Maternal immunization: opportunities for scientific advancement.

Maternal immunization is an effective strategy to prevent and/or minimize the severity of infectious diseases in pregnant women and their infants. Based on the success of vaccination programs to prevent maternal and neonatal tetanus, maternal immunization has been well received in the United States and globally as a promising strategy for the prevention of other vaccine-preventable diseases that threaten pregnant women and infants, such as influenza and pertussis. Given the promise for reducing the burden of infectious conditions of perinatal significance through the development of vaccines against relevant pathogens, the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored a series of meetings to foster progress toward clinical development of vaccines for use in pregnancy. A multidisciplinary group of stakeholders convened at the NIH in December 2013 to identify potential barriers and opportunities for scientific advancement in maternal immunization.

[The preparation of rabbit antiserum against gekko japonicus Hoxc10 and it's property identification].

AIM: Prepare the rabbit antiserum against gecko japonicus Hoxc10 and to identify its properties. METHODS: Prokaryotic expression vector of g-Hoxc10 were constructed and then transform into E.coli (BL21). To make GST-g-Hoxc10 fusion protein in E.coli (BL21) under the optimized induction of Isopropyl ß-D-1-thiogalactopyranoside(IPTG). The recombination proteins were purified using affinity chromatography. The purified fusion protein was inoculated into adult rabbits to develop antiserum. Western blot and immunohistochemistry staining were then performed to evaluate the feature of the prepared antiserum. RESULTS: Prokaryotic expression vectors of g-Hoxc10 were successfully constructed. The soluble recombinant protein was highly expressed in E.coli BL21 and inoculated into adult rabbits to obtain high titer antiserum. Western blot and immunohistochemistry staining were then performed to evaluate the specificity of the prepared antiserum. CONCLUSION: We successfully amplified and expressed the g-Hoxc10 in E.coli BL21. The purified fusion protein was inoculated into adult rabbits to develop antiserum. The obtained antiserum of g-Hoxc10 showed a high titer against Hoxc10 proteins. The protein and antiserum prepared in this study can be used for further research of the function investigation of Hoxc10.

cis-Terpenones as an effective chemopreventive agent against aflatoxin B1-induced cytotoxicity and TCDD-induced P450 1A/B activity in HepG2 cells.

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is a potent carcinogen, which can significantly increase the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma development through food contamination. In past decades, chemopreventive agents, such as oltipraz and chlorophyllins, have demonstrated that chemo-intervention is an effective approach to reduce hepatotoxicity by AFB1. However, because of the potential adverse effects of these agents, alternative novel mechanism-based chemopreventive agents are needed. We report here that novel cis-terpenones 1-3, which were synthesized as the precursors of natural product analogues in our laboratory, showed promising protective effects against AFB1-induced cytotoxicity in HepG2 cells. Chemo-protection was observed with increasing concentrations of cis-terpenones in the co-treatment of AFB1, and no cytotoxicity was observed with cis-terpenones alone. In addition, cis-terpenones 1-3 at 10 and microM effectively inhibited induced cytochrome P450 1A/1B activity by 50% in HepG2 cells, as indicated by an EROD assay. P450 1A/B is involved in the activation of many pre-carcinogens and is highly inducible in liver cells. These results suggested that novel terpenones 1-3 are candidates for the development of novel mechanism-based chemopreventive agents against AFB1 and other carcinogenic stimuli.