Group B streptococcal antibiotic resistance patterns in pregnant women.

Group B Streptococcal (GBS) antibiotic susceptibility studies were performed in 95 pregnant women in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Testing for penicillin, ampicillin, cefazolin, and clindamycin sensitivity was performed. Resistance to clindamycin was seen in 5% of isolates. All isolates were susceptible to penicillin, ampicillin, and cefazolin. Clindamycin sensitivity testing should be performed in patients who are allergic to penicillin. GBS remained uniformly susceptible to penicillin and first generation cephalosporins during this study period.

Cathepsin B-labile dipeptide linkers for lysosomal release of doxorubicin from internalizing immunoconjugates: model studies of enzymatic drug release and antigen-specific in vitro anticancer activity.

The anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) has been linked to chimeric BR96, an internalizing monoclonal antibody that binds to a Lewis(y)-related, tumor-associated antigen, through two lysosomally cleavable dipeptides, Phe-Lys and Val-Cit, giving immunoconjugates 72 and 73. A self-immolative p-aminobenzyloxycarbonyl (PABC) spacer between the dipeptides and the DOX was required for rapid and quantitative generation of free drug. DOX release from model substrate Z-Phe-Lys-PABC-DOX 49 was 30-fold faster than from Z-Val-Cit-PABC-DOX 42 with the cysteine protease cathepsin B alone, but rates were identical in a rat liver lysosomal preparation suggesting the participation of more than one enzyme. Conjugates 72 and 73 showed rapid and near quantitative drug release with cathepsin B and in a lysosomal preparation, while demonstrating excellent stability in human plasma. Against tumor cell lines with varying levels of BR96 expression, both conjugates showed potent, antigen-specific cytotoxic activity, suggesting that they will be effective in delivering DOX selectively to antigen-expressing carcinomas.

Amines That Transport Protons across Bilayer Membranes: Synthesis, Lysosomal Neutralization, and Two-Phase pK(a) Values by NMR.

It is desirable to be able to control the pH of lysosomes. A collection of lipophilic, nitrogenous bases, designed to act as membrane-active, catalytic proton transfer agents, were prepared and their effective pK(a)s measured in a vigorously stirred, two-phase system. One phase was a phosphate buffer whose pH was varied over the range ca. 1-11. The other was an immiscible, deuterated organic solvent in which the compounds preferentially resided even when protonated. When chemical shift changes versus the pH of the buffer were plotted, clear pK(a) curves were generated that are relevant to transmembrane proton transfer behavior. The two-phase pK(a)s increased with increasing counterion lipophilicity and with increasing organic solvent polarity. The compounds were also tested for their ability to neutralize the acidity of lysosomes, a model for other acidic vesicles involved in drug sorting. The most successful of these, imidazole 6a, has >100 times the neutralizing power of ammonia, a standard lysosomotropic amine, causing a 1.7 unit rise in lysosomal pH of RAW cells at 0.1 mM, compared to a 0.2 and 1.4 unit rise for ammonium chloride at 0.1 and 10 mM, respectively.