sVEGFR-2 and its Role in Lymphangiogenesis Modulation

Disclosed herein are nucleic acid molecules comprising a nucleotide sequence of sVEGF-2, proteins encoded by those sequences and antibodies that bind to the protein. Also disclosed are methods for inhibiting or enhancing expression or activity of sVEGFR-2 and methods for inhibiting graft rejection, particularly cornea graph rejection. Also described are methods for inhibiting lymphangiogenesis and lymphatic endothelial cell proliferation by administering an effective amount of sVEGFR-2 and methods for treating lymphedema by inhibiting the activity of sVEGFR-2

Compositions and Methods for Treating Retinal Degradation

The present disclosure relates to compositions and methods for treating retinal damage and/or retinal degradation. More specifically, this disclosure relates to methods for treating degradation of the retinal pigment epithelium by administering compositions comprising a nucleoside and/or a nucleoside or nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor

On the rate of convergence of the Hamiltonian particle-mesh method

The Hamiltonian Particle-Mesh (HPM) method is a particle-in-cell method for compressible fluid flow with Hamiltonian structure. We present a numer- ical short-time study of the rate of convergence of HPM in terms of its three main governing parameters. We find that the rate of convergence is much better than the best available theoretical estimates. Our results indicate that HPM performs best when the number of particles is on the order of the number of grid cells, the HPM global smoothing kernel has fast decay in Fourier space, and the HPM local interpolation kernel is a cubic spline

VEGF(164)-mediated inflammation is required for pathological, but not physiological, ischemia-induced retinal neovascularization

Hypoxia-induced VEGF governs both physiological retinal vascular development and pathological retinal neovascularization. In the current paper, the mechanisms of physiological and pathological neovascularization are compared and contrasted. During pathological neovascularization, both the absolute and relative expression levels for VEGF(164) increased to a greater degree than during physiological neovascularization. Furthermore, extensive leukocyte adhesion was observed at the leading edge of pathological, but not physiological, neovascularization. When a VEGF(164)-specific neutralizing aptamer was administered, it potently suppressed the leukocyte adhesion and pathological neovascularization, whereas it had little or no effect on physiological neovascularization. In parallel experiments, genetically altered VEGF(164)-deficient (VEGF(120/188)) mice exhibited no difference in physiological neovascularization when compared with wild-type (VEGF(+/+)) controls. In contrast, administration of a VEGFk-1/Fc fusion protein, which blocks all VEGF isoforms, led to significant suppression of both pathological and physiological neovascularization. In addition, the targeted inactivation of monocyte lineage cells with clodronate-liposomes led to the suppression of pathological neovascularization. Conversely, the blockade of T lymphocyte-mediated immune responses with an anti-CD2 antibody exacerbated pathological neovascularization. These data highlight important molecular and cellular differences between physiological and pathological retinal neovascularization. During pathological neovascularization, VEGF(164) selectively induces inflammation and cellular immunity. These processes provide positive and negative angiogenic regulation, respectively. Together, new therapeutic approaches for selectively targeting pathological, but not physiological, retinal neovascularization are outlined

Identification of putative candidate gene markers for grain zinc content using recombinant inbred lines (RIL) population of IRRI38 X Jeerigesanna

Nutrients in food crops can be enriched by adopting biofortification. Identifying the target quantitative trait loci (QTL) genes will help achieve biofortification with greater precision and accuracy. The objective of this experiment is to estimate grain zinc content, evaluation of candidate gene markers in recombinant inbred lines (RIL) derived from IRRI38 X Jeerigesanna and validation of putative candidate gene markers with rice accessions. Grain zinc content ranged from 16.1 to 35.5 ppm with an average of 23.7 ppm. Among twenty four candidate gene markers, eight showed polymorphism and out of three simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers, three showed polymorphism. Single marker analysis revealed that four (OsNAC, OsZIP8a, OsZIP8c and OsZIP4b) candidate gene markers showed significant variation among RIL population with a phenotypic variation of 4.5, 19.0, 5.1 and 10.2% respectively. Validation with 96 rice genotypes showed three markers (OsZIP8a, OsNAC and OsZIP4b) with phenotypic variation of 11.0, 5.8 and 4.8%, respectively.Keywords: Zinc, biofortification, single-marker analysis (SMS) and marker assisted selection (MAS)African Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 13(5), pp. 657-663, 29 January, 201

The endogenous soluble VEGF receptor-2 isoform suppresses lymph node metastasis in a mouse immunocompetent mammary cancer model

BACKGROUND: Cancer metastasis contributes significantly to cancer mortality and is facilitated by lymphangiogenesis and angiogenesis. A new splicing variant, endogenous soluble vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 (esVEGFR-2) that we recently identified is an endogenous selective inhibitor of lymphangiogenesis. To evaluate the antimetastatic potential of esVEGFR-2, gene therapy with vector expressing esVEGFR-2 (pesVEGFR-2) or endostatin (pEndo) as a positive control was conducted on murine metastatic mammary cancer. METHODS: Syngeneic inoculated metastatic mammary cancers received direct intratumoral injection of pesVEGFR-2, pEndo or pVec as control, once a week for six weeks. In vivo gene electrotransfer was performed on the tumors after each injection. RESULTS: Deaths from metastasis were much lower in the pesVEGFR-2 and pEndo groups than in those of the pVec. Tumor volume was significantly lower in the pesVEGFR-2 and the pEndo groups throughout the study. Multiplicity of lymph node and lung metastatic nodules was significantly suppressed in the pesVEGFR-2 and pEndo groups. Moreover, the total number of overall metastasis including the other organs was also decreased in these groups. However, pesVEGFR-2 was not able to decrease the number of lungs, ovaries, kidneys and adrenals with metastasis as counted by unilateral or bilateral metastasis. The number of CD34+/Lyve-1⁻ blood microvessels was significantly decreased in the pEndo group, while the number of CD34⁻/Lyve-1+ lymphatic vessels was significantly decreased in the pesVEGFR-2 and pEndo groups. In addition, a significant reduction in the number of dilated lymphatic vessels containing intraluminal cancer cells was observed in the pesVEGFR-2 and pEndo groups. Levels of apoptosis were significantly increased in the pEndo group, whereas the rates of cell proliferation were significantly decreased in the pesVEGFR-2 and pEndo groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our data demonstrate that esVEGFR-2 can inhibit mainly lymph node metastasis. The antimetastatic activity of esVEGFR-2 may be of high clinical significance in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer because lymph node involvement is a most important prognostic factor in cancer patients

cGAS Drives Noncanonical-Inflammasome Activation in Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Geographic atrophy is a blinding form of age-related macular degeneration characterized by retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) death; the RPE also exhibits DICER1 deficiency, resultant accumulation of endogenous Alu-retroelement RNA, and NLRP3-inflammasome activation. How the inflammasome is activated in this untreatable disease is largely unknown. Here we demonstrate that RPE degeneration in human-cell-culture and mouse models is driven by a noncanonical-inflammasome pathway that activates caspase-4 (caspase-11 in mice) and caspase-1, and requires cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS)-dependent interferon-β production and gasdermin D-dependent interleukin-18 secretion. Decreased DICER1 levels or Alu-RNA accumulation triggers cytosolic escape of mitochondrial DNA, which engages cGAS. Moreover, caspase-4, gasdermin D, interferon-β, and cGAS levels were elevated in the RPE in human eyes with geographic atrophy. Collectively, these data highlight an unexpected role of cGAS in responding to mobile-element transcripts, reveal cGAS-driven interferon signaling as a conduit for mitochondrial-damage-induced inflammasome activation, expand the immune-sensing repertoire of cGAS and caspase-4 to noninfectious human disease, and identify new potential targets for treatment of a major cause of blindness

Variational water-wave model with accurate dispersion and vertical vorticity

A new water-wave model has been derived which is based on variational techniques and combines a depth-averaged vertical (component of) vorticity with depth-dependent potential flow. The model facilitates the further restriction of the vertical profile of the velocity potential to n-th order polynomials or a finite-element profile with a small number of elements (say), leading to a framework for efficient modeling of the interaction of steepening and breaking waves near the shore with a large-scale horizontal flow. The equations are derived from a constrained variational formulation which leads to conservation laws for energy, mass, momentum and vertical vorticity. It is shown that the potential-flow water-wave equations and the shallow-water equations are recovered in the relevant limits. Approximate shock relations are provided, which can be used in numerical schemes to model breaking waves

Repurposing Anti-Inflammasome NRTIs for Improving Insulin Sensitivity and Reducing Type 2 Diabetes Development

Innate immune signaling through the NLRP3 inflammasome is activated by multiple diabetes-related stressors, but whether targeting the inflammasome is beneficial for diabetes is still unclear. Nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI), drugs approved to treat HIV-1 and hepatitis B infections, also block inflammasome activation. Here, we show, by analyzing five health insurance databases, that the adjusted risk of incident diabetes is 33% lower in patients with NRTI exposure among 128,861 patients with HIV-1 or hepatitis B (adjusted hazard ratio for NRTI exposure, 0.673; 95% confidence interval, 0.638 to 0.710; P \u3c 0.0001; 95% prediction interval, 0.618 to 0.734). Meanwhile, an NRTI, lamivudine, improves insulin sensitivity and reduces inflammasome activation in diabetic and insulin resistance-induced human cells, as well as in mice fed with high-fat chow; mechanistically, inflammasome-activating short interspersed nuclear element (SINE) transcripts are elevated, whereas SINE-catabolizing DICER1 is reduced, in diabetic cells and mice. These data suggest the possibility of repurposing an approved class of drugs for prevention of diabetes

Short-Term Retinoic Acid Treatment Increases In Vivo, but Decreases In Vitro, Epidermal Transglutaminase-K Enzyme Activity and Immunoreactivity

Epidermal transglutaminase-K is believed to catalyze the covalent linking of loricrin and involucrin to form cross-linked (CE) envelopes. In normal skin, transglutaminase-K is expressed as a band immediately below the stratum corneum, whereas in psoriasis and healing skin its expression is considerably expanded throughout the suprabasal layers. We have investigated whether the hyperproliferative state induced by short-term application of topical retinoic acid is similarly characterized by an increase in transglutaminase-K enzyme activity and immunoreactivity.Retinoic acid (0.1% cream) or vehicle were applied to human skin and occluded for 4 d. Skin biopsies were obtained for measurement of transglutaminase-K and transglutaminase-C activity and immunoreactivity. For comparison, cultured normal human keratinocytes were incubated for 4 d in the presence of 1 μM retinoic acid and the subsequent transglutaminase-K activity and immunoreactivity measured. Transglutaminase-K activity was increased 2.8 times in retinoic acid compared to vehicle-treated skin (p < 0.005, n = 12) whereas there was no significant difference in transglutaminase-C activity. However, transglutaminase-K mRNA levels were not significantly different between retinoic acid- and vehicle-treated skin. In vehicle-treated skin, transglutaminase-K immunoreactivity was limited to a narrow, substratum corneal band, but was considerably expanded in a diffuse suprabasal pattern in retinoic acid-treated epidermis. In contrast, transglutaminase-K immunostaining was decreased and its enzymatic activity reduced sixfold in retinoic acid-treated keratinocytes (p < 0.01, n = 4).These results demonstrate that retinoic acid treatment in vivo, in contrast to in vitro, leads to not only increased transglutaminase-K protein expression but also increased enzymatic activity in the absence of detectable increases in mRNA levels.These data, taken with the previously reported lack of in vivo modulation of the differentiation markers keratins 1 and 10 by retinoic acid, indicate that certain aspects of keratinocyte terminal differentiation that are altered in vitro by retinoic acid do not occur in vivo in human skin