Designing an automated blood fractionation system.

Background: UK Biobank will be collecting blood samples from a cohort of 500 000 volunteers and it is expected that the rate of collection will peak at approximately 3000 blood collection tubes per day. These samples need to be prepared for long-term storage. It is not considered practical to manually process this quantity of samples so an automated blood fractionation system is required.

The receptor-binding region of human apolipoprotein E has direct anti-infective activity.

Background: The APOE genotype has a uniquely strong influence on the outcome of viral infection. The mechanism is unknown, although one possibility is direct inhibition of viral entry into cells.

Methods: We have examined the direct anti-infective activity of a peptide analogue of the receptor-binding region of apolipoprotein E (apoE) that is known as "apoE dimer tandem repeat peptide" (apoEdp) and has previously been shown to mimic some of the biological effects of apoE and that recently was shown to bind low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein.

Time-dependent changes in HIV nucleoside analogue phosphorylation and the effect of hydroxyurea.

Background: Nucleoside analogues are activated to their triphosphates, which compete with endogenous deoxynucleoside triphosphate (dNTP) pools to inhibit HIV reverse transcriptase. Hydroxyurea has been administered with nucleoside analogues to modulate intracellular dNTP pools and thus the ratio of drug triphosphate:endogenous triphosphate.

Objectives: To examine changes in drug activation over time and investigate the effects of hydroxyurea on intracellular phosphorylation of antiretroviral nucleoside analogues.

Development of enzymatic assays for quantification of intracellular lamivudine and carbovir triphosphate levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients.

In this paper, we describe the development and use of enzymatic assays to determine intracellular lamivudine triphosphate (3TCTP) and carbovir triphosphate (CBVTP) concentrations in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients. The assays involve inhibition of HIV reverse transcriptase (RT), which normally incorporates radiolabeled deoxynucleoside triphosphates into a synthetic template primer. For the 3TCTP assay, a preincubation procedure was added whereby 3TCTP becomes incorporated before [(3)H]dCTP.