Human noroviruses (HuNoVs) are a major cause of foodborne gastroenteritis worldwide. Because they do not grow in cell culture and there is no animal model for HuNoVs, pathogenesis studies have been hampered. Thus, little is known about their replication strategies or induction of neutralizing antibodies.The limited information on their pathogenesis is from human volunteer studies of HuNoV infections in which villus atrophy in duodenal biopsies and presence of malabsorptive diarrhea were described (1,7,8). No information is available on lesions in other portions of the intestines of these volunteers (9). Intestinal transplant pediatric patients that were diagnosed with HuNoV infection developed secretory or osmotic diarrhea (19,20,31). These patients had prolonged diarrhea (17 to 326 days) due to immunosuppressive therapy. The detection of HuNoV RNA and the clinical symptoms remitted after reduction of the immunosuppressive therapy. Usually in exposed individuals, histologic lesions correlate with diarrhea, but in one report, lesions in volunteers who did not show clinical symptoms were described (42). There are also numerous reports of asymptomatic individuals who were infected with HuNoVs and shed virus in the feces (11, 28).Most past attempts to study these viruses in an animal model may have failed because (i) the human strains that were used were not closely related to the host animal NoV strains, (ii) sensitive detection techniques were lacking, and finally (iii) the role of histo-blood group antigen (HBGA) phenotypes in differential susceptibility of the host was unrecognized. Our goal was to adapt a HuNoV strain to replicate in the gnotobiotic (Gn) pig to develop an animal model for the study of HuNoV pathogenesis. Gnotobiotic pigs are good models for human enteric diseases (40) because pigs resemble humans in their gastrointestinal anatomy, physiology, and immune responses. The Gn pigs are immunocompetent at birth, but they lack maternal antibodies and previous or ongoing exposure to microbial agents, including caliciviruses.Recently, viral RNA genetically similar to that of human NoV GII (65 to 71% amino acid sequence identity in the capsid gene) was detected in pigs in Japan (46, 47) and Europe (22,48). In U.S. swine, our laboratory detected both viral RNA and virus particles similar to GII HuNoV (70% sequence identity in the capsid region) which were infectious for Gn pigs (50). Our approach to infect Gn pigs with a HuNoV was to use a GII strain that is closely related genetically to the identified GII porcine NoVs and that has a broad HBGA binding pattern because little information or reagents are available for pig HBGA. Additionally, we used sensitive assays and reagents including reverse transcription (RT)-PCR to detect fecal shedding, virus-like particles (VLPs) for serological assays, and antisera to these VLPs for antigen enzyme-linked immunosor-

Pigs may be reservoirs for human noroviruses, and porcine/human genogroup II recombinants could emerge.

We previously characterized the pathogenesis of two host-specific bovine enteric caliciviruses (BEC), the GIII.2 norovirus (NoV) strain CV186-OH and the phylogenetically unassigned NB strain, in gnotobiotic (Gn) calves. In this study we evaluated the Gn calf as an alternative animal model to study the pathogenesis and host immune responses to the human norovirus (HuNoV) strain GII.4-HS66. The HuNoV HS66 strain caused diarrhea (five/five calves) and intestinal lesions (one/two calves tested) in the proximal small intestine (duodenum and jejunum) of Gn calves, with lesions similar to, but less severe than, those described for the Newbury agent 2 (NA-2) and NB BEC.

No abstract

Poor clinical outcomes in cancer can often be attributed to inadequate response to chemotherapy. Strategies to overcome either primary or acquired chemoresistance may ultimately impact on patients' survival favourably. We previously showed that lower levels of SPARC were associated with therapy-refractory colorectal cancers (CRC), and that upregulating its expression enhances chemosensitivity resulting in greater tumour regression in vivo. Here, we examined aberrant hypermethylation of the SPARC promoter as a potential mechanism for repressing SPARC in CRCs and whether restoration of its expression with a demethylating agent 5-Aza-2 0 deoxycytidine (5-Aza) could enhance chemosensitivity. Initially, the methylation status of the SPARC promoter from primary human CRCs were assessed following isolation of genomic DNA from laser capture microdissected specimens by direct DNA sequencing. MIP101, RKO, HCT 116, and HT-29 CRC cell lines were also used to evaluate the effect of 5-Aza on: SPARC promoter methylation, SPARC expression, the interaction between DNMT1 and the SPARC promoter (ChIP assay), cell viability, apoptosis, and cell proliferation. Our results revealed global hypermethylation of the SPARC promoter in CRCs, and identified specific CpG sites that were consistently methylated in CRCs but not in normal colon. We also demonstrate that SPARC repression in CRC cell lines could be reversed following exposure to 5-Aza, which resulted in increased SPARC expression, leading to a significant reduction in cell viability (by an additional 39% in RKO cells) and greater apoptosis (an additional 18% in RKO cells), when combined with 5-FU in vitro (in comparison to 5-FU alone). Our exciting findings suggest potential diagnostic markers of CRCs based on specific methylated CpG sites. Moreover, the results reveal the therapeutic utility of employing demethylating agents to improve response through augmentation of SPARC expression.