BACKGROUND Wound healing represents a dynamic process involving directional migration of different cell types. Chemokines, a family of chemoattractive proteins, have been suggested to be key players in cell-to-cell communication and essential for directed migration of structural cells. Today, the role of the chemokine network in cutaneous wound healing is not fully understood. Unraveling the ch...

Cells from the myeloid lineage are pluripotent. To investigate the potential of myeloid cell polarization in a primitive vertebrate species, we phenotypically and functionally characterized myeloid cells of common carp (Cyprinus carpio L.) during culture. Flow cytometric analysis, Ab labeling of cell surface markers, and light microscopy showed the presence of a major population of heterogeneou...

PURPOSE There is substantial germline genetic variability within angiogenesis pathway genes, thereby causing interindividual differences in angiogenic capacity and resistance to antiangiogenesis therapy. We investigated germline polymorphisms in genes involved in VEGF-dependent and -independent angiogenesis pathways to predict clinical outcome and tumor response in metastatic colorectal cancer ...

Chemokine CXCL8 plays a pivotal role in host immune response by recruiting neutrophils to the infection site. CXCL8 exists as monomers and dimers, and mediates recruitment by interacting with glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) and activating CXCR1 and CXCR2 receptors. How CXCL8 monomer and dimer interactions with both receptors and GAGs mediate trafficking is poorly understood. In particular, both hapto...

Interleukin-8 (IL-8; CXCL8) has been shown to play a role in multiple cellular processes. Here, we report an additional role of IL-8 as a growth and essential survival factor for normal human urothelial cells. Supplementing exogenous recombinant human IL-8 to normal urothelial cells promoted cell growth through the Akt pathway. Inhibition of IL-8 expression by small inhibitory RNA (siRNA) cause...

Recovery from hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection depends on the cellular immune responses. Chemokines and their receptors play significant roles in immune defense. This study was undertaken to investigate the association between HBV infection and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of genes for the chemokines and their receptors. Between March 2002 and February 2004, a total of 957 single eth...

The World Health Organization classification of mature T-cell lymphoproliferative disorders, combines clinical, morphological and immunophenotypic data. The latter is a major contributor to the classification, as well as to the understanding of the malignant T-cell behavior. The fact that T-cell migration is regulated by chemokines should, in theory, enable us to identify tissue tropism and org...

The recruitment of leukocytes, mediated by endothelium bound chemokine gradients, is a vital process in inflammation. The highly negatively charged, unbranched polysaccharide family of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), such as heparan sulfate and chondroitin sulfate mediate chemokine immobilization. Specifically the binding of CXCL8 (interleukin 8) to GAGs on endothelial cell surfaces is known to regu...

TNFα-induced adipose-related protein (TIARP) is a six-transmembrane protein expressed on macrophages, neutrophils and synoviocytes. We reported recently that mice deficient in TIARP (TIARP-/-) spontaneously develop arthritis and are highly susceptible to collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) with enhanced interleukin (IL)-6 production. However, the effects of TIARP on neutrophils and fibroblast-like...