Current Gene Therapy - Volume 13, Issue 4, 2013

Poorly controlled diabetes mellitus can result in serious complications. Gene therapy is increasingly being considered as an alternative approach to treat diabetes, because of its ability to induce physiological insulin secretion and it allows patients to escape insulin injections. The properties of gut K and L-cells, including glucose sensitivity, the ability to process insulin and a regulated secretion pathway support their use as surrogate Read More

Although the excision of unstable pathogenicity islands is a phenomenon that has been described for several virulent bacteria, whether this process directly affects the capacity of these microorganisms to cause disease in their hosts remains unknown. Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis (S. Enteritidis) is an enterobacterium that harbors several unstable pathogenicity islands that can excise from the main bacterial chromoso Read More

Ultrasound is a common used technique for clinical imaging. In recent years, with the advances in preparation technology of microbubbles and the innovations in ultrasound imaging, ultrasound is no longer confined to detection of tissue perfusion, but extends to specific ultrasound molecular imaging and target therapy gradually. With the development of research, ultrasound molecular imaging and target therapy have made Read More

Erythropoietin (EPO) can protect the retina from acute damage, but long-term systemic treatment induces polycythemia. Intraocular gene delivery of EPO is not protective despite producing high levels of EPO likely due to its bellshaped dose curve. The goal of this study was to identify a therapeutic dose of continuously produced EPO in the eye. We packaged a mutated form of EPO (EPOR76E) that has equivalent neuropr Read More

Monoclonal antibodies are successfully used in the clinic. However, repeated high-dose bolus injections imply high costs. As an alternative to recombinant protein administration, gene therapy may provide a novel mean for systemic delivery of monoclonal antibodies. This strategy has been used in preclinical studies of a wide variety of pathological conditions, including cancer, infectious diseases, drug addiction, retinal Read More

Over three years following the discovery of the TAL code, artificial TAL effector DNA binding domains have emerged as the premier platform for building site-specific DNA binding polypeptides for use in biological research. Here, we provide an overview of TAL effector and alternative modular DNA binding domain (mDBD) technologies, focusing on their use in established and emerging architectures for building site-specific end Read More