Malignant melanoma is a life-threatening skin cancer increasingly diagnosed in the western world. In advanced disease the prognosis is grave. Growth and metastasis formation in melanomas are regulated by a network of cytokines, cytokine-receptors, and adhesion molecules. However, little is known about surface antigens and target expression profiles in human melanomas. We examined the cell surfa...

Recent research findings postulate that adipocytes and endothelial cells (EC) may share a common progenitor. However, the interlinking pathways between adipose tissue and endothelium, and the differentiation potential of cells to convert from one tissue into the other via progenitor cells have not been elucidated and are therefore the focus of this study. Stromal vascular fraction (SVF) cells w...

During ageing thymic function declines and is unable to meet the demand for peripheral T helper (Th) cell replenishment. Therefore, population maintenance of naive Th cells must be at least partly peripherally based. Such peripheral postthymic expansion of recent thymic emigrants (RTEs) during ageing consequently should lead to loss or dilution of T cell receptor excision circles (TRECs) from a...

Human sperm have to undergo a maturational process called capacitation in the female reproductive tract. Capacitation confers upon the sperm an ability to gain hypermotility and undergo acrosome reaction. Previous studies have suggested that seminal plasma proteins induce the capacitation of sperm in the female reproductive tract for the successful fertilization of the oocyte. However, the func...

OBJECTIVES While useful in diagnosing angiosarcomas, CD31 can also highlight histiocytes within soft tissue tumors and lead to errors in diagnosis. We sought to determine how often CD31 highlights cutaneous histiocytomas and histiocytoma mimics. METHODS We examined eight epithelioid cell histiocytomas (ECHs), 12 xanthogranulomas (XGs), nine cases of Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH), eight ...

Naive CD4 T-cell maintenance is critical for immune competence. We investigated here the fine-tuning of homeostatic mechanisms of the naive compartment to counteract the loss of de novo CD4 T-cell generation. Adults thymectomized in early childhood during corrective cardiac surgery were grouped based on presence or absence of thymopoiesis and compared with age-matched controls. We found that th...

BACKGROUND Several studies have suggested that stem cells are present in the stroma-vascular fraction (SVF) of adipose tissue (AT). METHODS AND RESULTS To characterize the cell populations that compose the SVF of human AT originating from subcutaneous and visceral depots, fluorescence-activated cell sorter analysis was performed by use of fluorescent antibodies directed against the endothelia...

DeLeve, Laurie D., Xiangdong Wang, Margaret K. McCuskey, and Robert S. McCuskey. Rat liver endothelial cells isolated by anti-CD31 immunomagnetic separation lack fenestrae and sieve plates. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 291: G1187–G1189, 2006. First published June 15, 2006; doi:10.1152/ajpgi.00229.2006.— The gold standard for the identification of sinusoidal endothelial cells (SEC) is...

Purpose: Angiogenesis is an important step in the process of cancer growth. The purpose of this study was to determine the neoangiogenesis with CD31, CD34 and CD105, and tried to observe the differences between these three antibodies. Material/Methods: The blood vessels stained with CD31, CD 34 and CD105 were counted, and we reported their number per square millimeter to obtain microvascular de...

Objectives. To evaluate the role of angiogenesis tumor marker CD31 in the detection of precancerous and cancerous cervical lesions and to compare its efficacy with colposcopy and histopathology. Materials and Methods. 230 patients with a suspicious looking cervix and an abnormal Pap smear attending the Outpatient Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of GSVM Medical College were subjected to...