Myocardial fibrosis is excess accumulation of the extracellular matrix fibrillar collagens. Fibrosis is a key feature of various cardiomyopathies and compromises cardiac systolic and diastolic performance. TIMP1 (tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1) is consistently upregulated in myocardial fibrosis and is used as a marker of fibrosis. However, it remains to be determined whether TIMP1 prom...

objective (s): the scarcity of articular cartilage defect to repair due to absence of blood vessels and tissue engineering is one of the promising approaches for cartilage regeneration. the objective of this study was to prepare an extracellular matrix derived decellularized bovine articular cartilage scaffold and investigate its interactions with seeded rat bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (...

introduction: exercise training increases skeletal muscle capillary density, but the molecular mechanisms of this process are not yet clear. the aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of acute long- term submaximal exercise on serum vascular endothelial growth factor (vegf) as the main angiogenic factor, and matrix metalloproteinases 2 and 9 ( mmp-2 and mmp-9), as the degrading ...

SCCRO (DCUN1D1) Induces Extracellular Matrix Invasion by Activating Matrix Metalloproteinase 2. Pornchai O-charoenrat, Inderpal Sarkaria, Simon G. Talbot, Pabbathi Reddy, Su Dao, Ivan Ngai, Ashok Shaha, Dennis Kraus, Jatin Shah, Valerie Rusch, Y. Ramanathan, and Bhuvanesh Singh..........................................................................................................................

Tumor cells secrete not only a variety of soluble factors, but also extracellular vesicles that are known to support the establishment of a favorable tumor niche by influencing the surrounding stroma cells. Here we show that tumor-derived microvesicles (T-MV) also directly influence the tumor cells by enhancing their invasion in a both autologous and heterologous manner. Neither the respective ...

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is best known for its function as a structural scaffold for the tissue and more recently as a microenvironment to sequester growth factors and cytokines allowing for rapid and localized changes in their activity in the absence of new protein synthesis. In this review, we explore this and additional new aspects of ECM function in mediating cell-to-cell communicatio...

Extracellular matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are a family of endopeptydases which recquire a zinc ion at their active site, for proteolityc activity. There are six members of the MMP family: matrilysins, collagenases, stromelysins, gelatinases, membrane MMPs and other MMPs. Activity of MMPs is regulated at the level of gene transcription, mRNA stability, zymogene proteolitic activation, inhib...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Extracellular matrix metalloproteinase inducer (EMMPRIN) is an important pro-inflammatory protein involved in the cellular functions of monocytes/macrophages. We have hypothesized that high-level heterogeneousness of protein glycosylation of EMMPRIN may have functional relevance to its biological effects and affect the inflammatory activity of monocytes/macrophages. M...