New highly sensitive sandwich ELISA system for soluble endoglin quantification in different biological fluids.

Soluble endoglin (sEng) is a fragment of a membrane-associated receptor (CD105) expressed on endothelial cells, mesenchymal stem cells and trophoblast cells. It is considered as a regulatory factor involved in the development of preeclampsia (PE) and cancer-associated neo-angiogenesis. The purpose of this study was to describe a new sandwich ELISA for sEng quantification.

In an early branching metazoan, bacterial colonization of the embryo is controlled by maternal antimicrobial peptides.

Early embryos of many organisms develop outside the mother and are immediately confronted with myriads of potential colonizers. How these naive developmental stages control and shape the bacterial colonization is largely unknown. Here we show that early embryonic stages of the basal metazoan Hydra are able to control bacterial colonization by using maternal antimicrobial peptides.

Development of immunoreagents for diagnostics of CagA-positive Helicobacter pylori infections.

Background: Helicobacter pylori strains expressing cytotoxic CagA protein are more likely to provoke severe gastric mucosal pathology and cause adenocarcinoma development than that lacking CagA. Determination of the CagA-status of a pathogen, therefore, is regarded as informative approach in H. pylori infection diagnostics and disease risk prediction.