Novel elucidation and treatment of pancreatic chronic graft-versus-host disease in mice

Chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) is a severe complication of allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. There is a growing understanding of cGVHD, and several effective therapies for cGVHD have been reported. However, pancreatic cGVHD is a potentially untapped study field. Our thought-provoking study using a mouse model of cGVHD suggested that the pancreas could be impaired by cGVHD-induced inflammation and fibrosis and that endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress was augmented in the pancreas affected by cGVHD. These findings urged us to treat pancreatic cGVHD through reduction of ER stress, and we used 4-phenylbutyric acid (PBA) as an ER stress reducer. A series of experiments have indicated that PBA can suppress cGVHD-elicited ER stress in the pancreas and accordingly alleviate pancreatic cGVHD. Furthermore, we focused on a correlation between epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) and fibrosis in the cGVHD-affected pancreas, because EMT was conceivably implicated in various fibrosis-associated diseases. Our investigation has suggested that the expression of EMT markers was increased in the cGVHD-disordered pancreas and that it could be reduced by PBA. Taken together, we have provided a clue to elucidate the pathogenic process of pancreatic cGVHD and created a potentially effective treatment of this disease using the ER stress alleviator PBA

An Algorithm for Calculating Perimeter Length

The present paper proposes an algorithm for calculating accurately the perimeter length of a picture. The outline of the algorithm is as follows: for each cell or picture element (i,j) on the perimeter, a coefficient which corresponds to the minute perimeter length at the cell is assigned as a function of the situation of neighbor cells (i,j-l), (i-l,j) and (i-l,j-l), and the number of same situation connected along the perimeter. Then, the total perimeter length can be given as the sum of these coefficientso According to this methods, approximation accurate to 002 percent could be obtained in the blob patterns

PREPARATION OF ACTIVATED CARBON FROM PEAT

Peat with an approximate 60% carbon content collected in the suburbs of Palangka Raya, Indonesia, was carbonized, followed by activation with steam in an electric furnace. The resultant activated carbon (AC) had ca. 900 m2/g of BET surface area and 1000 mg/g of iodine adsorption. This performance implies that this AC can be used as an adsorbent for environmental purification. We had a carbonizing furnace manufactured in Palangka Raya, which did not require electric power. Some AC having 350 mg/g of iodine adsorption was obtained by using this furnace. Although the adsorption ability was much lower than that of commercially available AC, the AC achieved significant decoloration and decrease in chemical oxygen demand of polluted river water. Thus, this article demonstrated the potential of tropical peat soil as a source of AC

Engineering the substrate specificity of toluene degrading enzyme XylM using biosensor XylS and machine learning

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Donor mesenchymal stem cells trigger chronic graft-versus-host disease following minor antigen-mismatched bone marrow transplantation

Chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) is a complication after minor antigen mismatched bone marrow transplantation (BMT) characterized by an autoimmune-type reaction in various organs. Aberration in T cell regulation is involved, with donor mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) playing a possible role in immunomodulation. In a minor-antigen mismatched mouse BMT model, transplantation of mismatched, but not syngeneic MSCs triggered the onset of cGVHD, and was associated with fibrosis, increased IL-6 secretion, decreased Foxp3+ regulatory T cells and increased Th17 in the peripheral blood. Mismatched MSCs alone were sufficient to induce cGVHD, while removal of donor MSCs rescued mice from cGVHD. RAG2 knockout recipient mice did not suffer cGVHD, indicating that host T cells were involved. Residual host-derived T cells were significantly higher in cGVHD patients compared to non-cGVHD patients. In conclusion, donor MSCs react with residual host T cells to trigger the progression of cGVHD

High-mass star formation in Orion triggered by cloud-cloud collision II, Two merging molecular clouds in NGC2024

We analyzed the NANTEN2 13CO (J=2-1 and 1-0) datasets in NGC 2024. We found that the cloud consists of two velocity components, whereas the cloud shows mostly single-peaked CO profiles. The two components are physically connected to the HII region as evidenced by their close correlation with the dark lanes and the emission nebulosity. The two components show complementary distribution with a displacement of 0.4 pc. Such complementary distribution is typical to colliding clouds discovered in regions of high-mass star formation. We hypothesize that cloud-cloud collision between the two components triggered the formation of the late O stars and early B stars localized within 0.3 pc of the cloud peak. The collision timescale is estimated to be ~ 10^5 yrs from a ratio of the displacement and the relative velocity 3-4 km s-1 corrected for probable projection. The high column density of the colliding cloud 1023 cm-2 is similar to those in the other massive star clusters in RCW 38, Westerlund 2, NGC 3603, and M42, which are likely formed under trigger by cloud-cloud collision. The present results provide an additional piece of evidence favorable to high-mass star formation by a major cloud-cloud collision in Orion.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, submitted for publication in PASJ (cloud-cloud collision special issue