Nanoscale mesoporous iron carboxylates metal-organic frameworks (nanoMOFs) have recently emerged as promising platforms for drug delivery, showing biodegradability, biocompatibility and important loading capability of challenging highly water-soluble drugs such as azidothymidine tryphosphate (AZT-TP). In this study, nanoMOFs made of iron trimesate (MIL-100) were able to act as efficient molecular sponges, quickly adsorbing up to 24 wt% AZT-TP with entrapment efficiencies close to 100%, without perturbation of the supramolecular crystalline organization. These data are in agreement with molecular modelling predictions, indicating maximal loadings of 33 wt% and preferential location of the drug in the large cages. Spectrophotometry, isothermal titration calorimetry, and solid state NMR investigations enable to gain insight on the mechanism of interaction of AZT and AZT-TP with the nanoMOFs, pointing out the crucial role of phosphates strongly coordinating with the unsaturated iron(III) sites. Finally, contrarily to the free AZT-TP, the loaded nanoparticles efficiently penetrate and release their cargo of active triphosphorylated AZT inside major HIV target cells, efficiently protecting against HIV infection.

IFN-I production is a characteristic of HIV/SIV primary infections. However, acute IFN-I plasma concentrations rapidly decline thereafter. Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDC) are key players in this production but primary infection is associated with decreased responsiveness of pDC to TLR 7 and 9 triggering. IFNα production during primary SIV infection contrasts with increased pDC death, renewal and dysfunction. We investigated the contribution of pDC dynamics to both acute IFNα production and the rapid return of IFNα concentrations to pre-infection levels during acute-to-chronic transition. Nine cynomolgus macaques were infected with SIVmac251 and IFNα-producing cells were quantified and characterized. The plasma IFN-I peak was temporally associated with the presence of IFNα+ pDC in tissues but IFN-I production was not detectable during the acute-to-chronic transition despite persistent immune activation. No IFNα+ cells other than pDC were detected by intracellular staining. Blood-pDC and peripheral lymph node-pDC both lost IFNα− production ability in parallel. In blood, this phenomenon correlated with an increase in the counts of Ki67+-pDC precursors with no IFNα production ability. In tissues, it was associated with increase of both activated pDC and KI67+-pDC precursors, none of these being IFNα+ in vivo. Our findings also indicate that activation/death-driven pDC renewal rapidly blunts acute IFNα production in vivo: pDC sub-populations with no IFNα-production ability rapidly increase and shrinkage of IFNα production thus involves both early pDC exhaustion, and increase of pDC precursors.

Prions cause various transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. They are highly resistant to the chemical and physical decontamination and sterilization procedures routinely used in healthcare facilities. The decontamination procedures recommended for the inactivation of prions are often incompatible with the materials used in medical devices. In this study, we evaluated the use of low-temperature hydrogen peroxide gas plasma sterilization systems and other instrument-processing procedures for inactivating human and animal prions. We provide new data concerning the efficacy of hydrogen peroxide against prions from in vitro or in vivo tests, focusing on the following: the efficiency of hydrogen peroxide sterilization and possible interactions with enzymatic or alkaline detergents, differences in the efficiency of this treatment against different prion strains, and the influence of contaminating lipids. We found that gaseous hydrogen peroxide decreased the infectivity of prions and/or the level of the protease-resistant form of the prion protein on different surface materials. However, the efficiency of this treatment depended strongly on the concentration of hydrogen peroxide and the delivery system used in medical devices, because these effects were more pronounced for the new generation of Sterrad technology. The Sterrad NX sterilizer is 100% efficient (0% transmission and no protease-resistant form of the prion protein signal detected on the surface of the material for the mouse-adapted bovine spongiform encephalopathy 6PB1 strain and a variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease strain). Thus, gaseous or vaporized hydrogen peroxide efficiently inactivates prions on the surfaces of medical devices.