Congenital obstructive nephropathy is the primary cause for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in children. An increasingly used animal model of obstructive nephropathy is unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO). This model mimics, in an accelerated manner, the different stages of obstructive nephropathy leading to tubulointerstitial fibrosis: cellular infiltration, tubular proliferation and apoptosi...

Rice feeds more than half of the world’s population. In much of Asia, rice is the staple food. The highest producing countries of rice are in Asia; in 2004, China produced 177,434,000 Mt (metric ton) of rice paddy, India produced 129,000,000 Mt and Indonesia produced 54,060,816 Mt (FAOSTAT 2005). Agricultural biotechnology has been developing at a rapid pace, and genetic engineering has been pr...

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have recently attracted the attention of agricultural, medical and food scientists and governments of many countries in the world due to an increasing concern that the recombinant gene(s) inserted into an organism may result in unforeseen effects. Therefore, there is a need to regulate each transgenic event so that the officially approved events will be the...

Despite major improvement in treatment of early stage localised prostate cancer, the distinction between indolent tumors and those that will become aggressive, as well as the lack of efficient therapies of advanced prostate cancer, remain major health problems. Genetically engineered mice (GEM) have been extensively used to investigate the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying prostate t...

We have recently shown that ex vivo gene therapy of rabbit autologous vein grafts with antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (AS ODN) blocking cell cycle regulatory gene expression inhibits not only neointimal hyperplasia, but also diet-induced, accelerated graft atherosclerosis. We observed that these grafts remained free of macrophage invasion and foam cell deposition. Since endothelial dysfunction...

The taxonomically diverse lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are unified by their capability to produce lactic acid from carbohydrates by fermentation. The LAB Lactococcus (L.) lactis has been characterized into great detail and is increasingly used as a production host for heterologous proteins. L. lactis is a non-pathogenic and non-colonizing LAB species and can be efficiently engineered to produce p...

Superantigens (SAg) are a family of bacterial and viral proteins with strong immunostimulatory properties. SAg bound to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules activate a high frequency of T cells and represent the most potent known activators of T cells to date. To explore the use of SAg for T cell-based tumor therapy we have created a tumor-reactive SAg by engineering a fusi...

The marketing approval of genetically engineered hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) as the first-line therapy for the treatment of severe combined immunodeficiency due to adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID) is a tribute to the substantial progress that has been made regarding HSC engineering in the past decade. Reproducible manufacturing of high-quality, clinical-grade, genetically engineere...

In the past few decades, increased awareness of environmental pollution has led to the exploitation of microbial metabolic potential in the construction of several genetically engineered microorganisms (GEMs) for bioremediation purposes. At the same time, environmental concerns and regulatory constraints have limited the in situ application of GEMs, the ultimate objective behind their developme...

Aqua Bounty Technologies, Inc. has recently applied for deregulation of their AquAdvantage salmon—salmon that have been genetically engineered to grow faster than wild-type salmon. The salmon have the potential benefit of providing high-quality animal protein without putting additional pressure on declining wild fish stocks. However, these salmon present some potential risks that warrant examin...