Biotech Law

A revival of bispecific antibodies

Peter Kufer, Ralf Lutterbüse, Patrick A. Baeuerle. Bispecific antibodies usually do not occur in nature but are constructed by recombinant DNA or cell-fusion technologies. Most are designed to recruit cytotoxic effector cells of the immune system ….

Cre–lox recombination: Cre-ative tools for plant biotechnology

Larry Gilbertson. Targeted insertion and the precise deletion of DNA from transgenic plant chromosomes increase the potential of plant biotechnology for commercial applications and basic research. The Cre–lox

Biological applications of protein transduction technology

Panagiotis S Kabouridis. The impermeable nature of the cell membrane to peptides, proteins, DNA and oligonucleotides limits the therapeutic potential of these biological agents. However, the recent discovery of short cati….

Haematococcus astaxanthin: applications for human health and nutrition

Martin Guerin, Mark E Huntley, Miguel Olaizola. The carotenoid pigment astaxanthin has important applications in the nutraceutical, cosmetics, food and feed industries. Haematococcus pluvialis is the richest source of natural astaxanthin….

Organ printing: computer-aided jet-based 3D tissue engineering

Vladimir Mironov, Thomas Boland, Thomas Trusk, Gabor Forgacs, Roger R. Markwald. Tissue engineering technology promises to solve the organ transplantation crisis. However, assembly of vascularized 3D soft organs remains a big challenge. Organ printing, which we define as compu….

The history of the peer-review process

Ray Spier. The peer-review process is a turf battle with the ultimate prize of the knowledge, science or doctrine being published. On the one side, we have the writers and originators of ideas, on the other,….

Detection of genetically modified organisms in foods

Farid E Ahmed. Legislation enacted worldwide to regulate the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in crops, foods and ingredients, necessitated the development of reliable and sensitive methods for ….

Nantotechniques and approaches in biotechnology

Adam Curtis, Chris Wilkinson. Nanotechnology has enabled the development of an amazing variety of methods for fabricating nanotopography and nanopatterned chemistry in recent years. Some of these techniques are directed toward….

Effect of glycosylation on antibody function: implications for genetic engineering

Ann Wright, Sherie L. Morrison. Antibodies are able to both bind antigens and trigger the responses that eliminate them from circulation. All antibodies are glycosylated at conserved positions in their constant regions, and the ….