Neural stem cell-based treatment holds a new therapeutic opportunity for neurodegenerative disorders. Here, we investigated the effect of methylene blue on proliferation and differentiation of rat neural progenitor cells (NPCs) both in vitro and in vivo. We found that methylene blue inhibited proliferation and promoted quiescence of NPCs in vitro without affecting committed neuronal differentia...

BACKGROUND Task shifting is a common strategy to deliver antiretroviral therapy (ART) in resource-limited settings and is safe and effective if implemented appropriately. Consensus among stakeholders is necessary to formulate clear national policies that maintain high-quality care. We sought to understand key stakeholders' opinions regarding task shifting of HIV care in Mozambique and to charac...

Two different information systems with respect to their ability to afford clinicians' needs in the chemotherapy medication process were implemented in a large Dutch academic hospital. A commercially available Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) system was not appreciated because clinicians believed that it could not support complex chemotherapy process. Later, a home-grown IT system with ...

Although transplanted neural stem/progenitor cells (NPCs) can ameliorate disease course in animal models of central nervous system inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases, little is known about the regulation of NPC differentiation and proliferation. The Fas receptor, a member of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) superfamily, has recently been shown to be important in NPC survival and immunor...

SUMMARY Asymmetric cell division in unicellular organisms enables sequestration of senescence factors to specific subpopulations. Accumulation of autonomously replicating sequence (ARS) plasmids, which frequently emerge from recombination within the highly repetitive ribosomal DNA locus, is linked to limited replicative life span of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells [1]. During budding yeast cell ...

Disassembly and reassembly of the nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) is one of the major events during open mitosis in higher eukaryotes. However, how this process is controlled by the mitotic machinery is not clear. To investigate this we developed a novel in vivo model system based on syncytial Drosophila embryos. We microinjected different mitotic effectors into the embryonic cytoplasm and monito...

Recent studies have shown that proinflammatory cytokines damage rodent neural precursor cells (NPCs), a source of self-renewing, multipotent cells that play an important role in the developing as well as adult brain. In this study, the effects of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) on cytokine and chemokine production by human NPCs (>98% nestinand >90% A2B5-positive), obtained from 6to 8-week-old fetal...

Signaling through GABA(A) receptors controls neural progenitor cell (NPC) development in vitro and is altered in schizophrenic and autistic individuals. However, the in vivo function of GABA(A) signaling on neural stem cell proliferation, and ultimately neurogenesis, remains unknown. To examine GABA(A) function in vivo, we electroporated plasmids encoding short-hairpin (sh) RNA against the Na-K...

Although mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) transplantation into the IVD (intervertebral disc) may be beneficial in inhibiting apoptosis of nucleus pulposus cells (NPCs) and alleviating IVD degeneration, the underlying mechanism of this therapeutic process has not been fully explained. The purpose of this study was to explore the protective effect of MSC-derived exosomes (MSC-exosomes) on NPC apopto...

We have recently described sustained clinical recovery associated with dampened neuroinflammation and remyelination following transplantation of neural precursor cells (NPCs) derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in a viral model of the human demyelinating disease multiple sclerosis. The hNPCs used in that study were derived by a novel direct differentiation method (direct differentia...