Acres of antibodies: the future of recombinant biomolecule production?

The Cambridge Healthtech Institute's second international conference entitled "Recombinant Therapeutics: Antibodies and Biomolecules" was held in Baltimore, MD, USA, 30 May-1 June 2001.     

DNA methylation: the future of crime scene investigation?

Proper detection and subsequent analysis of biological evidence is crucial for crime scene reconstruction. The number of different criminal acts is increasing rapidly. Therefore, forensic geneticists are constantly on the battlefield, trying hard to find solutions how to solve them. One of the essential defensive lines in the fight against the invasion of crime is relying on DNA methylation. In this review, the role of DNA methylation in body fluid identification and other DNA methylation applications are discussed. Among other applications of DNA methylation, age determination of the donor of biological evidence, analysis of the parent-of-origin specific DNA methylation markers at imprinted loci for parentage testing and personal identification, differentiation between monozygotic twins due to their different DNA methylation patterns, artificial DNA detection and analyses of DNA methylation patterns in the promoter regions of circadian clock genes are the most important ones. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of open chapters in DNA methylation research that need to be closed before its final implementation in routine forensic casework.     

Handmade cloning: the future way of nuclear transfer?

The topic of this review is an alternative technique for somatic cell nuclear transfer. Removal of the zona pellucida facilitates manipulations of mammalian oocytes and early embryos, and problems related to their subsequent culture are commonly overestimated. This approach enables radical modifications to somatic cell nuclear transfer, and the handmade cloning (HMC) technique is now successfully applied to an increasing numbers of species. HMC radically decreases costs and the need for a skilled workforce; furthermore, it increases productivity, enables cryopreservation, and results in birth rates comparable, or even higher, than those achievable by micromanipulation-based traditional cloning (TC). The new technique can accelerate technology transfer and standardization and, eventually, might contribute to the widespread application of cloning. Additionally, HMC offers unique possibilities for the automation of somatic cell nuclear transfer.     

Hypothermic perfusion preservation: the future of organ preservation revisited?

Hypothermic perfusion preservation (HPP) was an integral step in the development of early clinical transplantation programmes, and considerable progress was made in understanding the basic principles underlying the technique. In subsequent years, the development of better preservation solutions for cold hypoxic storage, along with pragmatic choices made on grounds of costs and logistics, saw a fall in the application of HPP. More recently, the acute shortage of suitable organ donors and the inevitable pressure to use organs from sub-optimal (or expanded criteria) donors, has forced a re-evaluation of HPP, and the development of a new generation of HPP machines and associated perfusion solutions. This review sets out the historical development of HPP across the range of organs in which the method was originally investigated, describes the biological benefits and drawbacks associated with HPP, and sets out the most recent literature on the topic (including comments on the interest in use of higher temperatures in organ perfusion).     

Organ transplantation--how much of the promise has been realized?

Since the introduction of organ transplantation into medical practice, progress and optimism have been abundant. Improvements in immunosuppressive drugs and ancillary care have led to outstanding short-term (1--3-year) patient and graft survival rates. This success is mitigated by several problems, including poor long-term (>5-year) graft survival rates, the need for continual immunosuppressive medication and the discrepancy between the demand for organs and the supply. Developing methods to induce transplant tolerance, as a means to improve graft outcomes and eliminate the requirement for immunosuppression, and expanding the pool of organs for transplantation are the major challenges of the field.     

Optimizing future treatment of enterococcal infections: attacking the biofilm?

Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium are among the leading causative agents of nosocomial infections and are infamous for their resistance to many antibiotics. They cause difficult-to-treat infections, often originating from biofilm-mediated infections associated with implanted medical devices or endocarditis. Biofilms protect bacteria against antibiotics and phagocytosis, and physical removal of devices or infected tissue is often needed but is frequently not possible. Currently there are no clinically available compounds that disassemble biofilms. In this review we discuss all known structural and regulatory genes involved in enterococcal biofilm formation, the compounds directed against biofilm formation that have been studied, and potentially useful targets for future drugs to treat enterococcal biofilm-associated infections.     

Is regeneration inDrosophila the result of epimorphic regulation?

Summary It has been known for many years that when a wing disc ofDrosophila is bisected, and the fragments cultured in adult females, regulation occurs and either a complete disc is regenerated or the fragment is duplicated. We have investigated how this regeneration process occurs. To establish which cells contribute to the regenerate, and thus determine if regeneration is the result of epimorphic regulation, fragments of discs, after culture in an adult for one to five days, were exposed to³H-thymidine to label replicating cells. Imaginal discs, both whole and as regenerating fragments, undergo some DNA replication which is distributed throughout the disc, but cut discs frequently show clusters of labelled cells around the wound, indicating that regeneration is probably epimorphic.     

Quantitative analysis of electroencephalograms: is there chaos in the future?

The history of quantitative, computerized electroencephalogram (EEG) analysis is reviewed. It is shown that, until very recently, the basic approach to EEG analysis involved the assumption that the EEG is stochastic. Consequently, statistical pattern recognition techniques, segmentation procedures, syntactic methods, knowledge-based approaches, and even artificial neural network methods have been developed with different levels of success. A fundamentally different approach to computerized EEG analysis, however, is making its way into the laboratories. The basic idea, inspired by recent advances in the area of non-linear dynamics, and especially the theory of chaos, is to view an EEG as the output of a deterministic system of relatively simple complexity, but containing non-linearities. This suggests that studying the geometrical dynamics of EEGs, and the development of neurophysiologically realistic models of EEG generation may produce more successful automated EEG analysis techniques than the classical, stochastic methods. Evidence supporting the non-linear dynamics paradigm is reviewed, and possible research paths are indicated.     

The evolution of regeneration: adaptive or inherent?

If regeneration were adaptive, it would have arisen autonomously by natural selection from non-regenerative antecedents. Unless each episode coincidentally reinvented the same method of regeneration independently, one would expect the various lineages to differ basically from each other, which they do not. On the other hand, if regeneration were inherent to metazoan life, a derivative of embryogenesis, its various expressions should be as much like each other as they resemble the development of embryonic appendage buds, which they do. It follows that the uneven distribution of regeneration must have been due to its extinction here and there, not as a negative adaptation by natural selection but as a pleiotropic epiphenomenon linked to more useful adaptations with which it was incompatible. In vertebrate evolution, these adaptations have included the transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitats and the modification of poikilothermic to homeothermic metabolism. The former advance rendered the regeneration of weight-bearing limbs impractical; the latter favored rapid wound healing and scar formation which effectively precluded blastema formation. If the latent capacity for regeneration persists in non-regenerative appendages, as would seem to be the case, then the restoration of its overt expression should be possible if the mechanisms of its inhibition could be discovered and eventually rendered ineffectual.     

Metal-based photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy: the future of multimodal oncology?

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an approved medical technique to treat certain forms of cancer. It has been used to complement traditional anticancer modalities such as surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and in certain cases, to replace these treatments. One critical parameter of PDT is the photosensitizer (PS); historically, a purely organic macrocyclic tetrapyrrole-based structure. This short review surveys two recent clinical examples of metal complexes, namely TOOKAD®-Soluble and TLD-1433, which have ideal photophysical properties to act as PDT PSs. We highlight the important role played by the metal ions in the PS for PDT activity.     

Use of platelet lysate for bone regeneration - are we ready for clinical translation?

Current techniques to improve bone regeneration following trauma or tumour resection involve the use of autograft bone or its substitutes supplemented with osteoinductive growth factors and/or osteogenic cells such as mesenchymal stem cells(MSCs).Although MSCs are most commonly grown in media containing fetal calf serum,human platelet lysate(PL) offers an effective alternative.Bone marrow- derived MSCs grown in PLcontaining media display faster proliferation whilst maintaining good osteogenic differentiation capacity.Limited pre-clinical investigations using PL-expanded MSCs seeded onto osteoconductive scaffolds indicate good potential of such constructs to repair bone in vivo.In an alternative approach,nude PL-coated scaffolds without seeded MSCs have been proposed as novel regenerative medicine devices.Even though methods to coat scaffolds with PL vary,in vitro studies suggest that PL allows for MSC adhesion,migration and differentiation inside these scaffolds.Increased new bone formation and vascularisation in comparison to uncoated scaffolds have also been observed in vivo.This review outlines the state-of-the-art research in the field of PL for ex vivo MSC expansion and in vivo bone regeneration.To minimise inconsistency between the studies,further work is required towards standardisation of PL preparation in terms of the starting material,platelet concentration,leukocyte depletion,and the method of platelet lysis.PL quality control procedures and its "potency" assessment are urgently needed,which could include measurements of key growth and attachment factors important for MSC maintenance and differentiation.Furthermore,different PL formulations could be tailor-made for specific bone repair indications.Such measures would undoubtedly speed up clinical translation of PL-based treatments for bone regeneration.     

What lies in the future of high-pressure bioscience?

Without being comprehensive in this mini-review, I will address perspectives, some speculative, for the development and use of high pressure to explore biochemical phenomena. This will be illustrated with several examples.