Apoptotic cells expose phosphatidylserine on their surface as an "eat me" signal, and macrophages respond by engulfing them. Although several molecules that specifically bind phosphatidylserine have been identified, the molecular mechanism that triggers engulfment remains elusive. Here, using a mouse pro-B cell line, Ba/F3, that grows in suspension, we reconstituted the engulfment of apoptotic ...

Advanced pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal malignant human diseases lacking effective treatment. Its extremely low survival rate necessitates development of novel therapeutic approach. Human neural stem cells (NSCs) are known to have tumor-tropic effect. We genetically engineered them to express rabbit carboxyl esterase (F3.CE), which activates prodrug CPT-11(irinotecan) into potent m...

A noncytotoxic protein substance, produced by Streptococcus intermedius, with very potent immunosuppressive properties (F3'EP-Si) was tested for lymphocyte mitogenic activity. Although devoid of T-cell mitogenicity, F3'EP-Si stimulated proliferation and led to high numbers of plaque-forming cells in cultures of normal or T-cell-depleted, small or large splenic B cells from both lipopolysacchari...

In this paper we study the homotopical rotation vectors and the homotopical rotation sets for the billiard flow on the unit flat torus with three, mutually intersecting and mutually orthogonal cylindrical scatterers removed from it. The natural habitat for these objects is the infinite cone erected upon the Cantor set Ends(F3) of all “ends” of the hyperbolic group F3 = π1(Q). An element of Ends...

This study investigated fluoride release, acid resistance and shear bond strength (SBS) of new 4-META/MMA-TBB-based fluoride-containing resin adhesive (Super-Bond/F3). Super-Bond, Transbond Plus and Fuji Ortho LC were selected for comparison. Fluoride release into distilled water during 6-month period was measured using disk-shaped specimens. Brackets were bonded to human premolars with each ma...

The perception of the distinction between /r/ and /l/ by native speakers of American English and of Japanese was studied using natural and synthetic speech. The American subjects were all nearly perfect at recognizing the natural speech sounds, whereas there was substantial variation among the Japanese subjects in their accuracy of recognizing /r/ and /l/ except in syllable-final position. A lo...

House dust mites (HDM) are most important indoor allergens for humans. Der f3, one of the potent allergens with allergenicity, is derived from Dermatophagoides farina (D. farinae), and exhibits strong allergenicity that was confirmed in our previous work. The current study was undertaken to determine the localization of T-cell epitope of Der f3. We initially developed the T-cell fraction from B...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is the most common adult onset motor neuron disease. The etiology and pathogenic mechanisms of the disease remain unknown, and there is no effective treatment. Here we show that intrathecal transplantation of human motor neurons derived from neural stem cells (NSCs) in spinal cord of the SOD1G93A mouse ALS model delayed disease onset and extended life span of...

PURPOSE To characterize the fundamental frequency and the frequency of the formants F1, F2, F3, and F4 from vocal emissions of amateur singers with metallic voice quality. METHODS There were 60 amateur female singers aged between 18 and 60 years old; 30 women with metallic voice quality forming the study group (SG) and 30 women without such a vocal quality forming control group (CG). The samp...