Programmed to direct alloimmunity

Modulation of Alloimmunity by Heat Shock Proteins

The immunological mechanisms that evolved for host defense against pathogens and injury are also responsible for transplant rejection. Host rejection of foreign tissue was originally thought to be mediated mainly by T cell recognition of foreign MHC alleles. Management of solid organ transplant rejection has thus focused mainly on inhibition of T cell function and matching MHC alleles between d...

Derived from Cord Blood Progenitors Alloimmunity to Human Endothelial Cells

Grand Challenges in Alloimmunity and Transplantation

The pioneering Times Although the concept of Transplantation could be traced back as early as Saint Cosmas and Damian most famous miracle, grafting of a leg to replace a patient’s ulcered leg, it is not before the 50’s that it entered reality. Important steps were made before, from sewing vessels to understanding the basis of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in mice (Snell, 1986). Thi...

Programmed to be Human?

Pletikos et al. (2014) demonstrate in this issue of Neuron that the human neocortex has an "hourglass" temporal gene expression pattern with robust and dynamic transcriptome differences during the prenatal and adolescent/adult periods. Similar changes are not observed in the nonhuman primate-is this what makes us human?

Direct transformation from amorphous to crystalline calcium phosphate facilitated by motif-programmed artificial proteins.

An animal's hard tissue is mainly composed of crystalline calcium phosphate. In vitro, small changes in the reaction conditions affect the species of calcium phosphate formed, whereas, in vivo, distinct types of crystalline calcium phosphate are formed in a well-controlled spatiotemporal-dependent manner. A variety of proteins are involved in hard-tissue formation; however, the mechanisms by wh...