Transduction of SIV-Specific TCR Genes into Rhesus Macaque CD8+ T Cells Conveys the Ability to Suppress SIV Replication

The SIV/rhesus macaque model for HIV/AIDS is a powerful system for examining the contribution of T cells in the control of AIDS viruses. To better our understanding of CD8(+) T-cell control of SIV replication in CD4(+) T cells, we asked whether TCRs isolated from rhesus macaque CD8(+) T-cell clones that exhibited varying abilities to suppress SIV replication could convey their suppressive properties to CD8(+) T cells obtained from an uninfected/unvaccinated animal.We transferred SIV-specific TCR genes isolated from rhesus macaque CD8(+) T-cell clones with varying abilities to suppress SIV replication in vitro into CD8(+) T cells obtained from an uninfected animal by retroviral transduction. After sorting and expansion, transduced CD8(+) T-cell lines were obtained that specifically bound their cognate SIV tetramer. These cell lines displayed appropriate effector function and specificity, expressing intracellular IFNγ upon peptide stimulation. Importantly, the SIV suppression properties of the transduced cell lines mirrored those of the original TCR donor clones: cell lines expressing TCRs transferred from highly suppressive clones effectively reduced wild-type SIV replication, while expression of a non-suppressing TCR failed to reduce the spread of virus. However, all TCRs were able to suppress the replication of an SIV mutant that did not downregulate MHC-I, recapitulating the properties of their donor clones.Our results show that antigen-specific SIV suppression can be transferred between allogenic T cells simply by TCR gene transfer. This advance provides a platform for examining the contributions of TCRs versus the intrinsic effector characteristics of T-cell clones in virus suppression. Additionally, this approach can be applied to develop non-human primate models to evaluate adoptive T-cell transfer therapy for AIDS and other diseases

The role of access policies on the Development of local SDIs: the Special Role of Utilities

Within the context of Spatial data infrastructures (SDI) access-to-government-data policies are important for the existence and successful use of the data, and the success of the SDI itself. Many researches have attempted to assess the success of access policies for public sector (geographic) information. Most compare the open access approach of the United States federal government with the cost recovery models in other countries, and conclude that the open access policy is more successful. Consistently, most research recommend nations toconvert cost recovery policies into open access policies. The SDI hierarchy of global, regional, national, state, local and corporate SDIs, however, suggests that success of a specific policy option at one SDI level does not necessarily apply to other levels of SDIs.Therefore, although at first sight the accomplished researches provide convincing evidence for the success of the open access model at the national (or regional) level, they appear to have some deficiencies for application to the local levels of SDIs. The frequently cited researches underestimate the role cost recovery policies may have in the availability of spatial framework data at the local levels of SDI. Through an analysis of the large-scale topographic datasets in three jurisdictions in Europe and two states in the United States, this paper provides insights in the technical and non-technical characteristics of these data, and in the role private or semi-public utilities may play at the local SDI levels. The paper will show that cost recovery policies may be more beneficial for SDI development at the local levels than current research has suggested

Harmonization of land registry in Europe

An increase in cross-border transactions of immovable property within the European Union puts a demand for easy access to the information of the national land administrations of the member states. The European Union Land Information System (EULIS) project brings together the registrations of eight European jurisdictions in one portal. In this way it provides cross-border access to information about the rights on real estate, using the information in thecomputerized databases of the participating land registries. The EULIS project is the first step towards a more transparent system of real estate transactions. The next logical step, from the viewpoint of international accessibility of the information, is that the national land registries within the united Europe will be harmonized or even integrated in one European land registry or administration.In order to promote cross-border transactions and to facilitate the European mortgage market the authors suggest the introduction of a common way of land registration, in addition to the existing national land registrations: the EuroTitle system. This is a challenging concept, which may bring the required uniformity of land registration in Europe. This approach is in the beginning stages of development and the legal and organisational consequences need to be further explored and developed in order to assess the feasibility of the introduction of such a concept in European land registry

Worldwide (status, development and) impact assessment of geoportals

At this moment, numerous (catalogue) geoportals have been established and it is expected that many more geoportals will be implemented in the future. To the best of our knowledge, not many status, development and impact assessment studies have been performed with regard to all these initiatives (certainly not on a worldwide scale). It is very important to know what the main developments and impacts of these facilities are to justify all costs, efforts and time to implement these geoportals and to improve their effectiveness and efficiency. For this reason, a survey was undertaken (November 2003 – April 2004) in orderto assess the worldwide (status, developments and) impacts. The survey consisted of 21 questions and was sent to all known geoportal coordinators. In total 428 coordinators were contacted.105 coordinators completed the survey. They were mainly coordinating international, national/federal and state geoportals in Europe, Australia and USA/Canada (only a few were coordinating Caribbean, African and Asian ones). The results were aggregated for the whole world.The main results are that the implementation of geoportals is a global activity, that the use of geoportals and spatial data will increase, that more services will be provided and new services will be introduced within the next 5 years. As the main drawbacks for implementation are considered: institutional problems, lack of specialized data managers and data standardization. Moreover, it seems that geoportals (of the developed world) have a positive impact on society. These impacts are mainly economic in nature