Functioning of Innovative Territorial Clusters

One of the basic directions of development of modern economy, closely related, primarily, to the innovative nature of this development is in the process of forming clusters. Regional and interregional clusters are considered as a priority inter-sectoral complexes that determine the development of post-industrial information economy at the national and regional level. Their development is associated with the processes of globalization and formation of the industrial structure of the information economy. The tasks of Russia's transition to innovative type of development are associated in particular with the need of formation of innovative clusters. Clusters as a form of spatial associations of enterprises is widespread in the Western economies. Taking into account the necessity of innovative development of Russia in the context of improving the competitiveness of industries and sectors in terms of integration of the country into the global economy, we consider it appropriate in this work to conduct a study of foreign experience of formation of clusters (Cherenkov, 2013). From the definition given by the founder of the modern theory of clusters by M. porter, that “...a cluster or industrial group, is a group of geographically neighboring interconnected companies and related organizations operating in a certain area, characterized by common activities and complementary to each other”. Keywords: cluster, territorial-production cluster, globalization, innovation JEL Classifications: P25, P28, R1, R1

Cellular Activation of the Self-Quenched Fluorescent Reporter Probe in Tumor Microenvironment

The effect of intralysosomal proteolysis of near-infrared fluorescent (NIRF) self-quenched macromolecular probe (PGC-Cy5.5) has been previously reported and used for tumor imaging. Here we demonstrate that proteolysis can be detected noninvasively in vivo at the cellular level. A codetection of GFP fluorescence (using two-photon excitation) and NIRF was performed in tumor-bearing animals injected with PGC-Cy5.5. In vivo microscopy of tumor cells in subdermal tissue layers (up to 160 µm) showed a strong Cy5.5 dequenching effect in GFP-negative cells. This observation was corroborated by flow cytometry, sorting, and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction analysis of tumor-isolated cells. Both GFP-positive (81% total) and GFP-negative (19% total) populations contained Cy5.5-positive cells. The GFP-negative cells were confirmed to be host mouse cells by the absence of rat cathepsin mRNA signal. The subfraction of GFP-negative cells (2.5–3.0%) had seven times higher NIRF intensity than the majority of GFP-positive or GFP-negative cells (372 and 55 AU, respectively). Highly NIRF-positive, FP-negative cells were CD45- and MAC3-positive. Our results indicate that: 1) intracellular proteolysis can be imaged in vivo at the cellular level using cathepsin-sensitive probes; 2) tumor-recruited cells of hematopoetic origin participate most actively in uptake and degradation of long-circulating macromolecular probes