DIRECT DETECTION OF ANTIPYRINE METABOLITES IN RAT URINE BY 13 C LABELING AND NMR SPECTROSCOPY

This paper is available online at http://www.dmd.org ABSTRACT: Antipyrine is a useful probe to evaluate variation of in vivo activities of oxidative hepatic drug-metabolizing enzymes. Here we describe a new approach usin

Palladium- and base-free synthesis of conjugated ynones by cross-coupling reactions of alkynylboronates with acid chlorides mediated by CuCl

Alkynylboronates can be employed as a practical and versatile precursor for a variety of pi-conjugated organic compounds. In the presence of Cu(I) salt, cross-coupling reactions of acid chlorides with alkynylboronates giving rise to the corresponding conjugated ynones takes place readily in aprotic polar solvents such as DMI under neutral conditions

Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Ameliorate Hepatic Ischemia Reperfusion Injury in a Rat Model

BACKGROUND: Ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury associated with living donor liver transplantation impairs liver graft regeneration. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are potential cell therapeutic targets for liver disease. In this study, we demonstrate the impact of MSCs against hepatic I/R injury and hepatectomy. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We used a new rat model in which major hepatectomy with I/R injury was performed. Male Lewis rats were separated into two groups: an MSC group given MSCs after reperfusion as treatment, and a Control group given phosphate-buffered saline after reperfusion as placebo. The results of liver function tests, pathologic changes in the liver, and the remnant liver regeneration rate were assessed. The fate of transplanted MSCs in the luciferase-expressing rats was examined by in vivo luminescent imaging. The MSC group showed peak luciferase activity of transplanted MSCs in the remnant liver 24 h after reperfusion, after which luciferase activity gradually declined. The elevation of serum alanine transaminase levels was significantly reduced by MSC injection. Histopathological findings showed that vacuolar change was lower in the MSC group compared to the Control group. In addition, a significantly lower percentage of TUNEL-positive cells was observed in the MSC group compared with the controls. Remnant liver regeneration rate was accelerated in the MSC group. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These data suggest that MSC transplantation provides trophic support to the I/R-injured liver by inhibiting hepatocellular apoptosis and by stimulating regeneration

Impact of Normothermic Preservation with Extracellular Type Solution Containing Trehalose on Rat Kidney Grafting from a Cardiac Death Donor

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to investigate factors that may improve the condition of a marginal kidney preserved with a normothermic solution following cardiac death (CD) in a model of rat kidney transplantation (RTx). METHODS: Post-euthanasia, Lewis (LEW) donor rats were left for 1 h in a 23°C room. These critical kidney grafts were preserved in University of Wisconsin (UW), lactate Ringer's (LR), or extracellular-trehalose-Kyoto (ETK) solution, followed by intracellular-trehalose-Kyoto (ITK) solution at 4, 23, or 37°C for another 1 h, and finally transplanted into bilaterally nephrectomized LEW recipient rats (n = 4-6). Grafts of rats surviving to day 14 after RTx were evaluated by histopathological examination. The energy activity of these marginal rat kidneys was measured by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC; n = 4 per group) and fluorescence intensity assay (n = 6 per group) after preservation with UW or ETK solutions at each temperature. Finally, the transplanted kidney was assessed by an in vivo luciferase imaging system (n = 2). RESULTS: Using the 1-h normothermic preservation of post-CD kidneys, five out of six recipients in the ETK group survived until 14 days, in contrast to zero out of six in the UW group (p<0.01). Preservation with ITK rather than ETK at 23°C tended to have an inferior effect on recipient survival (p = 0.12). Energy activities of the fresh donor kidneys decreased in a temperature-dependent manner, while those of post-CD kidneys remained at the lower level. ETK was superior to UW in protecting against edema of the post-CD kidneys at the higher temperature. Luminescence intensity of successful grafts recovered within 1 h, while the intensity of grafts of deceased recipients did not change at 1 h post-reperfusion. CONCLUSIONS: Normothermic storage with extracellular-type solution containing trehalose might prevent reperfusion injury due to temperature-dependent tissue edema

Implementation and Evaluation of OpenMP for Hitachi

Abstract. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of the OpenMP compiler designed for the Hitachi SR8000 Super Technical Server. The compiler performs parallelization for the shared memory multiprocessors within a node of SR8000 using the synchronization mechanism of the hardware to perform highspeed parallel execution. To create an optimized code, the compiler can perform optimizations across inside and outside of a PARALLEL region or can produce a code optimized for a fixed number of processors according to the compile option. For user’s convenience, it supports combination of OpenMP and automatic parallelization or Hitachi proprietary directive and also supports reporting diagnostic messages which help user’s parallelization. We evaluate our compiler by parallelizing NPB2.3-serial benchmark with OpenMP. The result shows 5.3 to 8.0 times speedup on 8 processors.

Decrease of luciferase activity.

<p>The expression level of luciferase was postoperatively observed using a noninvasive living image acquisition IVIS system. Accumulation of MSCs in the remnant liver. <b>A</b>. Most of the MSCs became trapped in the remnant liver. Thereafter, the luciferase activity diminished with time. <b>B</b>. The largest level of luciferase was 187272±119507 photons/sec/cm²/sr (sr = units of solid angle or steradian). (24 h vs. 168 h: <i>P</i><0.03; 24 h vs. 120 h: P<0.05; 72 h vs. 168 h: P<0.05).</p