The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Steinke Sexual Concerns Inventory-General Cardiac Version (SSCI-GCV) and to examine its use across multiple cardiac diagnoses. A sub-analysis of a cross-sectional sample of 205 cardiac patients from the central USA was completed. Our analyses yielded promising evidence that the SSCI-GCV is a reliable (Cronbach's al...

Smad4 is a key tumor suppressor that is frequently deleted or inactive in pancreatic and colon tumors. In this report, we describe an approach for attaining selective killing of Smad4-deficient tumor cells. Using a vector system involving a designed repressor with zinc finger binding domains and the herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (HSV-TK) "suicide gene," we demonstrate Smad4-responsive r...

Based on Kullback-Leibler information we propose a data-driven selector, called GAIC (c) , for choosing parameters of regression splines in nonparametric regression via a stepwise forward/backward knot placement and deletion strategy 1]. This criterion uniies the commonly used information criteria and includes the Akaike information criterion (AIC) 2] and the corrected Akaike information criter...

UNLABELLED The ability to monitor tumor responses during prodrug activation gene therapy and other anticancer gene therapies is critical for their translation into clinical practice. Previously, we demonstrated the feasibility of noninvasive in vivo imaging with 131I-5-iodo-2'-fluoro-1-beta-D-arabinofuranosyluracil (131I-FIAU) for monitoring herpes simplex virus type 1 thymidine kinase (HSV1-tk...

The consistent presence of the EBV genome in certain tumors offers the potential for novel EBV-directed therapies. Switching the latent form of EBV infection present in most EBV-positive tumor cells into the cytolytic form may be clinically useful because lytic EBV infection leads to host cell destruction, and very few normal cells contain the EBV genome. It would also be therapeutically advant...

Tumor cells expressing the herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (HSV-TK) gene are sensitive to the drug ganciclovir (GCV). We demonstrate here that HSV-TK-positive cells exposed to GCV were lethal to HSV-TK-negative cells as a result of a "bystander effect." HSV-TK-negative cells were killed in vitro when the population of cultured cells contained only 10% HSV-TK-positive cells. The mechanism ...

Periventricular germinal zones (GZs) of developing and adult brain contain neural stem cells (NSCs), the cellular identities and origins of which are not defined completely. We used tissue culture techniques and transgenic mice expressing herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (HSV-TK) from the mouse glial fibrillary acid protein (GFAP) promoter to test the hypothesis that certain NSCs express G...

Bladder cancer is the ninth most common malignancy in the world. Successful clinical management remains a challenge. In order To search for novel targeted and efficacious treatment, we sought to investigate anti-tumor activity of BI-TK suicide gene therapy system in a rat model of bladder tumors. We first constructed and tested an anaerobic Bifidobacterium infantis-mediated thymidine kinase (BI...

Direct in vivo tumor-targeting with "suicide" viral vectors is limited by either inefficient gene transfer (i.e., retroviral vectors) or indiscriminate transfer of a conditionally toxic gene to surrounding nonmalignant tissue (i.e., adenoviral vectors). Retrovectors pseudotyped with the vesicular stomatitis virus G protein (VSVG) may serve as a remedy to this conundrum. These retroviral particl...

Administration of donor T cells expressing the herpes simplex–thymidine kinase (HS-tk) with a hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation could allow, if graftversus-host disease (GVHD) was to occur, a selective in vivo depletion of these T cells by the use of ganciclovir (GCV). The study evaluates the feasibility of such an approach. Escalating numbers of donor HS-tk–expressing CD31 gene-mod...