executed with a single serum-free, animal protein-free commercial medium designed for suspension-adapted Chinese hamster ovary cells (CHO DG44). This is a most important process to consider for clinical production of recombinant proteins. The transfection with polyethylenimine (PEI) was shown here to be scalable using both stirred-tank bioreactors of 3- and 150-l and novel agitated cultivation vessels (50 ml ventilated centrifuge tubes and 1-l square-shaped glass bottles) that lack any instrumentation.

The monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 gene polymorphism is associated with cardiomyopathy in human chagas disease.

Background: Only a subset of individuals infected with Trypanosoma cruzi develop chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy (CCC). Familial aggregation of CCC in areas of endemicity indicates that susceptibility may be genetic, which may be a plausible explanation for why only one-third of T. cruzi-infected individuals develop CCC.

BAT1, a putative anti-inflammatory gene, is associated with chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy.

Background: It is not understood why only a subset of individuals infected with Trypanosoma cruzi develop chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy (CCC). Patients with CCC display high levels of circulating proinflammatory cytokines. Heart-infiltrating lymphocytes from patients with CCC also express proinflammatory cytokines (tumor necrosis factor- alpha and interferon- gamma ) that are detectable in biopsy samples and surgical heart-tissue samples.

Transient gene expression in suspension HEK-293 cells: application to large-scale protein production.

Recent advances in genomics, proteomics, and structural biology raised the general need for significant amounts of pure recombinant protein (r-protein). Because of the difficulty in obtaining in some cases proper protein folding in bacteria, several methods have been established to obtain large amounts of r-proteins by transgene expression in mammalian cells. We have developed three nonviral DNA transfer protocols for suspension-adapted HEK-293 and CHO cells: (1) a calcium phosphate based method (Ca-Pi), (2) a calcium-mediated method called Calfection, and (3) a polyethylenimine-based method (PEI).

Orbital shaker technology for the cultivation of mammalian cells in suspension.

For large-scale applications in biotechnology, cultivation of mammalian cells in suspension is an essential prerequisite. Typically, suspension cultures are grown in glass spinner flasks filled to less than 50% of the nominal volume. We propose a superior system for suspension cultures of mammalian cells based on orbital shaker technology.

Serum-free large-scale transient transfection of CHO cells.

To date, methods for large-scale transient gene expression (TGE) in cultivated mammalian cells have focused on two transfection vehicles: polyethylenimine (PEI) and calcium phosphate (CaPi). Both have been shown to result in high transfection efficiencies at scales beyond 10 L. Unfortunately, both approaches yield higher levels of recombinant protein (r-protein) in the presence of serum than in its absence.

Calfection: a novel gene transfer method for suspension cells.

We have developed a novel method called Calfection for gene delivery to and protein expression from suspension-cultivated mammalian cells. Plasmid DNA was simply diluted into a calcium chloride solution and then added to the cell culture for transfection. We evaluated and optimized this approach using suspension-adapted HEK293 cells grown in 12-well plates that were shaken on an orbital shaker.