Adult mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are non-hematopoietic cells with multi-lineage potential which makes them attractive targets for regenerative medicine applications. However, to date, therapeutic success of MSC-therapy is limited and the genetic modification of MSCs using viral vectors is one option to improve their therapeutic potential. Ex-vivo genetic modification of MSCs using recombinan...

Dendritic cells are professional antigen presenting cells, which show an extraordinary capacity to initiate primary immune responses by stimulating T cells. This established function of dendritic cells has attracted much attention in efforts to develop useful vaccines for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. Designing effective strategies to generate clinical dendritic cell-based va...

Chemical modification of the gRNA and donor DNA has great potential for improving the gene editing efficiency of Cas9 and Cpf1, but has not been investigated extensively. In this report, we demonstrate that the gRNAs of Cas9 and Cpf1, and donor DNA can be chemically modified at their terminal positions without losing activity. Moreover, we show that 5' fluorescently labeled donor DNA can be use...

There is currently a tremendous interest in developing bioorthogonal "click chemistry" methods for the modification of biopolymers. Very recently, inverse-electron-demand Diels-Alder reactions have received attention, but to date they have not been applied to nucleic acids. Here we describe the first example of DNA modification by inverse-electron-demand Diels-Alder reaction. We synthesized fou...

Genetic mutations or engineered nucleases that disrupt the HIV co-receptor CCR5 block HIV infection of CD4(+) T cells. These findings have motivated the engineering of CCR5-specific nucleases for application as HIV therapies. The efficacy of this approach relies on efficient biallelic disruption of CCR5, and the ability to efficiently target sequences that confer HIV resistance to the CCR5 locu...

the features of helicobacter pylori adhesins, their interactions with their host counterparts, regulated and selective gene expressions are amongst the many clever strategies this microorganism undertakes to survive the otherwise sterile gastric milieu. the ingenious crafting of these interactions and the respective host reactions govern, in part, an array of consequences ranging from asymptoma...

The CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system requires Cas9 endonuclease and guide RNAs (either the natural dual RNA consisting of crRNA and tracrRNA or a chimeric single guide RNA) that direct site-specific double-stranded DNA cleavage. This communication describes a click ligation approach that uses alkyne-azide cycloaddition to generate a triazole-linked single guide RNA (sgRNA). The conjugated sgRNA ...

patients and methods in this cross-sectional study, peripheral mononuclear cells (pbmcs) were isolated from peripheral blood of 29 patients with newly diagnosed pulmonary tb and 19 patients with positive tuberculin skin test. the pbmcs were activated with ppd for 72 hours. activated cells were harvested, rna was extracted and cdna was synthesized. a real-time taqman method was designed and opti...

Abstract BACKGROUND: Diagnosis of Echinococcus granulosus in the definitive host particularly in dog is the significant complication in the endemic area. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study is serological detection of E. granulosus in the infected dogs. METHODS: Dot-ELISA based on the copro-antigen and recombinant EPC1 antigen (rEPC1) for antibody detection was performed. Blood and fecal samples ...