Hepatitis E virus derived from different sources exhibits different behaviour in virus inactivation and/or removal studies with plasma derivatives.

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) causes viral hepatitis, and is considered a risk factor for blood products. Although some HEV inactivation/removal studies have been reported, detailed investigations of different manufacturing steps as heat treatment, partitioning during cold ethanol fractionation, low pH treatment, and virus filtration have yet to be reported for plasma-derived medicinal products. In this study, human serum- and swine faeces-derived HEVs, with and without detergent treatment, were used.

Enhanced in vivo gene transfer into the placenta using RGD fiber-mutant adenovirus vector.

Among viral vectors, the fiber-mutant adenovirus vector carrying the Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) peptide sequence (Ad-RGD) seems to have potential for both clinical gene therapy and basic research. As a part of a thorough evaluation of Ad-RGD in preclinical studies, we designed an experiment to investigate in detail the distribution of Ad-RGD compared with conventional adenovirus vector (WT-Ad) in pregnant mice. Surprisingly, Ad-RGD had substantial placental tropism, at 10-100 times that of WT-Ad.

RNA interfering approach for clarifying the PPARgamma pathway using lentiviral vector expressing short hairpin RNA.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARgamma) plays a central role in adipocyte differentiation and insulin sensitivity. Although PPARgamma also appears to regulate diverse cellular processes in other cell types such as lymphocytes, the detailed mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we established a lentivirus-mediated short hairpin RNA expression system and identified a potent short hairpin RNA which suppresses PPARgamma expression, resulting in marked inhibition of preadipocyte-to-adipocyte differentiation in 3T3-L1 cells.