The ability of COS cells to bind and internalise acidic fibroblast growth factor (aFGF) was studied after transient transfection of the cells with wild-type and mutated fibroblast growth factor receptor 4. In one case the tyrosine kinase of the receptor was inactivated by a point mutation in the active site, whereas in other cases parts of the receptor were deleted to remove various parts of th...

The astrocytes prepared by 1 week secondary culture after 1 month primary culture of rat brain cells (M/W cells) synthesized and secreted apolipoprotein E (apoE) and cholesterol more than the astrocytes prepared by conventional 1 week primary and 1 week secondary culture (W/W cells) (Ueno, S., J. Ito, Y. Nagayasu, T. Furukawa, and S. Yokoyama. 2002. An acidic fibroblast growth factor-like facto...

PURPOSE To investigate whether retinal glial cells (RGCs), which are believed to play an important role in the development and maintenance of microvessels, stimulate the proliferation of retinal bovine microvascular pericytes, an essential component of the vessels. METHODS Conditioned medium (CM) was collected from a primary culture of RGC obtained from chick embryonic retina. The cell number...

Two monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against bovine heparin-binding growth factor II (HBGF-II)/basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) were obtained from mouse hybridoma cell lines. They were highly specific for bFGF from bovine, human, and mouse sources and did not cross-react with bovine heparin-binding growth factor I (HBGF-I)/acidic fibroblast growth factor (aFGF). The immunoglobulin class and su...

objective(s): vascular calcification is one the major characteristics in patients with various types of chronic inflammatory disorders. mirnas have been shown to be involved in many normal biological functions as well as diseases; however, their role in vascular calcification has not received much attention. materials and methods: in the current study, we built a vascular calcification rat mode...

a new strategy for construction of synthetic gene encoding human basic fibroblast growth factor comprising dna annealing-ligation and augmentation by polymerase chain reaction was introduced. the sequence of the gene and corresponding amino acid chain were modified in order to increase stability of the protein. first, 300 bp and 160 bp fragments of the gene were assembled from 18 oligonucleotid...

Rat brown preadipocytes cultured in low serum conditions increase DNA synthesis and proliferate in response to serum and a variety of growth factors and hormones. Epidermal growth factor, platelet-derived growth factor, and acidic and basic fibroblast growth factors stimulate DNA synthesis in a dose-dependent manner and induce at least a 5-fold increase in [3H]thymidine incorporation after 40 h...

To investigate the molecular mechanisms of cholinergic sprouting in the hippocampus after removal of entorhinal cortical inputs, we evaluated trophic factor gene expression in the denervated hippocampus. Despite the proposed role for nerve growth factor (NGF) in this sprouting, we observed no change in NGF mRNA or protein at several postlesion time points. In contrast, FGF-2 mRNA was increased ...