Endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) are bone-marrow derived circulating cells participating in angiogenesis and vascular homeostasis. Reduced numbers of circulating EPC are observed in patients with various cardiovascular diseases and are related to an increased risk for future cardiovascular events and death. Little is known about functional changes. The aim of this thesis was to study the func...

PURPOSE Early diagnosis and treatment of multiple sclerosis-related progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) significantly improve clinical outcomes. However, there is a lack of information regarding the restart of immunomodulatory therapy in the post-PML setting, when multiple sclerosis activity reappears. We aimed at the examination of metabolic differences using 1H-magnetic resonance...

BACKGROUND EPC number and functionality are assumed to reflect the endogenous vascular repair capacity with the EPC pool declining in higher ages and being exhausted by unfavorable life-style and risk factors. This intriguing and clinically highly relevant concept, however, has so far been derived from small case-control studies and patient series. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPLE FINDINGS In the po...

Transplantation of bone marrow cells as well as circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) enhances neovascularization after ischemia. The chemokine receptor CXCR4 is essential for migration and homing of hematopoietic stem cells. Therefore, we investigated the role of CXCR4 and its downstream signaling cascade for the angiogenic capacity of cultured human EPC. Ex vivo, differentiated EPC d...

The tumor suppressor protein PML and oncoprotein MDM2 have opposing effects on p53. PML stimulates p53 activity by recruiting it to nuclear foci termed PML nuclear bodies. In contrast, MDM2 inhibits p53 by promoting its degradation. To date, neither a physical nor functional relationship between PML and MDM2 has been described. In this study, we report an in vivo and in vitro interaction betwee...

PML, the organizer of nuclear bodies (NBs), is expressed in several isoforms designated PMLI to VII which differ in their C-terminal region due to alternative splicing of a single gene. This variability is important for the function of the different PML isoforms. PML NB formation requires the covalent linkage of SUMO to PML. Arsenic trioxide (As₂O₃) enhances PML SUMOylation leading to an increa...

The promyelocytic leukemia (PML) tumour suppressor is the organiser of PML nuclear bodies, which are domains the precise functions of which are still disputed. We show that upon several types of stress, endogenous PML proteins form nucleolar caps and eventually engulf nucleolar components. Only two specific PML splice variants (PML-I and PML-IV) are efficiently targeted to the nucleolus and the...

Promyelocytic Leukaemia Protein nuclear bodies (PML-NBs) are dynamic nuclear protein aggregates. To gain insight in PML-NB function, reductionist and high throughput techniques have been employed to identify PML-NB proteins. Here we present a manually curated network of the PML-NB interactome based on extensive literature review including database information. By compiling 'the PML-ome', we hig...

We present an improved perfectly matched layer (PML) for the analysis of plasmonic structures, based on the manipulation of PML parameters. Two different types of stretched coordinate PML are employed sequentially in the spatial domain: a real stretched coordinate PML to increase the effective buffer space around plasmonic structures and a complex stretched coordinate PML to absorb outgoing wav...

Tumor suppressor protein promyelocytic leukemia (PML) is implicated in apoptosis regulation and antiviral response. PML localizes predominantly to PML-nuclear bodies (PML-NB), nuclear macromolecular complexes regulating tumor suppressor protein p53 activity. Consistent with the function of PML in the cellular antiviral response, PML-NBs represent preferential targets in viral infections. In the...