Celia Berta Fernández-Ortega

• Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology

The peptide CIGB‐210 inhibits HIV replication, inducing a rearrangement of vimentin intermediate filaments. The assessment of the in vitro serum and plasma stability of this peptide is important to develop an optimal pharmacological formulation. A half‐life of 17.68 ± 0.59 min was calculated for CIGB‐210 in human serum by reverse‐phase high‐perform...

There is an urgent need to understand severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-host interactions involved in virus spread and pathogenesis, which might contribute to the identification of new therapeutic targets. In this study, we investigated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in postmortem lung, kidney, and liver samples of patients w...

Current human immunodeficiency virus treatments need to be periodically administered lifelong. In this study we assess the effect of repeated doses of an anti-HIV peptide drug candidate in C57BL6 strain. Two schemes of up to 15 administrations and one of 30, daily dosing for 5 days per week, all by the subcutaneous route were evaluated. Different d...

The synthetic peptide CIGB-210 is a promising anti-HIV drug candidate shown to inhibit HIV replication in MT4 cells at the nanomolar range by triggering the rearrangement of vimentin intermediate filaments. Sensitive and specific analytical methods are required for pharmacological studies of CIBG-210 in animals. In this study, we describe the devel...

Peptidic drugs have many advantages as compared to small chemical molecules; however, they also possess some limitations as their poor membrane transducing properties. Our group has recently reported the potent anti-HIV antiviral activity of CIGB-210, a peptide derived from human keratin 10. Previous experiments showed that this peptide is internal...

A combination of antiviral drugs known as antiretroviral therapy (ART) has shown effectiveness against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). ART has markedly decreased mortality and morbidity among HIV-infected patients, having even reduced HIV transmission. However, an important current disadvantage, resistance development, remains to be solved....

The antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the treatment of HIV/AIDS has been extremely successful in prolonging the lives of people living with HIV. Since the approval of AZT up to the present, over 26 individual compounds have been added to the arsenal available for physicians. The combination of three of these drugs, directed against more than one tar...

Combined anti-retroviral therapy has been really efficient in suppressing HIV replication, but it does not cure the infection. This is due to the permanency of integrated viral DNA in the infected cells. To achieve the HIV cure, the interaction between virus and its host needs to be extremely understood. Because of this, scientific community persis...

Background Despite the therapeutic advances of antiretroviral, problems of drug resistance, latent viral reservoirs, and drug induced toxic effects that compromise effective viral control point to the need for new classes of anti-HIV drugs with different modes of action. An extract from human leukocyte called Dialyzable Leukocyte Extract (DLE) dela...

This report summarizes the main topics delivered as lectures at the meeting Frontiers in HIV pathogenesis, Therapy and Eradication, held at the Whistler Conference Centre, in Whistler British Columbia, Canada, in March 26-31. The meeting was organized as part of the Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cell Biology joined with the conference Cell Bio...

This report summarizes the main topics delivered as lectures at the meeting Frontiers in HIV pathogenesis, Therapy and Eradication, held at the Whistler Conference Centre, in Whistler British Columbia, Canada, in March 26-31. The meeting was organized as part of the Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cell Biology joined with the conference Cell Bio...

Retroviral integration is an essential stage in the life cycle of retroviruses. Viruses need to insert their DNA into the chromosomal DNA of the host cells. Retroviral integration is a complex process which involves viral and host proteins and requires the movement of the retroviral DNA from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. The viral integrase is a ke...

Retroviral integration is an essential stage in the life cycle of retroviruses. Viruses need to insert their DNA into the chromosomal DNA of the host cells. Retroviral integration is a complex process which involves viral and host proteins and requires the movement of the retroviral DNA from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. The viral integrase is a ke...

The present invention describes a method to inhibit replication of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) by negatively modulating or altering the cytoskeleton, more precisely the proteins forming the intermediate cytoskeletal filaments, wherein the said proteins are vimentin and/or keratin-10. The replication of the virus is inhibited in human cel...

7‐11 November 2010, Tenth International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection, Glasgow, UK

The search for new therapeutic agents to treat the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) continues, since therapeutic anti-retroviral combinations already employed to treat AIDS patients do not eradicate the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Our group recently demonstrated the inhibitory effect of the Dialyzable Leukocyte Extract (D...

To investigate i) whether the Dialyzable Leukocyte Extract (DLE) modulates the production of proinflammatory cytokines in leukocytes activated by the bacterial cell wall components lipopolysaccharide (LPS), lipoteichoic acid (LTA), and peptidoglycan (PGN); ii) the effect of DLE on LPS-stimulated endothelial cells; and iii) whether the regulatory ef...

In this study, we examined the expression of hepatitis C virus (HCV) components in hepatocytes and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from patients positive for anti-HCV antibodies and negative for serum HCV-RNA. The samples obtained from 25 randomly selected patients (13 of 25 patients showed no histological evidences of chronic hepatitis a...

Understanding the mechanism of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) pathogenesis is an important part of HCV research. In this study, the presence of apoptosis in HCV-infected liver and Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMC) from patients positive for anti-HCV antibodies and negative for serum HCV-RNA was investigated. The samples obtained from 21 patients w...

According to UNAIDS, the global HIV/AIDS epidemic increased to 40 million the number of people living with the virus around the world. Dialyzable leukocyte extract obtained by our group is a low molecular weight dialyzable material from peripheral human leukocytes previously in vitro induced with Sendai virus (DLE-ind), and more recently, from non-...

Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFalpha) is a major mediator of inflammatory responses and also plays a prominent role in bridging the innate and adaptive phases of immunity. In the present work we attempted to study TNFalpha production in endotoxin-stimulated blood of healthy individuals, and the inter-individual variability in TNFalpha production....

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) contains regulatory regions in its long terminal repeat (LTR) implicated in the control of viral gene expression. We previously demonstrated that Dialyzable Leukocyte Extract (DLE), a preparation derived from immune leukocytes, is able to inhibit HIV-1 replication in MT-4 cell cultures. Here, we exami...

Dialysable Leucocyte Extract (DLE) is a low molecular weight dialysable material of disrupted peripheral human leucocytes with widespread effects on the immune system. We described the in vitro anti-HIV activity of DLE as well as its three chromatographic fractions (Fa, Fb and Fc). To determine the levels of inhibition on HIV replication by DLE we...

Dialysable leucocyte extract (DLE), obtained from lysed leucocytes, provide clinical effectiveness in a broad spectrum of diseases. Tumour necrosis factor (TNF) is raised in AIDS patients leading to an increase in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) replication in vitro [1,2], whereas progression to AIDS in asymptomatic HIV infected individuals is r...

Protection of cells against HIV infection by the Dialyzable Leukocyte Extract prior to cell culture duplication. The search for new therapeutic agents to treat the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) continues, since therapeutic anti-retroviral combinations already employed to treat AIDS patients do not eradicate the human immunodeficiency vi...