Background and Objective: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and its receptors (VEGF-R1 and R2) are major regulators of angiogenesis. This study was designed to assess serum levels of VEGF and VEGF-R1 and their prognostic significance in newly diagnosed childhood acute leukemia. Materials and Methods: For this purpose, VEGF and VEGF-R1 were determined using enzyme linked immuno-sorba...

Leupaxin is a LIM domain–containing adapter protein belonging to the paxillin family that has been previously reported to be preferentially expressed in hematopoietic cells. Herein, we identified leupaxin in a screen for focal adhesion kinase binding partners in aortic smooth muscle, and we show that leupaxin is enriched in human and mouse vascular smooth muscle and that leupaxin expression is ...

Coronary artery smooth muscle (SM) cells originate from proepicardial cells that migrate over the surface of the heart, undergo epithelial to mesenchymal transformation and invade the subepicardial and cardiac matrix. Prior to contact with the heart, proepicardial cells exhibit no expression of smooth muscle markers including SMalphaactin, SM22alpha, calponin, SMgammaactin or SM-myosin heavy ch...

The human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 Tax protein activates the expression of cellular immediate early genes controlled by the serum response element (SRE), which contains both the serum response factor (SRF) binding element (CArG box) and the ternary complex factor (TCF) binding element (Ets box). We show that TCF binding is necessary for Tax activation of the SRE and that Tax directly intera...