Mechanisms controlling anaemia in Trypanosoma congolense infected mice.

Trypanosoma congolense are extracellular protozoan parasites of the blood stream of artiodactyls and are one of the main constraints on cattle production in Africa. In cattle, anaemia is the key feature of disease and persists after parasitaemia has declined to low or undetectable levels, but treatment to clear the parasites usually resolves the anaemia. The progress of anaemia after Trypanosoma congolense infection was followed in three mouse strains. Anaemia developed rapidly in all three strains until the peak of the first wave of parasitaemia. This was followed by a second phase, characterized by slower progress to severe anaemia in C57BL/6, by slow recovery in surviving A/J and a rapid recovery in BALB/c. There was no association between parasitaemia and severity of anaemia. Furthermore, functional T lymphocytes are not required for the induction of anaemia, since suppression of T cell activity with Cyclosporin A had neither an effect on the course of infection nor on anaemia. Expression of genes involved in erythropoiesis and iron metabolism was followed in spleen, liver and kidney tissues in the three strains of mice using microarrays. There was no evidence for a response to erythropoietin, consistent with anaemia of chronic disease, which is erythropoietin insensitive. However, the expression of transcription factors and genes involved in erythropoiesis and haemolysis did correlate with the expression of the inflammatory cytokines Il6 and Ifng. The innate immune response appears to be the major contributor to the inflammation associated with anaemia since suppression of T cells with CsA had no observable effect. Several transcription factors regulating haematopoiesis, Tal1, Gata1, Zfpm1 and Klf1 were expressed at consistently lower levels in C57BL/6 mice suggesting that these mice have a lower haematopoietic capacity and therefore less ability to recover from haemolysis induced anaemia after infection

Scapinin, the Protein Phosphatase 1 Binding Protein, Enhances Cell Spreading and Motility by Interacting with the Actin Cytoskeleton

Copyright (c) 2009 Sagara et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Scapinin, also named phactr3, is an actin and protein phosphatase 1 (PP1) binding protein, which is expressed in the adult brain and some tumor cells. At present, the role(s) of scapinin in the brain and tumors are poorly understood. We show that the RPEL-repeat domain of scapinin, which is responsible for its direct interaction with actin, inhibits actin polymerization in vitro. Next, we established a Hela cell line, where scapinin expression was induced by tetracycline. In these cells, expression of scapinin stimulated cell spreading and motility. Scapinin was colocalized with actin at the edge of spreading cells. To explore the roles of the RPEL-repeat and PP1-binding domains, we expressed wild-type and mutant scapinins as fusion proteins with green fluorescence protein (GFP) in Cos7 cells. Expression of GFP-scapinin (wild type) also stimulated cell spreading, but mutation in the RPEL-repeat domain abolished both the actin binding and the cell spreading activity. PP1-binding deficient mutants strongly induced cell retraction. Long and branched cytoplasmic processes were developed during the cell retraction. These results suggest that scapinin enhances cell spreading and motility through direct interaction with actin and that PP1 plays a regulatory role in scapinin-induced morphological changes.ArticlePLOS ONE. 4(1):e4247 (2009)journal articl

Chondroitin sulfates and their binding molecules in the central nervous system

Chondroitin sulfate (CS) is the most abundant glycosaminoglycan (GAG) in the central nervous system (CNS) matrix. Its sulfation and epimerization patterns give rise to different forms of CS, which enables it to interact specifically and with a significant affinity with various signalling molecules in the matrix including growth factors, receptors and guidance molecules. These interactions control numerous biological and pathological processes, during development and in adulthood. In this review, we describe the specific interactions of different families of proteins involved in various physiological and cognitive mechanisms with CSs in CNS matrix. A better understanding of these interactions could promote a development of inhibitors to treat neurodegenerative diseases

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

The efficacy and safety of combined tiotropium and olodaterol via the Respimat® inhaler in patients with COPD: results from the Japanese sub-population of the Tonado® studies

Masakazu Ichinose,1 Hiroyuki Taniguchi,2 Ayako Takizawa,3 Lars Grönke,4 Lazaro Loaiza,4 Florian Voß,4 Yihua Zhao,5 Yoshinosuke Fukuchi61Department of Respiratory Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan; 2Department of Respiratory Medicine and Allergy, Tosei General Hospital, Aichi, Japan; 3Nippon Boehringer Ingelheim Co. Ltd, Tokyo, Japan; 4Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, Ingelheim, Germany; 5Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA; 6Juntendo University School of Medicine, Tokyo, JapanBackground: The efficacy and safety of once-daily tiotropium + olodaterol (T+O) maintenance treatment was demonstrated in the large, multinational, replicate, randomized, Phase III, Tonad® 1 (NCT01431274) and 2 (NCT01431287) studies in patients with moderate to very severe COPD. However, there may be racial differences in the effects of T+O on lung function in patients with COPD.Methods: In this Tondao® subgroup analysis, we assessed efficacy and safety of T+O in Japanese participants.Results: Versus the overall population, the 413 Japanese patients randomized and treated were slightly older, with more men, lower body mass index, lower baseline St George’s Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) scores, fewer current smokers, but with higher pack-year smoking history. A lower proportion of Japanese patients used inhaled corticosteroids, short-acting muscarinic antagonists, or short- or long-acting β-adrenergic agonists at baseline, but use of long-acting muscarinic antagonists was higher. At Week 24, mean improvements with T+O 5/5 µg in forced expiratory volume in 1 second area under the curve from 0–3 hours response were 151 mL versus olodaterol and 134 mL versus tiotropium 5 µg; mean improvements with T+O 2.5/5 µg were 87 mL versus olodaterol and 70 mL versus tiotropium 2.5 µg. Mean improvements with T+O 5/5 µg in trough forced expiratory volume in 1 second were 131 mL versus olodaterol and 108 mL versus tiotropium 5 µg; mean improvements with T+O 2.5/5 µg were 60 mL versus olodaterol and 47 mL versus tiotropium 2.5 µg. SGRQ scores improved from baseline to a greater extent with both doses of T+O versus monotherapies. Responses were similar in the overall population. Adverse-event incidence was generally balanced across treatment groups.Conclusion: Consistent with results from the overall population, T+O 5/5 µg was superior to each monotherapy for lung function and SGRQ in the Japanese sub-population of patients with COPD in Tonado®.Keywords: COPD, bronchodilators, maintenance treatmen

The mechanism of development of acute lung injury in lethal endotoxic shock using α-galactosylceramide sensitization

The mechanism underlying acute lung injury in lethal endotoxic shock induced by administration of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) into α-galactosylceramide (α-GalCer)-sensitized mice was studied. Sensitization with α-GalCer resulted in the increase of natural killer T (NK T) cells and the production of interferon (IFN)-γ in the lung. The IFN-γ that was produced induced expression of adhesion molecules, especially vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1), on vascular endothelial cells in the lung. Anti-IFN-γ antibody inhibited significantly the VCAM-1 expression in α-GalCer-sensitized mice. Very late activating antigen-4-positive cells, as the counterpart of VCAM-1, accumulated in the lung. Anti-VCAM-1 antibody prevented LPS-mediated lethal shock in α-GalCer-sensitized mice. The administration of LPS into α-GalCer-sensitized mice caused local production of excessive proinflammatory mediators, such as tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6 and nitric oxide. LPS caused microvascular leakage of proteins and cells into bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Taken together, sensitization with α-GalCer was suggested to induce the expression of VCAM-1 via IFN-γ produced by NK T cells and recruit a number of inflammatory cells into the lung. Further, LPS was suggested to lead to the production of excessive proinflammatory mediators, the elevation of pulmonary permeability and cell death. The putative mechanism of acute lung injury in LPS-mediated lethal shock using α-GalCer sensitization is discussed