A Cystic Lymphangioma of the Colon Seen in a Patient with Early Gastric Cancer

Lymphangiomas are very rare benign neoplasms of the gastrointestinal tract. A case of cystic lymphangioma in the hepatic flexure of the colon seen in patient with early gastric cancer is reported and the literature is reviewed

Lymphangioma of the Small Intestine : A Case Report

Lymphangiomas of the small intestine are rare tumors arising from masses of dilated lymphatic vessels in the submucosa. There are 11 cases of lymphangioma of the small intestine in the Japanese literature. We report a case of lymphangioma of the jejunum seen in a 76-year-old female and discuss with clinical feature

Effect of honeycomb film on protein adsorption, cell adhesion and proliferation

This article describes novel methods for controlling of cell adhesion by using micro porous polymer films. Recently we found the highly ordered micro porous films were formed when poly(ε-caprolactone)(PCL) solution was cast on substrates at high atmospheric humidity. The micro porous film has regular honeycomb morphology with a size of 5 μm per cell (honeycomb film). Endothelial cells grew rapidly on the honeycomb film. After 24 h cell culture, the cell number on honeycomb films was lager than that on PCL flat films. In order to elucidate the effect of honeycomb films as a scaffold for cell culture, the adsorbed proteins on honeycomb films under cell culture condition were observed. After conditioning of the honeycomb film and the flat film in DMEM containing 10 % foetal bovine serum (FBS) for 72 h at 37 ℃ in 5% CO2 atmosphere, the adsorbed fibronectin-FITC and albumin-Texasred on the honeycomb films was observed by using confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM). The observation revealed that fibronectin showed site-selective adsorption behavior on the honeycomb film. Albumin adsorbed on the honeycomb film non site-selectively, while fibronectin mainly adsorbed on inside of honeycomb pores. On the flat film, fibronectin was hardly observed. Since the honeycomb film accelerates the adsorption of fibronectin which is a typical protein as a cell adhesion molecule, the film could be a scaffold with excellent cell adhesion properties

Dissociation-Association of lactate dehydrogenase Isozymes: Influences on the formation of tetramers versus dimers of M4-LDH and H4-LDH

1. 1. A molecular sieve membrane was used to separate active dimer vs active tetramer fractions of M4-LDH and H4-LDH. 2. 2. Dissociation of both enzymes was influenced by enzyme protein concentration and by the concentration of added substrates, pyruvate or lactate. 3. 3. Increasing lactate concentrations increased the fraction of tetrameric enzyme whereas increasing pyruvate (up to saturating levels) had the opposite effect, raising the content of dimer fraction. 4. 4. For H4-LDH, levels of pyruvate that caused substrate inhibition reversed the effect of lower concentrations of pyruvate and reduced the dimer content. 5. 5. The data suggest that dissociation-association of LDH may have functional importance, the dimer having a preferential role in pyruvate reduction and the tetramer a preferred function in lactate oxidation

Stress Relaxation Measurement of Fibroblast Cells with Atomic Force Microscopy

We measured the stress relaxation of mouse fibroblast NIH3T3 cells with an atomic force microscope (AFM) using a sharp silicon tip and a silica bead with a radius of ∼1 µm as an indenter. The decay of loading force was clearly observed in NIH3T3 cells at a small initial loading force of ∼0.4 nN and was well fitted to the stretched exponential function rather than to a single exponential function. The stretching exponent parameter was ∼0.5 for both indenters, indicating that the stress relaxation observed in NIH3T3 cells consisted of multiple relaxation processes. The time-domain AFM technique described in this report allows us to measure directly the relaxation process of living cells in a range from milliseconds to seconds