Composition, production and procurement of glass at San Vincenzo: an early medieval monastic complex in southern Italy

136 glasses from the ninth-century monastery of San Vincenzo and its workshops have been analysed by electron microprobe in order to situate the assemblage within the first millennium CE glass making tradition. The majority of the glass compositions can be paralleled by Roman glass from the first to third centuries, with very few samples consistent with later compositional groups. Colours for trailed decoration on vessels, for vessel bodies and for sheet glass for windows were largely produced by melting the glass tesserae from old Roman mosaics. Some weakly-coloured transparent glass was obtained by re-melting Roman window glass, while some was produced by melting and mixing of tesserae, excluding the strongly coloured cobalt blues. Our data suggest that to feed the needs of the glass workshop, the bulk of the glass was removed as tesserae and windows from a large Roman building. This is consistent with a historical account according to which the granite columns of the monastic church were spolia from a Roman temple in the region. The purported shortage of natron from Egypt does not appear to explain the dependency of San Vincenzo on old Roman glass. Rather, the absence of contemporary primary glass may reflect the downturn in long-distance trade in the later first millennium C.E., and the role of patronage in the “ritual economy” founded upon donations and gift-giving of the time

Linear doggybone DNA vaccine induces similar immunological responses to conventional plasmid DNA independently of immune recognition by TLR9 in a pre-clinical model

Vaccination with DNA that encodes cancer antigens is a simple and convenient way to raise immunity against cancer and has already shown promise in the clinical setting. Conventional plasmid DNA is commonly used which together with the encoded antigen also includes bacterial immunostimulatory CpG motifs to target the DNA sensor Toll like receptor 9. Recently DNA vaccines using doggybone DNA (dbDNATM), have been developed without the use of bacteria. The cell free process relies on use of Phi29 DNA polymerase to amplify the template followed by protelomerase TelN to complete individual closed linear DNA. The resulting DNA contains the required antigenic sequence, a promoter and a poly A tail but lacks bacterial sequences such as an antibiotic resistance gene, prompting the question of immunogenicity. Here we compared the ability of doggybone DNA vaccine with plasmid DNA vaccine to induce adaptive immunity using clinically relevant oncotargets E6 and E7 from HPV. We demonstrate that despite the inability to trigger TLR9, doggybone DNA was able to induce similar levels of cellular and humoral immunity as plasmid DNA, with suppression of established tumours

Anomeric Spiro-Annulated Glycopyranosides: An Overview of Synthetic Methodologies and Biological Applications

International audienceOrganic chemistry developed a series of synthetic strategies toward spiro-annulated carbohydrates as potential pharmaceutical drugs or developed new organic synthetic methodologies. The present chapter gives a general overview of the spiro-annulation of carbohydrates at the anomeric position. The main synthetic strategies can be summarized in five paths. Intramolecular cyclizations can be performed through two short tethers with their reactive ends generating th