The HDAC Inhibitor FK228 Enhances Adenoviral Transgene Expression by a Transduction-Independent Mechanism but Does Not Increase Adenovirus Replication

The histone deacetylase inhibitor FK228 has previously been shown to enhance adenoviral transgene expression when cells are pre-incubated with the drug. Upregulation of the coxsackie adenovirus receptor (CAR), leading to increased viral transduction, has been proposed as the main mechanism. In the present study, we found that the highest increase in transgene expression was achieved when non-toxic concentrations of FK228 were added immediately after transduction, demonstrating that the main effect by which FK228 enhances transgene expression is transduction-independent. FK228 had positive effects both on Ad5 and Ad5/f35 vectors with a variety of transgenes and promoters, indicating that FK228 works mainly by increasing transgene expression at the transcriptional level. In some cases, the effects were dramatic, as demonstrated by an increase in CD40L expression by FK228 from 0.3% to 62% when the murine prostate cancer cell line TRAMP-C2 was transduced with Ad[CD40L]. One unexpected finding was that FK228 decreased the transgene expression of an adenoviral vector with the prostate cell-specific PPT promoter in the human prostate adenocarcinoma cell lines LNCaP and PC-346C. This is probably a consequence of alteration of the adenocarcinoma cell lines towards a neuroendocrine differentiation after FK228 treatment. The observations in this study indicate that FK228 enhances adenoviral therapy by a transduction-independent mechanism. Furthermore, since histone deacetylase inhibitors may affect the differentiation of cells, it is important to keep in mind that the activity and specificity of tissue- and tumor-specific promoters may also be affected

Оценка эффективности комплекса методов медицинской реабилитации пациентов с двигательной дисфункцией кисти вследствие острых нарушений мозгового кровообращения

МЕДИЦИНСКАЯ РЕАБИЛИТАЦИЯКИСТЬ РУКИКИСТЬПСИХОМОТОРНАЯ АКТИВНОСТЬДВИГАТЕЛЬНЫХ НАВЫКОВ РАССТРОЙСТВА /РЕАБИЛРЕАБИЛИТАЦИЯ /МЕТОДЫМОЗГОВОГО КРОВООБРАЩЕНИЯ РАССТРОЙСТВА /ОСЛ /РЕАБИЛЛЕЧЕБНАЯ ГИМНАСТИКАМЕЛКАЯ МОТОРИКАЦелью исследования являлось изучение эффективности комплекса медицинской реабилитации, разработанного на основе зеркальной визуальной обратной связи, элементов двигательной терапии индуцированным ограничением, метода тренировки двигательных навыков кисти с использованием латексных резинок и авторского метода тренировки мелких моторных навыков у пациентов с двигательной дисфункцией кисти вследствие острого нарушения мозгового кровообращения различной степени выраженности. В исследовании приняли участие 62 пациента, разделенные на 2 группы сравнения, сопоставимые по полу, возрасту, реабилитационному периоду и потенциалу. Для анализа результатов использовались методы оценки эффективности медицинской реабилитации пациентов с двигательной дисфункцией кисти, утвержденные министерством здравоохранения Республики Беларусь. По результатам исследования было выявлено межгрупповое различие в восстановлении мелкой моторики, показателей кистевой динамометрии, уровне самооценки пациентом утраты функции верхней конечности, степени выраженности тревожной и депрессивной симптоматики, проявляющееся в более качественном результате у пациентов клинической группы. Также выявлено преобладание увеличений показателей и при оценке качества жизни у респондентов, проходящих предложенный комплекс методов медицинской реабилитации над пациентами контрольной группы. Разработанный комплекс, в условиях применения в соответствии с алгоритмом, позволяет более качественно по сравнению с пациентами, проходящими стандартный курс медицинской реабилитации, восстановить двигательный навык, утраченный вследствие острого нарушения мозгового кровообращения, улучшить степень самообслуживания, качества жизни и приводит к снижению выраженности тревожно-депрессивной симптоматики.Objectives. To study the efficacy of the medical rehabilitation complex developed on the basis of mirror visual feedback, elements of constraint induced movement therapy, the method of hand motor skills’ training with the use of latex rubber bands and the author’s own method of fine motor skills training in patients with motor dysfunction of the hand caused by acute cerebral circulation of different severity degree. Material and methods. The study involved 62 patients, divided into 2 comparison groups, matched by sex, age, rehabilitation period, and potential. To analyze the results we used methods for assessing the effectiveness of medical rehabilitation of patients with motor dysfunction of the hand, which were approved by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Belarus. Results. The study revealed an intergroup difference in restoring fine motor skills, hand dynamometry indices, the patient’s self-assessment of the upper limb function loss, the severity of anxiety and depression symptoms, which manifests itself in a better result in patients of the clinical group. The prevalence of the increased indicators was also revealed when assessing the life quality of respondents undergoing the proposed complex of medical rehabilitation methods over patients of the control group. Conclusions. The developed complex, in terms of application in accordance with the algorithm, allows more qualitatively compared with patients undergoing a standard course of medical rehabilitation, to restore the motor skill lost because of acute cerebral circulation disturbance, to improve the degree of self-care, quality of life and leads to a decrease in anxiety-depression symptoms

Adenovirus-mediated Gene Therapy of Prostate Cancer

Adenovirus-mediated gene therapy is a potential complement to standard cancer treatments. Advantages are that vectors can be used to target tumors and that replicating viruses lead to increased therapeutic dosage. In this thesis, an oncolytic serotype 5 adenovirus (Ad5), Ad[i/PPT-E1A, E3], was developed where viral replication is controlled by the insulator-shielded (i) prostate-specific PPT promoter. The adenoviral E3 region was inserted for its immune regulatory and lysis functions. Ad[i/PPT-E1A, E3] had improved cytotoxic abilities both in vitro and in a prostate cancer xenograft mouse model compared to a virus lacking the E3 region. To further improve adenoviral vectors, the histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) FK228 was studied. FK228 has been proposed to enhance the effect of adenoviral therapy by upregulation of CAR, the primary receptor for Ad5 infection. In the present study, we observed that FK228 promotes transgene expression even better when administered after viral transduction, indicating a post-transductional enhancement of transgene expression. Another interesting finding was that FK228 reduced transgene expression from the PPT promoter in the prostate cancer cell line LNCaP. This is explained by the fact that different HDACi have the ability to provoke a neuroendocrine phenotype of LNCaP. A potential drawback with adenoviral gene therapy is the rapid clearance of the virus from the circulation. Viral particles have been coated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) to evade immune recognition, a strategy that works well in mouse models. However, less is known about the effects of adenoviral PEGylation in human blood. We have studied cell interactions and immune responses to PEGylated and uncoated Ad5 vectors in human whole blood using a blood loop model with constant blood flow. Limited effects of PEGylation were observed in human blood, which were associated with the neutralizing ability of the donor blood. An important finding that donors with high neutralizing ability in whole blood do not necessarily have neutralizing antibodies against the virus strongly implies that neutralization should be measured in whole blood

Adenovirus-mediated Gene Therapy of Prostate Cancer

Adenovirus-mediated gene therapy is a potential complement to standard cancer treatments. Advantages are that vectors can be used to target tumors and that replicating viruses lead to increased therapeutic dosage. In this thesis, an oncolytic serotype 5 adenovirus (Ad5), Ad[i/PPT-E1A, E3], was developed where viral replication is controlled by the insulator-shielded (i) prostate-specific PPT promoter. The adenoviral E3 region was inserted for its immune regulatory and lysis functions. Ad[i/PPT-E1A, E3] had improved cytotoxic abilities both in vitro and in a prostate cancer xenograft mouse model compared to a virus lacking the E3 region. To further improve adenoviral vectors, the histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) FK228 was studied. FK228 has been proposed to enhance the effect of adenoviral therapy by upregulation of CAR, the primary receptor for Ad5 infection. In the present study, we observed that FK228 promotes transgene expression even better when administered after viral transduction, indicating a post-transductional enhancement of transgene expression. Another interesting finding was that FK228 reduced transgene expression from the PPT promoter in the prostate cancer cell line LNCaP. This is explained by the fact that different HDACi have the ability to provoke a neuroendocrine phenotype of LNCaP. A potential drawback with adenoviral gene therapy is the rapid clearance of the virus from the circulation. Viral particles have been coated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) to evade immune recognition, a strategy that works well in mouse models. However, less is known about the effects of adenoviral PEGylation in human blood. We have studied cell interactions and immune responses to PEGylated and uncoated Ad5 vectors in human whole blood using a blood loop model with constant blood flow. Limited effects of PEGylation were observed in human blood, which were associated with the neutralizing ability of the donor blood. An important finding that donors with high neutralizing ability in whole blood do not necessarily have neutralizing antibodies against the virus strongly implies that neutralization should be measured in whole blood

Leader Normativity in Crisis Management : Tales From a School Fire

This study examines the handling of a school fire in a rural Swedish community and the role of the normalized narratives of leaders in crisis management. The article claims that leader normativity legitimizes certain positions and actions in a crisis management narrative and marginalizes others. The study uses theories on gender, boundary work and space to illuminate this claim. To explore such processes in narratives, we use feminist theory and critical management studies. The study shows that leader normativity creates gendered differences that result in both inequalities and the marginalization of any parts of crisis management that do not apply to leader normativity. The study shows that there is a strong norm of crisis management as an individualistic perspective that focuses on heroes and higher-level management as the people managing a crisis. Support for describing crisis management as a collective achievement and caring perspectives become marginalized.

Gene transfer vectors targeted to human prostate cancer: Do we need better preclinical testing systems?

Destruction of cancer cells by genetically modified viral and nonviral vectors has been the aim of many research programs. The ability to target cytotoxic gene therapies to the cells of interest is an essential prerequisite, and the treatment has always had the potential to provide better and more long-lasting therapy than existing chemotherapies. However, the potency of these infectious agents requires effective testing systems, in which hypotheses can be explored both in vitro and in vivo before the establishment of clinical trials in humans. The real prospect of off-target effects should be eliminated in the preclinical stage, if current prejudices against such therapies are to be overcome. In this review we have set out, using adenoviral vectors as a commonly used example, to discuss some of the key parameters required to develop more effective testing, and to critically assess the current cellular models for the development and testing of prostate cancer biotherapy. Only by developing models that more closely mirror human tissues will we be able to translate literature publications into clinical trials and hence into acceptable alternative treatments for the most commonly diagnosed cancer in humans

The Human Pancreas Proteome Defined by Transcriptomics and Antibody-Based Profiling

The pancreas is composed of both exocrine glands and intermingled endocrine cells to execute its diverse functions, including enzyme production for digestion of nutrients and hormone secretion for regulation of blood glucose levels. To define the molecular constituents with elevated expression in the human pancreas, we employed a genome-wide RNA sequencing analysis of the human transcriptome to identify genes with elevated expression in the human pancreas. This quantitative transcriptomics data was combined with immunohistochemistry-based protein profiling to allow mapping of the corresponding proteins to different compartments and specific cell types within the pancreas down to the single cell level. Analysis of whole pancreas identified 146 genes with elevated expression levels, of which 47 revealed a particular higher expression as compared to the other analyzed tissue types, thus termed pancreas enriched. Extended analysis of in vitro isolated endocrine islets identified an additional set of 42 genes with elevated expression in these specialized cells. Although only 0.7% of all genes showed an elevated expression level in the pancreas, this fraction of transcripts, in most cases encoding secreted proteins, constituted 68% of the total mRNA in pancreas. This demonstrates the extreme specialization of the pancreas for production of secreted proteins. Among the elevated expression profiles, several previously not described proteins were identified, both in endocrine cells (CFC1, FAM159B, RBPJL and RGS9) and exocrine glandular cells (AQP12A, DPEP1, GATM and ERP27). In summary, we provide a global analysis of the pancreas transcriptome and proteome with a comprehensive list of genes and proteins with elevated expression in pancreas. This list represents an important starting point for further studies of the molecular repertoire of pancreatic cells and their relation to disease states or treatment effects

The Human Pancreas Proteome Defined by Transcriptomics and Antibody-Based Profiling

The pancreas is composed of both exocrine glands and intermingled endocrine cells to execute its diverse functions, including enzyme production for digestion of nutrients and hormone secretion for regulation of blood glucose levels. To define the molecular constituents with elevated expression in the human pancreas, we employed a genome-wide RNA sequencing analysis of the human transcriptome to identify genes with elevated expression in the human pancreas. This quantitative transcriptomics data was combined with immunohistochemistry-based protein profiling to allow mapping of the corresponding proteins to different compartments and specific cell types within the pancreas down to the single cell level. Analysis of whole pancreas identified 146 genes with elevated expression levels, of which 47 revealed a particular higher expression as compared to the other analyzed tissue types, thus termed pancreas enriched. Extended analysis of in vitro isolated endocrine islets identified an additional set of 42 genes with elevated expression in these specialized cells. Although only 0.7% of all genes showed an elevated expression level in the pancreas, this fraction of transcripts, in most cases encoding secreted proteins, constituted 68% of the total mRNA in pancreas. This demonstrates the extreme specialization of the pancreas for production of secreted proteins. Among the elevated expression profiles, several previously not described proteins were identified, both in endocrine cells (CFC1, FAM159B, RBPJL and RGS9) and exocrine glandular cells (AQP12A, DPEP1, GATM and ERP27). In summary, we provide a global analysis of the pancreas transcriptome and proteome with a comprehensive list of genes and proteins with elevated expression in pancreas. This list represents an important starting point for further studies of the molecular repertoire of pancreatic cells and their relation to disease states or treatment effects

Sample correlations and classification of all human protein coding genes.

<p>Scatter plots of FPKM values for all detected genes in (A) two pancreas tissue samples, (B) two islet samples, (C) two exocrine samples (D) and pancreas and salivary gland. (E) Pie chart showing the classification of all genes in pancreas, based on transcript abundance and number of tissues with expression. (F) Pie chart showing the distribution of the expressed mRNA molecules in pancreas.</p