DAS181 significantly reduced viral load in participants infected with influenza, thus warranting future clinical development of this novel host-directed therapy. CLINICAL TRIALS.GOV IDENTIFIER: NCT01037205.
Parainfluenza virus (PIV) may cause life-threatening pneumonia in lung transplant patients and there are no proven effective therapies. We report the use of inhaled DAS181, a novel sialidase fusion protein, to treat severe PIV type 3 pneumonia in a lung transplant patient. Treatment was well tolerated and associated with improvement in oxygenation and symptoms, along with rapid clearance of PIV. DAS181 should be systematically evaluated for treatment of PIV infection in transplant recipients.
Dysgerminomas are rare ovarian malignancies that primarily affect young women and can occur during pregnancy. Clinically, these tumors present with lower quadrant pain and adnexal mass, and laboratory values may include elevated beta human chorionic gonadotropin (β-hCG) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). These symptoms, along with the sonographic findings of a large, solid lobulated adnexal mass in young women, strongly suggest an ovarian dysgerminoma in the differential diagnosis. The majority of these tumors will be diagnosed at Stage IA and will respond well to fertility-sparing surgery. This case report demonstrates both the clinical and sonographic findings unique to this rare type of ovarian malignancy.
The availability of fibroblasts that express green fluorescent protein (GFP) would be of interest for the monitoring of cell growth, migration, contraction, and other processes within the fibroblast-populated collagen matrix and other culture systems. A plasmid lentiviral vector-GFP (pLV-GFP) was utilized for gene delivery to produce primary human foreskin fibroblasts (HFFs) that stably express GFP. Cell morphology, cell migration, and collagen contraction were compared between nontransduced HFFs and transduced GFP-HFFs; no differences were observed. Immunocytochemical staining showed no differences in cell morphology between nontransduced and GFP-HFFs in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional culture systems. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in cellular population growth within the collagen matrix populated with nontransduced vs. GFP-HFFs. Within the limits of our assays, we conclude that transduction of GFP into HFFs did not alter the observed properties of HFFs compared with nontransduced fibroblasts. The GFP-HFFs may represent a new tool for the convenient monitoring of living primary fibroblast processes in two-dimensional or three-dimensional culture.
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