objective: in an attempt to develop safer and more effective gene therapy approaches as a realistic treatment for various forms of cancer, researchers are increasingly using tumor-specific promoters (tsp) to drive the expression of the gene of interest and eradicate cancer cells. in this study, for the first time we introduce the oct-4 promoter as a cancer-specific promoter with a high efficacy...

background: hepatitis c virus (hcv) is a main public health problem causing chronic liver infection and subsequently liver cirrhosis and lethal hepatocellular carcinoma (hcc). vaccination based on hcv capsid proteins has attracted a special interest for prevention of viral infections. the core protein is a basic and evolutionary most conserved protein, which regulates the cellular processes rel...

transforming growth factor betas (tgf?s) are one of the most widespread and versatile cytokines. the three mammalian tgf? isoforms, ?1, ?2, and ?3, and their receptors regulate proliferation of neuronal precursors as well as survival and differentiation in neurons of developing and adult nervous system. functions of tgf?s has a wide spectrum ranging from regulating cell proliferation and differ...

alkaline phosphatase is an enzyme with widespread use in research and industry such as protein labeling, dephosphorylation of nucleic acids, and enzyme based biosensors. in the present study, alkaline phosphatase gene was inserted into the pet15b vector. the recombinant dna was then expressed using iptg as an inducer. the expression of this enzyme was optimized by changing expression conditions...

background and aims: influenza a virus of orthomyxoviridae family is able to create pandemic influenza. vaccination is the most effective way to prevent influenza virus infection. matrix protein 2 (m2) is a homotetramer ion channel with 97 amino acids length and highly conserved among influenza viruses and is considered for development of a universal influenza vaccine. materials and methods: we...

human insulin-like growth factor 1 (higf-1) consists of 70 amino acids in a single chain with three intermolecular disulfide bridges possessing valuable therapeutic effects. to date, numerous variants of specifically engineered higf-1 have been produced so as to improve higf-1 biological activity, stability and stronger binding to igf-1 receptor. mecasermin is one of the modified variants with ...

bacterial expression systems provide economic and logistic advantages in manufacturing proteins for human therapeutic purposes. however, most such proteins accumulate in insoluble biologicaiiy inactive form when overexpressed in bacterial cells. this is the case while attempting to produce recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (hgm-csf) in e. coli. in this report, d...

Background: Corynebacterium glutamicum (C. glutamicum) is a potential host for the secretory production of the heterologous proteins. However, to this date few secretion-type gene expression systems in C. glutamicum have been developed, which limit applications of C. glutamicum in a secretory production of the heterologous proteins.Objectives: In this stu...

lentiviral vectors are among the promising viral based-vectors in gene therapy applications, but the efficiency of their targeting needs to be improved. (strept)avidin-biotin adaptor system is a novel approach to modify the lentiviral envelope for better targeting properties. herein, we describe utilization of this adaptor system by designing a candidate envelope protein-bearing biotin acceptor...