Biocleavable Polycationic Micelles as Highly Efficient Gene Delivery Vectors

An amphiphilic disulfide-containing polyamidoamine was synthesized by Michael-type polyaddition reaction of piperazine to equimolar N, N′-bis(acryloyl)cystamine with 90% yield. The polycationic micelles (198 nm, 32.5 mV), prepared from the amphiphilic polyamidoamine by dialysis method, can condense foreign plasmid DNA to form nanosized polycationic micelles/DNA polyelectrolyte complexes with positive charges, which transfected 293T cells with high efficiency. Under optimized conditions, the transfection efficiencies of polycationic micelles/DNA complexes are comparable to, or even higher than that of commercially available branched PEI (Mw 25 kDa)

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

Nanomedicine-boosting tumor immunogenicity for enhanced immunotherapy

202211 bcwhAccepted ManuscriptRGCOthersNational Natural Science Foundation of China; Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou; China Postdoctoral Science FoundationPublishe

An MRI-visible non-viral vector for targeted Bcl-2 siRNA delivery to neuroblastoma

Min Shen,1,* Faming Gong,3,* Pengfei Pang,1,* Kangshun Zhu,1 Xiaochun Meng,1 Chun Wu,1 Jin Wang,1 Hong Shan,1,2 Xintao Shuai3,41Molecular Imaging Lab, Department of Radiology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; 2Institute of Intervention Radiology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; 3PCFM Lab of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; 4Center of Biomedical Engineering, Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China*These authors contributed equally to this workAbstract: Polyethylene glycol-grafted polyethylenimine (PEG-g-PEI) which was functionalized with a neuroblastoma cell-specific ligand, the GD2 single chain antibody (scAbGD2), was synthesized in order to effectively deliver Bcl-2 siRNA into neuroblastoma cells. This polymer was complexed first with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticle (SPION) to get a MRI-visible targeted non-viral vector (scAbGD2-PEG-g-PEI-SPION) and then with Bcl-2 siRNA to form nanoparticles showing low cytotoxicity. The targeting capacity of scAbGD2-PEG-g-PEI-SPION was successfully verified in vivo and in vitro by magnetic resonance imaging. The single chain antibody encoded targeted polyplex was more effective in transferring Bcl-2 siRNA than the nontargeting one in SK-N-SH cells, a human neuroblastoma cell line, resulting in a 46.34% inhibition in the expression of Bcl-2 mRNA. Consequently, a high level of cell apoptosis up to 50.76% and a significant suppression of tumor growth were achieved, which indicates that scAbGD2-PEG-g-PEI-SPION is a promising magnetic resonance imaging-visible non-viral vector for targeted neuroblastoma siRNA therapy and diagnosis.Keywords: tumor targeting, GD2, non-viral vector, Bcl-2 small interfering RNA, magnetic resonance imagin

The use of folate-PEG-grafted-hybranched-PEI nonviral vector for the inhibition of glioma growth in the rat

Combined treatment using nonviral agent-mediated enzyme/prodrug therapy and immunotherapy had been proposed as a powerful alternative method of cancer therapy. The present study was aimed to evaluate the cytotoxicity in vitro and the therapeutic efficacy in vivo when the cytosine deaminase/5-fluorocytosine (CD/5-FC) and TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) genes were jointly used against rat C6 glioma cells. The potency of the FA-PEG-PEI used as a nonviral vector was tested in the FR-expressed C6 glioma cells and Wistar rats. The C6 glioma cells and animal model were treated by the combined application of FA-PEG-PEI/pCD/5-FC and FA-PEG-PEI/pTRAIL. The antitumor effect was evaluated by survival assays and tumor volume. This study revealed a significant increase of cytotoxicity in vitro following the combined application of FA-PEG-PEI/pCD/5-FC and FA-PEG-PEI/pTRAIL treatments in C6 glioma cells. Animal studies showed a significant growth inhibition of the C6 glioma xenografts using the combined treatment. These results demonstrated that the combined treatment generated additive cytotoxic effect in C6 glioma cells in both in vitro and in vivo conditions, and indicated that such treatment method using both enzyme/prodrug therapy and TRAIL immunotherapy might be a promising therapeutic strategy in treating glioma. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Effects of Anti-discrimination Law on the Differential between Non-regular and Regular Workers in South Korea

South Korea implemented a new anti-discrimination law in 2007. The goal is to reduce the labor condition differentials between non-regular and regular workers. This study analyzes the effect of the law on the wage differential. The data comes from “Survey on Labor Conditions by Employment Type”. For the analysis, the Difference-in-Difference method was used. The result is that, by increasing the working-hours gap with the real monthly wage gap holding, the law alleviates the real hourly wage differential between targeted non-regular and regular workers. However, the law‟s effects on social insurance and fringe benefit are not significant in general. This could be interpreted as firms have more discretion in other labor conditions, rather than in wage or working-hours. Another finding is that the law has no or less influence in reducing the real hourly wage differential for workers without union membership, or young workers. This implies that policy makers should pay more attention to these workers, who might be socioeconomically vulnerable.MSc in Economic