Interleukin 6 plays a role in the migration of magnetically levitated mesenchymal stem cells spheroids

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) reside quiescently within a specialised ‘niche’ environment in the bone marrow. However, following appropriate signalling cues, MSCs mobilise and migrate out from the niche, typically toward either sites of injury (a regenerative response) or toward primary tumours (an intrinsic homing response, which promotes MSCs as cellular vectors for therapeutic delivery). To date, very little is known about MSC mobilisation. By adopting a 3D MSC niche model, whereby MSC spheroids are cultured within a type I collagen gel, recent studies have highlighted interleukin-6 (IL-6) as a key cytokine involved in MSC migration. Herein, the ability of IL-6 to induce MSC migration was further investigated, and the key matrix metalloproteinases used to effect cell mobilisation were identified. Briefly, the impact of IL-6 on the MSC migration in a two-dimensional model systems was characterised—both visually using an Ibidi chemotaxis plate array (assessing for directional migration) and then via a standard 2D monolayer experiment, where cultured cells were challenged with IL-6 and extracted media tested using an Abcam Human MMP membrane antibody array. The 2D assay displayed a strong migratory response toward IL-6 and analysis of the membrane arrays data showed significant increases of several key MMPs. Both data sets indicated that IL-6 is important in MSC mobilisation and migration. We also investigated the impact of IL-6 induction on MSCs in 3D spheroid culture, serving as a simplistic model of the bone marrow niche, characterised by fluorescently tagged magnetic nanoparticles and identical membrane antibody arrays. An increase in MMP levels secreted by cells treated with 1 ng/mL IL-6 versus control conditions was noted in addition to migration of cells away from the central spheroid mass

PACS de patologia: uma plataforma centralizada para a gestão de imagem médica de patologia

The clinical area of digital Pathology is still giving its first steps in the development of interoperable solutions that enable the distributed acquisition, storage, and visualization of medical images, including diagnostic support tools. Nowadays, digital management solutions use proprietary image formats and communication protocols that are not compatible with the DICOM standard. Moreover, the available technologies are not mature enough to support the practice of medicine in an area where scanned images can reach several gigapixels, requiring new engineering approaches to support huge volumes of data, in the order of gigabytes per study, that need to be consumed in real time. This dissertation aims to research and develop new technologies and associated information systems, capable of supporting the digital acquisition of pathology images, their centralized archive, sharing, and collaborative review with decision support tools. The result is an innovative web solution, focused on increasing productivity, with safe diagnostics and based on normalized protocols. A common web browser was transformed into a professional workstation that is able to access the image repository at any place and time, regardless of the operating system and without any prior installation.A área de Patologia clínica digital ainda se encontra a dar os primeiros passos no desenvolvimento de soluções interoperáveis que permitam a aquisição, arquivo e visualização distribuída da imagem, incluindo ferramentas de suporte ao diagnóstico. Os atuais cenários de revisão à distância usam aplicações proprietárias que não são interoperáveis com a norma DICOM. Isto deve-se ao facto de a tecnologia não estar suficientemente madura para apoiar a prática clínica numa área em que uma imagem digitalizada pode atingir vários giga-pixels, requerendo novas soluções de engenharia para suportar grandes volumes de dados, da ordem de gigabyte por estudo, que necessitam de ser consumidos remotamente em tempo real. Esta dissertação teve como objetivo estudar e desenvolver tecnologias e sistemas de informação que permitam a aquisição digital da imagem de patologia, o seu arquivo centralizado, a partilha e revisão colaborativa com ferramentas de suporte à decisão. O resultado é uma solução Web inovadora, de elevada produtividade, diagnóstico seguro e baseada em processos e protocolos normalizados. Um Web-browser comum foi transformado numa estação de trabalho capaz de aceder ao arquivo em qualquer altura e qualquer lugar, independentemente do sistema operativo, computador ou dispositivo móvel.Mestrado em Engenharia Informátic

Three and Four-Dimensional Visualization and Analysis Approaches to Study Vertebrate Axial Elongation and Segmentation

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Live Cell Imaging of Bacillus subtilis and Streptococcus pneumoniae using Automated Time-lapse Microscopy

During the last few years scientists became increasingly aware that average data obtained from microbial population based experiments are not representative of the behavior, status or phenotype of single cells. Due to this new insight the number of single cell studies rises continuously (for recent reviews see 1,2,3). However, many of the single cell techniques applied do not allow monitoring the development and behavior of one specific single cell in time (e.g. flow cytometry or standard microscopy)