Exosomes are small, 40-130 nm secreted extracellular vesicles that recently have become the subject of intense focus as agents of intercellular communication, disease biomarkers and potential vehicles for drug delivery. It is currently unknown whether a cell produces different populations of exosomes with distinct cargo and separable functions. To address this question, high-resolution methods ...

Changes occurring as the prophase I oocyte matures to metaphase II are critical for the acquisition of competence for normal egg activation and early embryogenesis. A prophase I oocyte cannot respond to a fertilizing sperm as a metaphase II egg does, including the ability to prevent polyspermic fertilization. Studies here demonstrate that the competence for the membrane block to polyspermy is d...

PURPOSE Patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma have a poor prognosis due to the extraordinary high invasive capacity of this tumor. Altered integrin and tetraspanin expression is suggested to be an important factor. We recently reported that after protein kinase C activation, colocalization of alpha6beta4 with the tetraspanin CO-029 strongly supports migration of a rat pancreatic adenocarcinom...

By means of a variety of intracellular scaffolding proteins, a vast number of heterotrimeric G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) may achieve specificity in signaling through a much smaller number of heterotrimeric G proteins. Members of the tetraspanin family organize extensive complexes of cell surface proteins and thus have the potential to act as GPCR scaffolds; however, tetraspanin-GPCR com...

CD9, a member of the tetraspanin family, has been shown to be involved in a range of cellular activities, including migration, proliferation and adhesion, but the molecular mechanisms by which it mediates such events is unclear. Here, we found that anti-CD9 monoclonal antibody ALB6 inhibited cell proliferation, reduced cell viability and induced not only morphological changes specific to apopto...

Formation of mammalian skeletal muscle myofibers, that takes place during embryogenesis, muscle growth or regeneration, requires precise regulation of myoblast adhesion and fusion. There are few evidences showing that adhesion proteins play important role in both processes. To follow the function of these molecules in myoblast differentiation we analysed integrin alpha3, integrin beta1, ADAM12,...

Opioid peptides have been implicated in the regulation of tumor growth and biology; however, little attention has been given to the mechanisms that are involved. In this study we show that physiological concentrations of the endogenous opioid neuropeptide methionine-enkephalin (MET-ENK) and the synthetic enkephalins D-Ala2, Me-Phe4, Gly(ol)5 and D-Ala2, D-Leu5 are stimulants for the in vitro mi...

BACKGROUND/AIM Exosomes have been demonstrated to be useful non-invasive biomarkers for several cancers including prostate cancer. Since normal cells also secrete exosomes, isolation of cancer-derived exosomes from blood is a prerequisite for their better understanding. The aim of this study is to establish the method for isolation of prostate cancer-related exosomes from blood. MATERIALS AND...