Background The expression of heat shock protein gp96 is strongly correlated with the degree of tissue inflammation in ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, thereby leading us to the hypothesis that inhibition of expression via gp96-II peptide prevents intestinal inflammation. Methods We employed daily injections of gp96-II peptide in two murine models of intestinal inflammation, the first r...

Rate coefficients for terminal acetate (g-O2CCH3) substitution from the [Mo3(l3-O)2(l-O2CCH3)6 (g-O2CCH3)3] anion were examined in polar protic (D2O and methanol-d4), polar aprotic (DMSO-d6 and DMF-d7) and acidic solvents (acetic acid-d4). Reaction rates were determined using variable-temperature H NMR and found to span orders of magnitude depending on the solvent (k K (s!1) = 7.2 " 10!6 for D2...

OBJECTIVE The aim of our study was to explore the presence and the distribution of D4 dopamine receptors in postmortem human prefrontal cortex, by means of the binding of [3H]YM-09151-2, an antagonist that has equal affinity for D2, D3 and D4 receptors. It was therefore necessary to devise a unique assay method in order to distinguish and detect the D4 component. METHOD Frontal cortex samples...

In guinea pig airways, contractions induced by leukotriene D4 or antigen are thought to be mediated primarily by an action of the agonist or of released mast cell-derived mediators directly on the airway smooth muscle cell. An indirect contractile action mediated by endogenous tachykinins also has been described for both of these stimuli. The present study evaluated the contribution of endogeno...

Conserved features of the sequences of dopamine receptors and of homologous G-protein-coupled receptors point to regions, and amino acid residues within these regions, that contribute to their ligand binding sites. Differences in binding specificities among the catecholamine receptors, however, must stem from their nonconserved residues. Using the substituted-cysteine accessibility method, we h...

Interleukin-6 (IL-6) plays an important role in immune responses and signals via two different pathways. When IL-6 binds to its non-signalling membrane-bound receptor (IL-6R), a non-covalent dimer of the ubiquitous interleukin-6 signal transducer gp130 is recruited to initiate intracellular signalling cascades. This so-called classical signalling pathway is restricted to cells expressing the me...

BACKGROUND Urotensin II (U-II), an 11-amino acid peptide, exerts a wide range of actions in cardiovascular systems. Interleukin-8 (IL-8) is secreted by endothelial cells, thereby enhancing endothelial cell survival, proliferation, and angiogenesis. However, the interrelationship between U-II and IL-8 as well as the detailed intracellular mechanism of U-II in vascular endothelial cells remain un...

Macrophages can be activated into several distinct activation states. One of these states, type II activation, has a regulatory phenotype characterized by decreased IL-12 and increased IL-10, and has been shown to bias naïve CD4+ T cells to a Th2 response. Microglia, the resident macrophage-like cells in the central nervous system (CNS), are important contributors to neuroinflammation and, thus...

Resistance of cancer cells against apoptosis induced by death factors contributes to the limited efficiency of immuneand drug-induced destruction of tumors. We report here that insulin and insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) fully protect HT29-D4 colon carcinoma cells from IFNg/tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF) induced apoptosis. Survival signaling initiated by IGF-I was not dependent on the canon...

We find and explore a class of dyonic instanton solutions which can be identified as the supertubes connecting two D4 branes. They correspond to a single monopole string and a pair of monopole-antimonopole strings from the worldvolume view point of D4 branes. 1 Introduction Recently there has been a considerable study of the so called supertube solutions. Originally Mateos and Townsend construc...