Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is an important cause of morbidity in renal transplant recipients, due to both direct and indirect effects of the virus on the graft and patient [1]. Ganciclovir (GCV) remains the most common first-line therapy, but its low oral bioavailability was identified as a risk factor for the emergence of resistant strains [1], and intravenous (IV) administration is incon...

The efficacy and safety of valganciclovir (VGCV) for cytomegalovirus (CMV) prophylaxis in liver transplant recipients has not been established. We retrospectively compared the efficacy and safety of low-dose oral VGCV (450 mg once daily for 90 days) and standard oral ganciclovir (1 g three times a day for 90 days, GCV) in preventing CMV disease in 109 adult liver transplant recipients who survi...

Depletion of neurogenesis worsens functional outcome in young-adult mice after focal cerebral ischemia, but whether a similar effect occurs in older mice is unknown. Using middle-aged (12-month-old) transgenic (DCX-TK((+))) mice that express herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (HSV-TK) under control of the doublecortin (DCX) promoter, we conditionally depleted DCX-positive cells in the subven...

The success of immunotherapeutic approaches targeting glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) demands a robust antiglioma T-cell cytotoxic and memory response. Recent evidence suggests that rapamycin regulates T-cell differentiation. Herein, we tested whether administration of rapamycin could enhance the efficacy of immunotherapy utilizing Fms-like tyrosine kinase 3 ligand (Ad-Flt3L) and thymidine kinase...

Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is a substantial cause of morbidity and mortality in immunocompromised hosts and globally is one of the most important congenital infections. The nucleoside analogue ganciclovir (GCV), which requires initial phosphorylation by the viral UL97 kinase, is the mainstay for treatment. To date, CMV decay kinetics during GCV therapy have not been extensively inves...

The ability to monitor the responses of and inhibit the growth of brain tumors during gene therapy has been severely limited due to the blood-brain barrier (BBB). A previous study has demonstrated the feasibility of noninvasive in vivo imaging with 123I-2'-fluoro-2'-deoxy-5-iodo-1-β-D-arabinofuranosyluracil (123I-FIAU) for monitoring herpes simplex virus type 1 thymidine kinase (HSV1-tk) cancer...

Lobucavir (LBV) is a deoxyguanine nucleoside analog with broad-spectrum antiviral activity. LBV was previously shown to inhibit herpes simplex virus (HSV) DNA polymerase after phosphorylation by the HSV thymidine kinase. Here we determined the mechanism of action of LBV against human cytomegalovirus (HCMV). LBV inhibited HCMV DNA synthesis to a degree comparable to that of ganciclovir (GCV), a ...

| Superresolution reconstruction produces a high resolution image from a set of aliased low resolution images. We model the low resolution frames as blurred and down-sampled, shifted versions of the high resolution image. In many applications, the blurring process, i.e., point spread function (PSF) parameters of the imaging system, is not known. In our blind superresolution algorithm, we rst es...

INTRODUCTION: Diffusion MRI is a unique noninvasive imaging technique capable of quantifying and visualizing the angular distribution and the anisotropy of the white matter fibers. Several approaches such as diffusion tensor imaging, q-ball imaging (QBI), spherical deconvolution and many others high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) have been proposed to describe the angular distribu...