BACKGROUND: The liver has been suggested as a suitable target organ for gene therapy of Type 1 diabetes. However, the fundamental issue whether insulin-secreting hepatocytes in vivo will be destroyed by the autoimmune processes that kill pancreatic beta cells has not been fully addressed. It is possible that the insulin secreting liver cells will be destroyed by the immune system because hepato...

FoxP3(+) regulatory T cells (Tregs) protect against autoimmunity, type 1 diabetes (T1D) in particular, prompting the hypothesis that a deficiency in Tregs is a critical determinant of diabetes susceptibility in NOD mice. However, tests of this hypothesis have yielded contradictory results. We confirmed that NOD mice, compared with reference strains, do not have a primary deficit in Treg numbers...

Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) in NOD/Lt mice represents a complex polygenic disease. NOR/Lt is a recombinant congenic strain (RCS) in which limited regions of the NOD/Lt genome have been replaced by genome from the C57BL/KsJ strain. NOR mice are insulitis resistant and diabetes free despite genetic identity with NOD at numerous chromosomal regions containing previously described in...

Interleukin (IL)-1 beta and IL-18 are two cytokines associated with the immunopathogenesis of diabetes in NOD mice. Both of these cytokines are cleaved by caspase-1 to their biologically active forms. IL-1 is a proinflammatory cytokine linked to beta-cell damage, and IL-18 stimulates production of interferon (IFN)gamma in synergy with IL-12. To examine the effects produced by caspase-1 deficien...

Selective breeding to introduce a gene mutation from one mouse strain onto the genetic background of another strain invariably produces "hitchhiking" (i.e. flanking) genomic intervals, which may independently affect a disease trait of interest. To investigate a role for the polymeric Ig receptor in autoimmune diabetes, a congenic nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse strain was generated that harbors a...

Objective(s): Umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (UCB-MSCs) are ideally suited for use in various cell-based therapies. We investigated a novel induction protocol (NIP) to improve the neuronal differentiation of human UCB-MSCs under appropriate conditions. Materials and Methods: This experimental study was performed in Iranian Blood Transfusion Organization (IBTO), Tehran, I...

UNLABELLED In Sinorhizobium meliloti, three NodD transcriptional regulators activate bacterial nodulation (nod) gene expression. NodD1 and NodD2 require plant compounds to activate nod genes. The NodD3 protein does not require exogenous compounds to activate nod gene expression; instead, another transcriptional regulator, SyrM, activates nodD3 expression. In addition, NodD3 can activate syrM ex...

BACKGROUND Bone marrow cell extract (termed as BM Soup) has been demonstrated to repair irradiated salivary glands (SGs) and restore saliva secretion in our previous study. In the present study, we aim to investigate if the function of damaged SGs in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice can be restored by BM Soup treatment and the molecular alterations associated with the treatment. METHODS Whole BM...

The Idd6 locus on mouse chromosome 6, which controls the development of type 1 diabetes in the NOD mouse, affects proliferation rates of T cells and the activity of regulatory CD4+CD25+ T cells. Using a transcriptional profiling approach, we show that splenocytes and thymocytes from diabetes-resistant Idd6 NOD.C3H-congenic mouse strains exhibit a constitutive and specific down-regulation of Tol...