Increased Oxidative Burden Associated with Traffic Component of Ambient Particulate Matter at Roadside and Urban Background Schools Sites in London

As the incidence of respiratory and allergic symptoms has been reported to be increased in children attending schools in close proximity to busy roads, it was hypothesised that PM from roadside schools would display enhanced oxidative potential (OP). Two consecutive one-week air quality monitoring campaigns were conducted at seven school sampling sites, reflecting roadside and urban background in London. Chemical characteristics of size fractionated particulate matter (PM) samples were related to the capacity to drive biological oxidation reactions in a synthetic respiratory tract lining fluid. Contrary to hypothesised contrasts in particulate OP between school site types, no robust size-fractionated differences in OP were identified due high temporal variability in concentrations of PM components over the one-week sampling campaigns. For OP assessed both by ascorbate (OPAA m−3) and glutathione (OPGSH m−3) depletion, the highest OP per cubic metre of air was in the largest size fraction, PM1.9–10.2. However, when expressed per unit mass of particles OPAA µg−1 showed no significant dependence upon particle size, while OPGSH µg−1 had a tendency to increase with increasing particle size, paralleling increased concentrations of Fe, Ba and Cu. The two OP metrics were not significantly correlated with one another, suggesting that the glutathione and ascorbate depletion assays respond to different components of the particles. Ascorbate depletion per unit mass did not show the same dependence as for GSH and it is possible that other trace metals (Zn, Ni, V) or organic components which are enriched in the finer particle fractions, or the greater surface area of smaller particles, counter-balance the redox activity of Fe, Ba and Cu in the coarse particles. Further work with longer-term sampling and a larger suite of analytes is advised in order to better elucidate the determinants of oxidative potential, and to fuller explore the contrasts between site types.\ud \u

Galectin-1 as a potential cancer target

Galectins are a family of structurally related carbohydrate-binding proteins, which are defined by their affinity for poly-N-acetyllactosamine-enriched glycoconjugates and sequence similarities in the carbohydrate recognition domain. Galectin-1, a member of this family, contributes to different events associated with cancer biology, including tumour transformation, cell cycle regulation, apoptosis, cell adhesion, migration and inflammation. In addition, recent evidence indicates that galectin-1 contributes to tumour evasion of immune responses. Given the increased interest of tumour biologists and clinical oncologists in this field and the potential use of galectins as novel targets for anticancer drugs, we summarise here recent advances about the role of galectin-1 in different events of tumour growth and metastasis

Correlating solution binding and ESI-MS stabilities by incorporating solvation effects in a confined cucurbit[8]uril system.

The high-throughput characterization of solution binding equilibria is essential in biomedical research such as drug design as well as in material applications of synthetic systems in which reversible binding interactions play critical roles. Although isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) has been widely employed for describing such binding events, factors such as speed, concentration, and sample complexity would principally favor a mass spectrometry approach. Here, we show a link between ITC and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) by incorporating solvation free energies in the study of the ternary complexes of the macrocyclic host cucurbit[8]uril (CB[8]). The binding affinities of 32 aromatic reference complexes were studied by ITC and ESI-MS and combined with solvation data of the guests from an implicit solvation model (SM8) to obtain a correlation between aqueous and gas-phase measurements. The data illustrates the critical importance of solvation on the binding strength in CB[8]'s ternary complexes. Finally, this treatment enabled us to predict association constants that were in excellent agreement with measured values, including several highly insoluble guest compounds.Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe