Bone anabolic agents promoting bone formation and rebuilding damaged bones would ideally overcome the limitations of anti-resorptive therapy, the current standard prescription for osteoporosis. However, the currently prescribed parathyroid hormone (PTH)-based anabolic drugs present limitations and adverse effects including osteosarcoma during long-term use. Also, the antibody-based anabolic dru...

Recent evidence suggests that members of the Dickkopf (Dkk) family can directly bind to LDL-related protein (LRP)-6, resulting in inhibition of Wnt-activated signaling. To further characterize the interactions between Dkk and LRP proteins, conditioned media containing individually conserved cysteine-rich domains of Dkk-1 and Dkk-2 were prepared. Although full-length Dkk-1 and Dkk-2 and the seco...

Dishevelled (Dvl) proteins are important signaling components of both the canonical beta-catenin/Wnt pathway, which controls cell proliferation and patterning, and the planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway, which coordinates cell polarity within a sheet of cells and also directs convergent extension cell (CE) movements that produce narrowing and elongation of the tissue. Three mammalian Dvl genes ...

Abstract. Dishevelled (Dvl) proteins are important regulators of the Wnt signalling pathway, interacting through their PDZ domains with receptor Frizzled. Blocking Dvl PDZ–Frizzled interaction represents a potential approach for cancer treatment, which stimulated identification small-molecule inhibitors, among them anti-inflammatory drug Sulindac and Ky-02327. Aiming to develop tighter binding ...

Background The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) is globally low (35%) in sub-Saharan Africa, whereas it is 58% in Ethiopia. Exclusive breastfeeding has the potential to prevent 11.6% of under-five deaths in developing countries. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to assess the exclusive breastfeeding practice and associated factors on mothers attending private pediatric ...

Research studies have produced conflicting results of the impact of breastfeeding on overweight/obesity. This study evaluated the impact of infant feeding on infant body composition. There were two groups of mother-infant pairs (exclusive breastfeeding [EBF; n = 27] and mixed feeding [MF; n = 13]) in this study. At baseline, participants were similar in their demographic characteristics except ...

Exclusive breast-feeding (EBF) for 6 months supports optimal infant growth, health and development. This paper examined whether maternal HIV status was associated with EBF and other infant feeding practices. Pregnant women were enrolled after HIV counselling, and their babies were followed up for up to 1 year. Data on household socio-economics and demographics, maternal characteristics and infa...

The hypertrophic response of the heart has been recognized recently as the net result of activation of prohypertrophic and antihypertrophic pathways. Here we report the involvement of the Wnt/Frizzled pathway in the onset of cardiac hypertrophy development. Stimulation of the Wnt/Frizzled pathway activates the disheveled (Dvl) protein. Disheveled subsequently can inhibit glycogen synthase kinas...

This paper proposes to incorporate full covariance matrices into the radial basis function (RBF) networks and to use the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm to estimate the basis function parameters. The resulting networks, referred to as elliptical basis function (EBF) networks, are evaluated through a series of text-independent speaker veriication experiments involving 258 speakers from a...

In order to support its research, development and engineering activities in the area of distributed simulation for materiel procurement, training, and operations, TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory has developed (and continues to enhance) an Electronic Battlespace Facility (EBF). In the vision of TNO-FEL, the EBF will form the basis of a coherent Netherlands defense modeling and simulation ...