Enhanced platelet adhesion in essential thrombocythemia after in vitro activation

Objective: Essential thrombocythemia (ET) is a chronic myeloproliferative disorder characterized by elevated platelet counts and increased risk of thrombosis. Ex vivo data suggest increased platelet reactivity in agreement with the increased thrombosis risk, while in vitro tests often detect decreased platelet activity. The present study aimed to investigate adhesion of ET-platelets in vitro, which is an aspect of platelet function that has been addressed in only a few studies on ET patients. Material and Methods: The study included 30 ET patients and 14 healthy controls. Platelet adhesion was measured with a static platelet adhesion assay. Results: The main finding was that ET-platelets were more readily activated by adhesion-inducing stimuli in vitro than control platelets. This was particularly evident in elderly patients and when using multiple stimuli, such as surfaces of collagen or fibrinogen combined with addition of adenosine 5’-diphosphate or ristocetin. Such multiple stimuli resulted in adhesion above the control mean +2 standard deviations for approximately 50% of the patients.Conclusion: The results are in accordance with the concept of increased platelet activity in ET, but opposite to most other in vitro studies. We suggest that the conditions in the adhesion assay might mimic the in vivo situation regarding the presence of chronic platelet activation

Dasatinib induces fast and deep responses in newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukaemia patients in chronic phase : clinical results from a randomised phase-2 study (NordCML006)

Peer reviewe

Molecular status 36 months after TKI discontinuation in CML is highly predictive for subsequent loss of MMR-final report from AFTER-SKI

Non peer reviewe

Tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy-induced changes in humoral immunity in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia

Purpose Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) have well-characterized immunomodulatory effects on T and NK cells, but the effects on the humoral immunity are less well known. In this project, we studied TKI-induced changes in B cell-mediated immunity. Methods We collected peripheral blood (PB) and bone marrow (BM) samples from chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients before and during first-line imatinib (n = 20), dasatinib (n = 16), nilotinib (n = 8), and bosutinib (n = 12) treatment. Plasma immunoglobulin levels were measured, and different B cell populations in PB and BM were analyzed with flow cytometry. Results Imatinib treatment decreased plasma IgA and IgG levels, while dasatinib reduced IgM levels. At diagnosis, the proportion of patients with IgA, IgG, and IgM levels below the lower limit of normal (LLN) was 0, 11, and 6% of all CML patients, respectively, whereas at 12 months timepoint the proportions were 6% (p = 0.13), 31% (p = 0.042) and 28% (p = 0.0078). Lower initial Ig levels predisposed to the development of hypogammaglobulinemia during TKI therapy. Decreased Ig levels in imatinibtreated patients were associated with higher percentages of immature BM B cells. The patients, who had low Ig levels during the TKI therapy, had significantly more frequent minor infections during the follow-up compared with the patients with normal Ig values (33% vs. 3%, p = 0.0016). No severe infections were reported, except recurrent upper respiratory tract infections in one imatinib-treated patient, who developed severe hypogammaglobulinemia. Conclusions TKI treatment decreases plasma Ig levels, which should be measured in patients with recurrent infections.Peer reviewe

Optimization and evaluation of electroporation delivery of siRNA in the human leukemic CEM cell line

In order to study nucleoside analog activation in the CEM cell line, a transfection protocol had to be optimized in order to silence an enzyme involved in nucleoside analog activation. Hematopoetic cell lines can be difficult to transfect with traditional lipid-based transfection, so the electroporation technique was used. Field strength, pulse length, temperature, electroporation media, siRNA concentration, among other conditions were tested in order to obtain approximately 70-80% mRNA and enzyme activity downregulation of the cytosolic enzyme deoxycytidine kinase (dCK), necessary for nucleoside analog activation. Downregulation was assessed at mRNA and enzyme activity levels. After optimizing the protocol, a microarray analysis was performed in order to investigate whether the downregulation was specific. Additionally two genes were differentially expressed besides the downregulation of dCK. These were however of unknown function. The leakage of intracellular nucleotides was also addressed in the electroporated cells since it can affect the DNA repair mechansism and the efficiency of nucleoside analogs. Three of these pools were increased compared to untreated, unelectroporated cells. The siRNA transfected cells with reduced dCK expression and activity showed reduced sensitivity to several nucleoside analogs as expected. The multidrug resistance to other drugs, as seen in nucleoside analog-induced resistant cells, was not seen with this model.The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com:Anna Fyrberg and Kourosh Lotfi, Optimization and evaluation of electroporation delivery of siRNA in the human leukemic CEM cell line, 2010, CYTOTECHNOLOGY, (62), 6, 497-507.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10616-010-9309-6Copyright: Springer Science Business Mediahttp://www.springerlink.com

Linköping University Post Print

Optimization and evaluation of electroporation delivery of siRNA in the human leukemic CEM cell lin

Review of Input Congestion Estimating Methods in DEA

Congestion is an economic phenomenon in the production process where excessive amounts of the input cause a reduction of the output. The motivation of this paper is to investigate and compare the methods provided for estimating congestion in the DEA literature