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« previous | page 4 of 146 pages | next »The Use of Recombinant Phage Lysins for the Control of Bacterial Pathogens
Marianne Horgan, Aidan Coffey, R. Paul Ross, Jim O'Mahony, Gerald F. Fitzgerald and Olivia McAuliffe
Endolysins are bacteriophage‑encoded peptidoglycan hydrolases that accumulate in the cytosol of phage‑infected bacterial cells, resulting in eventual cell lysis at the end of the lytic cycle. In view of the prevalence of antibiotic‑resistant bacteria, these enzymes represent a trul...
In Vivo Remote Control of Bacterial Vectors for Prophylaxis and Therapy
Holger Loessner and Siegfried Weiss
The use of live attenuated bacteria as prophylactic vaccines has a proven track record in human and veterinary medical praxis. In addition, bacteria‑based medicines are currently developed for the treatment of diseases such as cancer, gene deficiencies, autoimmunity and allergy. Treatment of t...
Cosmetic and Therapeutic Applications of Botulinum Toxin in the Head and Neck
Nwanmegha Young and Andrew Blitzer
Botulinum toxin is the most potent neurotoxin known to man. It is produced by the anaerobic bacteria Clostridium botulinum. In the early nineteenth century, it was responsible for large outbreaks of botulism , a systemic food poisoning. In the twentieth century, botulinum toxin has developed from ma...
Viral Pathogens as Therapeutic Delivery Vehicles
Helen O'Shea
The term patho‑biotechnology describes the exploitation of pathogenic bacteria for beneficial applications in food and biomedicine. We propose extending this definition to include viruses, for several reasons. Viruses, as well as providing a threat to human and animal health, can be used for b...
Bacterial Vectors for RNAi Delivery
Thu Nguyen and Johannes H. Fruehauf
RNA interference (RNAi) is a recently discovered powerful research tool which allows the targeted “silencing” of particular genes. RNAi is also thought to have immense therapeutic potential to treat and prevent a wide range of diseases from inflammation to cancer and to target genes which have forme...
Bacteria Mediated Gene Therapy Strategies
Sophie Conchon and Georges Vassaux
The recent discovery that genes carried by bacterial vectors can be functionally transferred to mammalian cells has led to the utilization of various bacterial strains in gene therapy. Genetically modified, nonpathogenic bacteria that have been used include attenuated strains of Salmonella, Shigella...
Genetic Immunization: Bacteria as DNA Vaccine Delivery Vehicles
Pablo Daniel Becker, Miriam Noerder and Carlos Alberto Guzmán
The so‑called DNA vaccination represents one of the most notable tools under development in the field of vaccinology. The concept of administering the gene coding for any given protective antigen and make responsible vaccinee’s own cells to produce the protein appeals as too simple to be true....
Use of Intracellular Bacteria for the Development of Tools for Tumor Therapy and the Detection of Novel Antibacterial Targets
Christoph Schoen, Jochen Stritzker, Thilo M. Fuchs, Stephanie Weibel, Ivaylo Gentschev, Aladar A. Szalay and Werner Goebel
Intracellularly replicating bacteria are suitable tools for a combined immunological and drug therapy of tumors. For example, virulence‑attenuated strains of L. monocytogenes, Salmonella spp., Shigella spp. and enteroinvasive Escherichia coli (EIEC) have already been used to develo...
Engineered Pharmabiotics with Improved Therapeutic Potential
Roy Sleator and Colin Hill
Although described for over a century, scientists and clinicians alike are only now beginning to realise the significant medical applications of probiotic cultures. Given the increasing commercial and clinical relevance of probiotics, improving their stress tolerance profile and ability to overcome ...
Improvement of Insect Pathogens as Insecticides through Genetic Engineering
Brian A. Federici, Bryony C. Bonning and Raymond J. St. Leger
Viruses and microorganisms that cause disease in insects have been under evaluation as insecticides for more than a century. Only Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) has been a commercial success and even so it still represents less than 1% of insecticide usage worldwide. The development of recombinant DNA ...
Bacterial Ghosts as Vaccine and Drug Delivery Platforms
Ulrike Beate Mayr, Verena Juliana Koller, Petra Lubitz and Werner Lubitz
The Bacterial Ghost (BG) Vaccine Platform Technology represents a particulate carrier system for protein subunit or DNA‑encoded antigens endowed with intrinsic adjuvant properties. By all its biological background BG vaccines alert the immune system with signals for a bacterial infection and i...
Integrin Receptors and Ligand-Gated Channels
Raffaella Morini and Andrea Becchetti
Plastic expression of different integrin subunits controls the different stages of neural development, whereas in the adult integrins regulate synaptic stability. Evidence of integrin‑channel crosstalk exists for ionotropic glutamate receptors. As is often the case in other tissues, integrin e...
The Role of Menin in Hematopoiesis
Ivan Maillard and Jay Hess
In the hematopoietic system, menin was found to interact with MLL, a large protein encoded by the Mixed Linage Leukemia gene that acts as a Histone H3 methyltransferase. The MLL gene is a recurrent target for translocations in both acute myeloid and acute lymphoid leukemias. MLL gene rearrangements ...
APC in Cell Migration
Sandrine Etienne-Manneville
Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) is a tumor suppressor protein involved in the initiation and progression of colon cancer. The most widely accepted function of APC is to participate to the Wnt signaling pathway, by downregulating β‑catenin and thereby controlling gene transcription and ce...
The Nucleotide Excision Repair of DNA in Human Cells and Its Association with Xeroderma Pigmentosum
Alexei Gratchev
Throughout their lifespan all free‑living organisms encounter diverse chemical and physical environmental and endogenous factors leading to DNA damage. Since DNA is a highly reactive macromolecule, these damages may affect both bases and the sugar‑phosphate backbone and may lead to a sev...
Population Distribution of Xeroderma Pigmentosum
Abdul Manan Bhutto and Sandra H. Kirk
Xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) is a rare autosomal recessive genetic disease caused by defects in the normal repair of DNA of various cutaneous and ocular cell types damaged by exposure to sunlight. Hebra and Kaposi reported the disease initially in 1874. It generally shows early onset of symptoms, henc...
Historical Aspects of Xeroderma pigmentosum and Nucleotide Excision Repair
James Cleaver
The discovery that xeroderma pigmentosum was a sun‑sensitive hereditary human disease that was deficient in DNA repair was made when research into the fundamental mechanisms of nucleotide excision repair was in its infancy. The linkage between DNA damage, DNA repair and human cancer stimulated...
XPA Gene, Its Product and Biological Roles
Ulrike Camenisch and Hanspeter Nägeli
The 31 kDa XPA protein is part of the core incision complex of the mammalian nucleotide excision repair (NER) system and interacts with DNA as well as with many other NER subunits. In the absence of XPA, no incision complex can form and no excision of damaged DNA damage occurs. A comparative analysi...
Xeroderma Pigmentosum and Skin Cancer
Leela Daya-Grosjean
The hypersensitivity of DNA repair deficient xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) patients to solar irradiation results in the development of high levels of squamous and basal cell carcinomas as well as malignant melanomas in early childhood. Indeed, XP presents a unique model for analysing the effects of unr...
XPB and XPD between Transcription and DNA Repair
Brian D. Beck, Dae-Sik Hah and Suk-Hee Lee
Xeroderma pigmentosum group B and D genes (XPB and XPD respectively) are components of the transcription factor IIH (TFIIH), a nine‑subunit complex involved in transcription initiation by RNA polymerase II (pol II). Five of these (XPB, p62, p52, p44 and p34) form a tight core subcomplex, while...
Clinical Features of Xeroderma Pigmentosum
Ulrich R. Hengge and Steffen Emmert
Xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) was first described in 1874 by Hebra and Kaposi. Albert Neisser was the first to report neurological abnormalities associated with XP in 1883. XP is an autosomal recessive disease with defective nucleotide excision repair (NER). It is characterized by easily recognizable c...
XPC: Its Product and Biological Roles
Kaoru Sugasawa
The XPC protein is a component of a heterotrimeric complex that is essential for damage recognition in a nucleotide excision repair subpathway that operates throughout the genome. Biochemical analyses have revealed that the broad substrate specificity of this repair system is based on the structure-...
XPF/ERCC4 and ERCC1: Their Products and Biological Roles
Lisa McDaniel and Roger A. Schultz
At the time of writing, a general search of the literature reveals 259 references that specifically refer to XPF/ERCC4. This puts XPF/ERCC4 around the half way point in a ranking for each of the XP groups based on the number of literature citations in which the specific acronym can be found in the t...
Other Proteins Interacting with XP Proteins
Steven M. Shell and Yue Zou
Genetic defects in Nucleotide excision repair (NER) lead to the clinical disorder xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) in humans which is characterized by dramatically increased sensitivity to UV light and a predisposition to development of skin cancers. NER is a major mechanism of DNA repair in cells for the...
The XPE Gene of Xeroderma Pigmentosum, Its Product and Biological Roles
Drew Bennett and Toshiki Itoh
Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP) is an inheritable genetic disorder in which patients become very sensitive to ultraviolet (UV) light exposure and prone to skin cancer. Its genetics are complex and multiallelic. Based on complementation studies, involving UV sensitivity of fused cells, initially XP was c...
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