When Folkman first suggested a theory about the association between angiogenesis and tumor growth in 1971, the hypothesis of targeting angiogenesis to treat cancer was formed. Since then, various studies conducted across the world have additionally confirmed the theory of Folkman, and numerous efforts have been made to explore the possibilities of curing cancer by targeting angiogenesis. Among them, anti‑angiogenic gene therapy has received attention due to its apparent advantages. Although specific problems remain prior to cancer being fully curable using anti‑angiogenic gene therapy, several methods have been explored, and progress has been made in pre‑clinical and clinical settings over previous decades. The present review aimed to provide up‑to‑date information concerning tumor angiogenesis and gene delivery systems in anti‑angiogenic gene therapy, with a focus on recent developments in the study and application of the most commonly studied and newly identified anti‑angiogenic candidates for anti‑angiogenesis gene therapy, including interleukin‑12, angiostatin, endostatin, tumstatin, anti‑angiogenic metargidin peptide and endoglin silencing.

Acinetobacter baumannii is a pathogenic species of bacteria, identified as an aerobic Gram-negative bacterium, that is resistant to most antibiotics. In this study, the MDR-TJ strain was isolated at the Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, China, and was found to be resistant to penicillin, cephalosporins, aminoglycosides, quinolones, and also imipenem. The genome sequence of Acinetobacter baumannii strain MDR-TJ was determined by using a combination of 454 pyrosequencing and paired-end sequencing performed with the Roche Genome Sequencer FLX system to generate a scaffolded assembly.

Bacteria such as the oral microbiome member Peptostreptococcus anaerobius can exacerbate colorectal cancer (CRC) development. Little is known regarding whether these immunomodulatory bacteria also affect antitumour immune checkpoint blockade therapy. Here we show that administration of P. anaerobius abolished the efficacy of anti-PD1 therapy in mouse models of CRC. P. anaerobius both induced intratumoral myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) and stimulated their immunosuppressive activities to impair effective T cell responses. Mechanistically, P. anaerobius administration activated integrin α₂β₁–NF-κB signalling in CRC cells to induce secretion of CXCL1 and recruit CXCR2⁺ MDSCs into tumours. The bacterium also directly activated immunosuppressive activity of intratumoral MDSCs by secreting lytC_22, a protein that bound to the Slamf4 receptor on MDSCs and promoted ARG1 and iNOS expression. Finally, therapeutic targeting of either integrin α₂β₁ or the Slamf4 receptor were revealed as promising strategies to overcome P. anaerobius-mediated resistance to anti-PD1 therapy in CRC.

We describe the rapid isolation of single-domain recombinant antibodies in VHH format from a pre-immune llama library created in our laboratory. Such naïve library has demonstrated to be a versatile tool and enabled the isolation of several different antibodies for any of the six proteins panned in parallel. The binders specific for human fibroblast growth factor receptor 1 (FGFR1) were successively analyzed in more detail and resulted suitable for both western blot and immunofluorescence analyses. Several milligrams per liter of antibodies were purified by affinity chromatography and used for kinetic and thermodynamic characterization. Their K_D was in the nanomolar range and they apparently bound a FGF receptor 1 domain not overlapping the region recognized by its physiological ligand FGF. Altogether, the collected data indicate that the new library can enable the recovery of binders of high affinity, specificity and functionality in the conventional immunological tests, avoiding the necessity of further maturation steps. Such results confirmed recent reports of high affinity pre-immune IgNARs and supported the choice of using large single-domain recombinant antibody naïve libraries as an alternative to the preparation of immune libraries for selecting monoclonal antibodies, at convenient cost and time conditions.