RNA interference (RNAi) is a process that can target intracellular RNAs for degradation in a highly sequence-specific manner, making it a powerful tool that is being pursued in both research and therapeutic applications. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a serious public health problem in need of better treatment options, and aspects of its life cycle make it an excellent target for RNAi-based therapeutics. We have designed a vector that expresses interfering RNAs that target HBV transcripts, including both viral RNA replicative intermediates and mRNAs encoding viral proteins. Our vector design incorporates many features of endogenous microRNA (miRNA) gene organization that are proving useful for the development of reagents for RNAi. In particular, our vector contains an RNA pol II driven gene cassette that leads to tissue-specific expression and efficient processing of multiple interfering RNAs from a single transcript, without the co-expression of any protein product. This vector shows potent silencing of HBV targets in cell culture models of HBV infection. The vector design will be applicable to silencing of additional cellular or disease-related genes.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.antiviral.2008.04.001 | DOI Listing |
Parasit Vectors
January 2025
Institute for Parasitology and Tropical Veterinary Medicine, Freie Universität Berlin, Robert-von-Ostertag-Str. 7, 14163, Berlin, Germany.
Background: Faecal egg counts (FECs) are essential for diagnosing helminth infections and guiding treatment decisions. For camels, no evaluations of coproscopic methods regarding precision, sensitivity and correlation between individual and pooled faecal samples are currently available.
Methods: Here, 410 camel faecal samples were collected in 2022 from South Darfur State, Sudan, and analysed to compare the semi-quantitative flotation, McMaster and Mini-FLOTAC methods in terms of precision, sensitivity, inter-rater reliability and helminth egg count correlations, as well as the effects of pooling samples.
J Biotechnol
January 2025
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Química, Departamento de Bioquímica, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. Electronic address:
The search for new non-animal textile materials has increased yearly as environmental awareness and veganism continue to spread, driving the development of greener fabrics. Concurrently, β-keratin, a fibrous, resistant, and insoluble protein shows great potential for producing innovative biomaterials. However, β-keratin is naturally abundant in animal feathers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExp Parasitol
January 2025
Department of Medical Zoology, School of Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, 02447, Republic of Korea; Medical Research Center for Bioreaction to Reactive Oxygen Species and Biomedical Science Institute, Core Research Institute (CRI), Kyung Hee University, Seoul, 02447, Republic of Korea. Electronic address:
Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease affecting a significant portion of the global population, whose etiology can be attributed to the protozoan organism Toxoplasma gondii. Despite its public health importance, an efficacious vaccine to prevent human toxoplasmosis remains unavailable. To this end, we designed an experimental toxoplasmosis vaccine using recombinant vaccinia virus vectors (rVacv) expressing the T.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Bone Miner Res
January 2025
Human Genetics Program, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, CA, United States.
We previously documented successful resolution of skeletal and dental disease in the infantile and late-onset murine models of hypophosphatasia (HPP), with a single injection of an adeno-associated serotype 8 vector encoding mineral-targeted TNAP (AAV8-TNAP-D10). Here, we conducted dosing studies in both HPP mouse models. A single escalating dose from 4x108 up to 4x1010 (vg/b) was intramuscularly injected into 4-day-old Alpl-/- mice (an infantile HPP model) and a single dose from 4x106 up to 4x109 (vg/b) was administered to 8-week-old AlplPrx1/Prx1 mice (a late-onset HPP model).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Department of Orthopaedics, Traditional Chinese Medical Hospital of Gansu Province, Qilihe District, Guazhou Street 418, Lanzhou, 730050,, Gansu, China.
Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) represents a progressive degenerative disorder characterized by the gradual erosion of articular cartilage. This study aimed to develop and validate biomarker-based predictive models for KOA diagnosis using machine learning techniques. Clinical data from 2594 samples were obtained and stratified into training and validation datasets in a 7:3 ratio.
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