Immunological analysis using monoclonal antibodies against subspecies of protein kinase C revealed the predominant expression of the isozyme, type II, in human megakaryoblastic leukemic cells. We investigated the effects of phorbol diester 12-O-tetradecanoyl phorbol-13-acetate (TPA), the Ca 2÷ ionophore ionomycin and synthetic diacylglycerol 1-oleoyl-2acetylglycerol (OAG) on the immunocytochemi...

Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from leprosy patients underwent spontaneous apoptosis upon culture for 24 h. The apoptosis was inhibited by anti-TNFalpha antibodies and to a certain extent by anti-IL-1alpha and IL-6, thus showing that T(H)2-type cytokines (mainly TNFalpha) are responsible for inducing apoptosis. This cytokine-mediated apoptosis could be inhibited by ionomycin and zinc, there...

Method We investigated the frequencies, phenotype and function of Tregs in the peripheral blood of MP infection and viral infections (measles virus, varicella-zoster virus, parvovirus B19, and EBV) patients at onset and after clinical resolution, and healthy controls. The cytokine production from CD4+ T cells stimulated with PMA/ionomycin and Toll-like 2 and 4 specific cytokine productions from...

The laser confocal fluorescent microscope-based observation of contractile responses in green fluorescent protein-expressing differentiated vascular smooth muscle cells, combined with the RNA interference-mediated gene-silencing technique, allowed us to determine the role of phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) class II -isoform (PI3K-C2 ) as a novel, Ca -dependent regulator of myosin light-chain p...

PBMC from tuberculoid (BT/TT) and lepromatous leprosy (BL/LL) leprosy patients showed spontaneous apoptosis when cultured in the absence of mitogen for 24 h, which was inhibited by anti-tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) antibodies. Apoptosis was also inhibited by ionomycin and zinc, which also increased IL-2 and decreased TNF-alpha production. The increase in IL-2 production suggests a m...