Posters

Dental precursor cells are attractive for novel approaches to treat diseases like periodontitis, dental caries or to improve dental pulp healing and the regeneration of craniofacial bone and teeth. These cells are easily accessible and, in contrast to bone-marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells, are more closely related to dental tissues. This paper gives a short overview of stem cells of dental origin.

We describe a novel platform, the nCounter Analysis System, for sensitive, highly multiplexed, digital gene expression analysis based on NanoString’s novel molecular barcoding technology. Detection of individual mRNA molecules using an assigned sequence of six different fluorescent spots per probe are detected, and then the number of times that code sequence appears in a sample are counted.

Hypokalemic periodic paralysis (HPP) represents a heterogeneous group of disorders that presents with acute muscular weakness. Familial periodic paralysis is the commonest cause of hypokalemic periodic paralysis in Caucasians and thyrotoxic paralysis in the Orientals. In this analysis, we have complied the etiological factors that appear to be more dominant in Indian population

We report the use of qPCR technique to follow the thermal unfolding of proteins by the binding of the dye SYPRO Orange, and exploit its potential as a robust and high-throughput primary screen for small molecule drug discovery.

Constitutive TNF-alpha expression is characteristic of the malignant ovarian surface epithelium. Adenoviral mutants hold great promise as gene therapy vectors but their efficacy is hindered by an inflammatory cascade orchestrated by TNF-alpha. We found that delivering TNF-alpha shRNA to ovarian cancer cells using oncolytic adenoviruses could reduce the inflammatory cascade generated by adenoviruses and also had direct anti-tumour activity on the cancer cells.

Dynamic cellular networks determine production of proteins in the cells in our body. The Rb-E2F network is a key example: it controls cell cycle, proliferation and degradation - a key network in almost all cancers. We develop statistical models of such single-cell processes - fine-time scale dynamic network models. Model estimation requires informative priors and custom Metropolis proposals.

In this work, a pressurized bioreactor was used for Y. lipolytica batch cultivation under increased air pressure from 1 bar to 6 bar. Cell growth was strongly enhanced by the pressure rise. The increase of oxygen availability caused the induction of the antioxidant enzyme SOD. The pre-growth of Y. lipolytica under increased pressure conditions did not affect the lipase production ability of the cells.

One major obstacle in stem cell therapy is poor cell engraftment. To address this issue, concurrent investigations were made to develop novel peptides targeting bone marrow and a method to transiently ‘paint’ targeting molecules onto cells. Painting was studied using a model palmitated peptide. Novel bone marrow targeting peptides were sought using in vivo phage display in a locally irradiated mouse model that has an internal control (untreated leg).

Using primary cells for RNAi based applications such as target identification or – validation, requires a highly efficient transfection technology in combination with a reliable and robust automation system. To accomplish these requirements we integrated the amaxa 96-well Shuttle® in a Tecan Freedom EVO® cell transfection workstation which is based on Tecan’s Freedom EVO® liquid handling platform and include all the necessary components and features for unattended cell transfection.