We report on the preparation of water-and oil-repellent surfaces using surface-attached monolayers of perfluorinated polymer molecules. A covalent attachment of the polymer molecules to the substrate surfaces is achieved by generation of the polymer chains through starting a surface-initiated radical-chain polymerization of a fluorinated monomer. To this, self-assembled monolayers of azo initiators are attached to SiO2 substrates, which are used to kick off the polymerization reaction in situ. The growth of the fluorinated polymer brushes and the characterization of the obtained surfaces by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, surface plasmon spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and contact angle measurements is described. It is shown that perfluorinated polymer films can be grown with controlled thicknesses on flat and even on porous silica surfaces, essentially without changing the surface roughness. The combination of the low surface energy coating and the surface porosity allows generation of materials which are both water and oil repellent.

Alpha 1 antitrypsin (AAT) is a serine proteinase inhibitor (serpin). One well-known function of this protein is to inactivate neutrophil elastase and other neutrophil-derived proteinases, and prevent the destruction of pulmonary extracellular matrix. Deficiency of AAT can cause emphysema due to degradation of interstitial elastin by elastase. The majority of circulating AAT is secreted from the liver. Muscle-directed gene therapy using recombinant adeno-associated virus 2 (rAAV2) vectors has been tested to increase the serum levels of AAT. However, inefficient transduction of rAAV2 vector makes it difficult to reach therapeutic levels of AAT in clinical trials and it remains unclear as to whether muscle-secreted AAT is functional. In the present study, we evaluated five serotypes (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) of rAAV vectors for transduction efficiency in mouse muscle. Results from these studies showed that rAAV1 is the most efficient vector among these serotypes and mediated at least 100-fold higher levels of AAT secretion than the rAAV2 vector. Western blot analysis showed that this murine muscle-secreted human AAT (hAAT) formed a complex with human neutrophil elastase in a dose-dependent manner. An anti-elastase activity assay showed that murine muscle-secreted hAAT inhibited elastase with equal capacity as hAAT purified from plasma. These results provide strong support for the functionality of AAT in ongoing clinical studies of muscle-directed AAT gene therapy.

We studied the effects of antisense oligonucleotides (AS oligos) with a novel structure. The AS oligos were covalently closed to avoid exonuclease activities by enzymatic ligation of two identical molecules. The AS oligos of a ribbon type (RiAS oligos) consist of two loops containing multiple antisense sequences and a stem connecting the two loops. Three antisense sequences targeting different binding sites were placed in a loop that was designed to form a minimal secondary structure by itself. RiAS oligos were found to be stable because they largely preserved their structural integrity after 24 h incubation in the presence of either exonuclease III or serums. When a human promyelocytic cell line, HL-60, was treated with RiAS oligos to c-myb, c-myb expression was effectively ablated. Cell growth was inhibited by >90% determined by both the 3-[4,5-dimethythiazol-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay and [ 3 H]thymidine incorporation. Further, when the leukemic cell line K562 was treated with c-myb RiAS oligos, colony formation on soft agarose was reduced by 92 ؎ 2%. These results suggest that RiAS oligos may be employed for developing molecular antisense drugs as well as for the functional study of a gene.

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