The impact of expression vector position on transgene transcription allows for rational expression vector design in a targeted integration system.

Site-specific integration (SSI) technology has emerged as an effective approach by the pharmaceutical industry for the development of recombinant Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell lines. While SSI systems have been demonstrated to be effective for the development of CHO cell lines, they can be limiting in terms of both transgene expression and in the case of multi-specifics, the ability to generate the correct product of interest. To maximize the performance of Pfizer's dual SSI expression system for expressing monoclonal and multi-specific antibodies, we used a novel approach to investigate the positional effect of transgenes within expression vectors by engineering nucleotide polymorphisms (NP)s to use as biomarkers to track the level of transcript output from each expression vector position.

A new approach for subset 2-D AR model identification for describing textures.

This paper addresses the problem of identification of appropriate autoregressive (AR) components to describe textural regions of digital images by a general class of two-dimensional (2-D) AR models. In analogy with univariate time series, the proposed technique first selects a neighborhood set of 2-D lag variables corresponding to the significant multiple partial auto-correlation coefficients. A matrix is then suitably formed from these 2-D lag variables.

[Merkel cell tumor of the hand in a 104-year-old patient. Case report with review of the literature].

Merkel cell tumors represent a rare subepidermal tumor of the skin. Despite the high tumor-mitosis-rate, the survival rate is rather high. This characterizes the biologic behavior of these tumors.

[Bouveret syndrome--a rare form of pyloric obstruction].

Gallstone ileus represents a severe complication of cholelithiasis. The incidence of serious disease concomitant with gallstone ileus is high; it is most often seen in elderly patients and contributes to its high morbidity and mortality rates. Bouveret's syndrome is a rare form of gallstone ileus, characterized by its duodenal site after migration through a cholecysto-duodenal fistula in almost all cases.