Minimally invasive percutaneous osteosynthesis seems to be a useful technique for the treatment of tibial shaft fractures in dogs and cats.

SG solutions are safe and effective preoperative skin antiseptics for elective clean-contaminated surgical procedures.

This prospective clinical study demonstrates the beneficial effects of ngly-rhBMP-2 in a specially designed fibrin matrix on the treatment of bone defects, and validates the use of this composite as an alternative to bone autografts in dogs and cats.

No abstract

Liver is an attractive organ for gene delivery in order to correct various genetic (metabolic) diseases. Hydrodynamic vein injection of naked DNA/minicircles devoid of viral or plasmid backbones was demonstrated in, for example, murine phenylketonuria to allow sustained therapeutic transduction of hepatocytes. Here we show successful hepatocyte transfusion in domestic small pigs immediately after weaning upon portal vein catheterization and hydrodynamic injection of naked DNA/minicircle vectors expressing the luciferase gene from the CMV or a liver-specific promoter. First, we established a surgical method allowing hydrodynamic portal vein pressurization up to 120 mmHg and infusion of naked DNA in pigs (n = 5) with long-term survival. No acute adverse effects such as changes in liver transaminases or signs of liver cell damage were observed. We then showed efficiency of stable hepatocyte transfection at 10 and 28 days in single experiments (n = 7) where we found that up to 60% of samples (45/75) were polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-positive for minicircle-DNA. Of these samples, 13% of the positive specimen (6/45) showed low but stable luciferase expression when driven by a liver-specific promoter, as well as appropriate copy numbers per diploid genome. In conclusion, we accomplished a safe procedure for stable transfection of liver cells upon hydrodynamic gene delivery using minicircle vectors in small pigs as a prerequisite to potentially treat infants with genetic liver diseases. Liver is an attractive organ for gene delivery in order to correct various genetic (metabolic) diseases. Hydrodynamic vein injection of naked DNA/minicircles devoid of viral or plasmid backbones was demonstrated in, for example, murine phenylketonuria to allow sustained therapeutic transduction of hepatocytes.Here we show successful hepatocyte transfusion in domestic small pigs immediately after weaning upon portal vein catheterization and hydrodynamic injection of naked DNA/minicircle vectors expressing the luciferase gene from the CMV or a liver-specific promoter. First, we established a surgical method allowing hydrodynamic portal vein pressurization up to 120 mmHg and infusion of naked DNA in pigs (n = 5) with long-term survival. No acute adverse effects such as changes in liver transaminases or signs of liver cell damage were observed. We then showed efficiency of stable hepatocyte transfection at 10 and 28 days in single experiments (n = 7) where we found that up to 60% of samples (45/75) were polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-positive for minicircle-DNA. Of these samples, 13% of the positive specimen (6/45) showed low but stable luciferase expression when driven by a liver-specific promoter, as well as appropriate copy numbers per diploid genome.In conclusion, we accomplished a safe procedure for stable transfection of liver cells upon hydrodynamic gene delivery using minicircle vectors in small pigs as a prerequisite to potentially treat infants with genetic liver diseases.