Biology subjects

Cardoso, F.

Publications and source records attributed to Cardoso, F..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Zebrafish Avatar-test predicts patient's tumor response to chemotherapy in breast cancer: a co-clinical study towards personalized medicine

Chemotherapy remains the mainstay in most high-risk breast cancer (BC) settings, with several equivalent options of treatment. However, the efficacy of each treatment varies between patients and there is currently no test to determine which option will be the most effective for each individual patient. Here, we developed a fast in-vivo test for BC therapy screening: the zebrafish patient derived xenograft model (zAvatars), where in-vivo results can be obtained in just 10 days. To determine the predictive value of the BC zAvatars we performed a clinical study, where zAvatars were treated with the same therapy as the donor-patient and their response to therapy was compared. Our data shows a 100% correlation between patients clinical response to treatment and its matching zAvatar. Altogether, our results suggest that the zAvatar model constitutes a promising in-vivo assay to optimize cancer treatments in truly personalized manner.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2021

SARS-CoV-2 RBD-Tetanus toxoid conjugate vaccine induces a strong neutralizing immunity in preclinical studies

Controlling the global COVID-19 pandemic depends, among other measures, on developing preventive vaccines at an unprecedented pace. Vaccines approved for use and those in development intend to use neutralizing antibodies to block viral sites binding to the hosts cellular receptors. Virus infection is mediated by the spike glycoprotein trimer on the virion surface via its receptor binding domain (RBD). Antibody response to this domain is an important outcome of the immunization and correlates well with viral neutralization. Here we show that macromolecular constructs with recombinant RBD conjugated to tetanus toxoid induce a potent immune response in laboratory animals. Some advantages of the immunization with the viral antigen coupled to tetanus toxoid have become evident such as predominant IgG immune response due to affinity maturation and long-term specific B-memory cells. This paper demonstrates that subunit conjugate vaccines can be an alternative for COVID-19, paving the way for other viral conjugate vaccines based on the use of small viral proteins involved in the infection process.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2019

Exact p-values for large-scale single step genome-wide association, with an application for birth weight in American Angus

BACKGROUNDSingle Step GBLUP (SSGBLUP) is the most comprehensive method for genomic prediction. Point estimates of marker effects from SSGBLUP are often used for Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) without a formal framework of hypothesis testing. Our objective was to implement p-values for GWAS studies in the ssGBLUP framework, showing algorithms, computational procedures, and an application to a large beef cattle population. METHODSP-values were obtained based on the prediction error (co)variance for SNP, which uses the inverse of the coefficient matrix and formulas to compute SNP effects. RESULTSComputation of p-values took a negligible time for a dataset with almost 2 million animals in the pedigree and 1424 genotyped sires, and no inflation was observed. The SNP passing the Bonferroni threshold of 5.9 in the -log10 scale were the same as those that explained the highest proportion of additive genetic variance, but the latter was penalized (as GWAS signal) by low allele frequency. CONCLUSIONThe exact p-value for SSGWAS is a very general and efficient strategy for QTL detection and testing. It can be used in complex data sets such as used in animal breeding, where only a proportion of pedigreed animals are genotyped.

genomics↗