Gregory S. Thomas

TL;DR: Increased the silencing activity and specificity of aptamer-siRNA chimeras by incorporating modifications that enable more efficient processing of the siRNA by the cellular machinery and resulted in pronounced regression of PSMA-expressing tumors in athymic mice after systemic administration.

TL;DR: This work substantially truncates A9, an RNA aptamer to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), which retains binding activity, functionality, and is amenable to large-scale chemical synthesis for future clinical applications and highlights the utility of existing RNA structural prediction and protein docking techniques that may be generally applicable to developing RNA aptamers optimized for therapeutic use.

TL;DR: The thorough preclinical characterization of an RNA aptamer (A9g) that functions as a smart drug for PC by inhibiting the enzymatic activity of prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is described and critical endpoints for the translation of a novel RNA smart drug are demonstrated.

TL;DR: Primary human keratinocytes immortalized by the HPV-16 E8 mutant genome contain more than eightfold-higher levels of unintegrated plasmid than the wt, demonstrating that 16-E8∧E2 limits the viral copy number but is not required for plasmids persistence and maintenance.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that TNF-α and cellular stresses induce TRAF2 phosphorylation at serine 11 and that this phosphorylations is required for the expression of a subset of NF-κB target genes and suggested that TRAF 2 phosphorylated contributes to elevated levels of basal NF-σB activity in certain human cancers.