Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV), the causative agent of bovine viral diarrhea/mucosal disease (BVD/MD), is an important pathogen of cattle and other wild animals throughout the world. BVDV infection typically leads to an impaired immune response in cattle. In the present study, we investigated the effect of Forsythoside A (FTA) on BVDV infection of bovine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (...

Nucleotide sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of Brazilian bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) field isolates identified four viruses belonging to the genotype 2. Comparison of 5' UTR sequences from these isolates to those of North American BVDV type 2 revealed genomic variations that correlated with the geographic origins of the isolates. Two of the Brazilian type 2 viruses were isolated from...

UNLABELLED Antigenic and genetic typing of pestiviruses isolated from Indian sheep and goats was carried out. Testing of 1777 sheep and 1026 goat blood samples collected between 2004 and 2008 resulted in isolation of twelve pestiviruses, seven from sheep and five from goats. All of them were antigenically typed as bovine viral diarrhea virus 1 (BVDV-1). Both the partial 5ʹ-UTR and entire non-st...

RNA silencing is an established method for investigating gene function and has attracted particular interest because of the potential for generating RNA-based therapeutics. Using lentiviral vectors as an efficient delivery system that offers stable, long-term expression in postmitotic cells further enhances the applicability of an RNA-based gene therapy for the CNS. In this review we provide an...

Recently, several systems designed to trigger RNA interference by using small hairpin RNA driven by polymerase III promoters have been described. Here, we report a lentiviral-mediated small interfering RNA delivery system that can be induced by CRE recombinase. The system consists of a lentiviral vector carrying a mouse U6 promoter that is separated from a small hairpin RNA by a random DNA stuf...

Lentiviral vectors are useful experimental tools for stable gene delivery and have been used to treat human inherited genetic disorders and hematologic malignancies with promising results. Because some of the lentiviral vector components are cytotoxic, transient plasmid transfection has been used to produce the large batches needed for clinical trials. However, this method is costly, poorly rep...

BACKGROUND Lentiviral vectors are efficient vehicles for stable gene transfer in dividing and non-dividing cells. Several improvements in vector design to increase biosafety and transgene expression, have led to the approval of these vectors for use in clinical studies. Methods are required to analyze the quality of lentiviral vector production, the efficiency of gene transfer and the extent of...

High gene transfer efficiencies have been difficult to achieve in hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) but are important to therapeutic success of HPC gene therapy. Efficient gene transfer is especially challenging with use of column-purified vector for clinical application, as opposed to centrifuged vector commonly used for research. We investigated novel approaches to increase transduction b...

The expression of osteopontin (OPN) has been correlated with tumor growth and metastasis. However, the mechanisms by which OPN promotes tumor metastasis remain unclear. In this study, we aimed to investigate the anti-tumor effects of OPN by silencing OPN expression in the gastric cancer cell line SGC7901, using lentiviral-OPN small interfering RNA (siRNA) technology. Plasmid vectors containing ...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the selective loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. This loss leads to complete dopamine depletion in the striatum and severe motor impairment. It has been demonstrated previously that a lentiviral vector system based on equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) gives rise to highly efficient and sustained tra...