Background: Cerebral palsy is currently one of the major diseases that cause severe paralysis of the nervous system in children; about 9-30% of cerebral palsy patients also have visual impairment, which has no effective treatment thus far. Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) have very strong self-renewal, proliferation, and pluripotent differentiation potentials. Therefore, autologous BMSC [...]
Background: Microelectrode dieletrophoresis capture of live cells has been explored in animal and cellular models ex-vivo. Currently there is no clinical data available regarding the safety and efficacy of dielectrophoresis (DEP) buffers and microcurrent manipulation in humans, despite copious pre-clinical studies suggesting its safety. The purpose of this study was to determine if DEP isolation [...]
Background: In vitro fabricated tissue engineered vascular constructs could provide an alternative to conventional substitutes. A crucial factor for tissue engineering of vascular constructs is an appropriate cell source. Vascular cells from the human umbilical cord can be directly isolated and cryopreserved until needed. Currently no cell bank for human vascular cells is available. Therefore, [...]
Background: Genomic DNA amplification is a genetic factor involved in cancer, and some oncogenes, such as ERBB2, are highly amplified in gastric cancer. We searched for the possible amplification of other genes in gastric cancer.Methods and ResultsA genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism microarray analysis was performed using three cell lines of differentiated gastric cancers, and 22 [...]
Background: Heat shock protein 70, a stress protein, has been implicated in tumor progression. However, its role in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) progression has not yet been clearly investigated. Methods: Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was employed to examine the expression patterns of Hsp70, human leukocyte antigen -A (HLA-A) in NPC tissue samples. Results: The expression of Hsp70 exhibited [...]
Background: T cell activation is associated with a rapid increase in intracellular fructose-2,6-bisphosphate (F2,6BP), an allosteric activator of the glycolytic enzyme, 6-phosphofructo-1-kinase. The steady state concentration of F2,6BP in T cells is dependent on the expression of the bifunctional 6-phosphofructo-2-kinase/fructose-2,6-bisphosphatases (PFKFB1-4) and the fructose-2,6-bisphosphatase, TIGAR. Of the PFKFB family of enzymes, PFKFB3 has the highest [...]
Background: Progress in recent years strengthened the concept of cellular tumor vaccinations. However, a crucial barrier to successful cancer immunotherapy is tumor-mediated immunosuppression. Tumor-derived soluble factors such as IL-10, TGF-beta, and VEGF suppress effector cells either directly or indirectly by disruption of dendritic cell (DC) differentiation, migration and antigen presentation. Human B cells acquire potent [...]
Background: Aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) is a ligand-activated transcription factor associated with gastric carcinogenesis. 3,3′-Diindolylmethane (DIM) is a relatively non-toxic selective AhR modulator. This study was to detect the effects of DIM on gastric cancer cell growth. Methods: Gastric cancer cell SGC7901 was treated with DIM at different concentrations (0, 1020304050umol/L) with or without an [...]
Background: To understand the role of proteases involved in human thyroid cancer progression and tissue invasion, thyrocytes from other species could potentially be used provided their characteristics are similar. It is not known whether dipeptidyl peptidase IV and aminopeptidase N activities, which are overexpressed in human thyroid cancer, are, as in human, also absent in [...]
Background: The immune system reconstitution in HIV-1- infected patients undergoing combined antiretroviral therapy is routinely evaluated by T-cell phenotyping, even though the infection also impairs the B-cell mediated immunity. To find new laboratory markers of therapy effectiveness, both B- and T- immune recovery were evaluated by means of a follow-up study of long-term treated HIV-1- [...]
