This invention relates to a method of treating a dog for canine diseases comprising administering to the dog therapeutically effective amounts of a vaccine, wherein the vaccine comprises viral antigens, a bacterin, or both, and wherein the vaccine is administered subcutaneously or orally according to the schedules provided herein.

The present invention discloses a modified interleukin 12 (nsIL-12) and its gene, recombinant vector and use in manufacture of a medicament for treatment of tumors. When the oncolytic adenovirus vector carrying the modified interleukin 12 gene targets tumor tissue, the modified interleukin 12 is continuously expressed at a low level and mainly distributed in the local tumor tissue, which improves the specificity to tumor cells and reduces the systemic toxicity of interleukin 12; the modified interleukin 12 shows stronger inhibitory effect on tumor growth in intraperitoneally disseminated tumors and orthotopic tumors, and has low toxicity. The modified interleukin 12 armed oncolytic viruses show excellent antitumor effects, with a significant regression of tumors and lower toxicity compared with the existing IL-12 armed virus.

The invention relates to an adenoviral-based biological delivery and expression system for use in the treatment or prevention of osteoathritis in human or mammalian joints by long-term inducible gene expression of human or mammalian interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (II-1 Ra) in synovial cells, comprising a helper-dependent adenoviral vector containing a nucleic acid sequence encoding for human or mammalian interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (II-1 Ra), left and right inverted terminal repeats (L ITR and R ITR), the adenoviral packaging signal and non-viral, non-coding stuffer nucleic acid sequences, wherein the expression of the human or mammalian interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (II-1 Ra) gene within synovial cells is regulated by an inflammation-inducible promoter.

The presently disclosed subject matter provides methods, reporter gene constructs, and kits for using prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) as an imaging reporter to image a variety of cells and tissues.

The present invention relates to a pharmaceutical composition for treating cancer, containing cytochrome b5 reductase 3 (CYB5R3) protein as an active ingredient. Over-expression of CYB5R3 in cancer cells results in significant reduction of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) expression, which leads inhibition of cancer cells growth in vitro and in vivo. Thus, the CYB5R3 gene or protein of the present invention can be useful as an active ingredient of a pharmaceutical composition for treating cancer.

Disclosed are replication-enhanced oncolytic adenoviruses. These oncolytic adenoviruses have tumor-specific replication capable of enhanced tumor oncolysis and enhanced therapeutic transgene expression. Also disclosed are methods comprising administering a replication-enhanced oncolytic adenovirus for patients suffering from a cancer.

Methods, reporter gene constructs, and kits for using prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) as an imaging reporter to image a variety of cells and tissues are provided.

Compositions and methods of activating dendritic cells with LMP1 and LMP1-activated dendritic cell based compositions and methods are effective for dendritic cell therapy and provide an adjuvant function for vaccine administration. LMP1 or LMP1-CD40 chimeric protein may be used to activate and mature dendritic cells. LMP1 and LMP1-activated dendritic cells act as an adjuvant to enhance the cellular immune response. Also disclosed herein are kits for activating dendritic cells and for preparing a vaccine formulation. Administration of the dendritic cells transfected with LMP1 can induce an immune response against cancer or infection. The mature dendritic cells may comprise an antigen and at least one cytokine in addition to LMP1. Use of LMP1 or LMP1-CD40 provides a way to activate and mature dendritic cells that retain functional and migratory abilities without the side effects that result from maturing the dendritic cells using PGE.sub.2.

This invention relates to a method of treating a dog for canine diseases comprising administering to the dog therapeutically effective amounts of a vaccine, wherein the vaccine comprises viral antigens, a bacterin, or both, and wherein the vaccine is administered subcutaneously or orally according to the schedules provided herein.

The present invention relates to variant AAV capsid polypeptides, wherein the variant AAV capsid polypeptides exhibit increased transduction and/or tropism in human pancreatic tissue or human islets as compared non-variant parent capsid polypeptides.