Intravenous injection of liposomes can cause significant pulmonary hypertension in pigs, a vasoconstrictive response that provides a sensitive model for the cardiopulmonary distress in humans caused by some liposomal drugs. The reaction was recently shown to be a manifestation of "complement activation-related pseudoallergy" (CARPA; Szebeni J, Fontana JL, Wassef NM, Mongan PD, Morse DS, Dobbins...

Different batches of 1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DSPC) had varying amounts of contaminants which appeared to affect systematic biological studies. This contaminant was separated by silica gel column chromatography followed by high performance liquid chromatography and identified as 1,3-distearoyl-glycerol-2-phosphocholine (beta-lecithin.

The self-assembling morphologies of low-concentration (mostly 1 and 10mg/mL) bicellar mixtures composed of zwitterionic dipalmitoyl (di-C16) phosphatidylcholine (DPPC), dihexanoyl (di-C6) phosphatidylcholine (DHPC), and negatively charged dipalmitoyl (di-C16) phosphatidylglycerol (DPPG) were investigated using small angle neutron scattering, dynamic light scattering and transmission electron mi...

The rates of 35S-sulfate incorporation into proteoglycan were compared in multi-scratch wounded and confluent cultures of bovine aortic endothelial cells to determine whether proteoglycan synthesis is altered as cells are stimulated to migrate and proliferate. Incorporation was found to be stimulated in a time-dependent manner, reaching maximal levels 44-50 h after wounding, as cells migrated i...

Cancer treatment by chemotherapy is typically accompanied by deleterious side effects, attributed to the toxic action of chemotherapeutics on proliferating cells from nontumor tissues. The cell surface proteoglycan CD44 has been recognized as a cancer stem cell marker. The present study has examined CD44 targeting as a way to selectively deliver therapeutic agents encapsulated inside colloidal ...

This article is available online at http://www.jlr.org Pulmonary surfactant is a complex of phospholipids ( 90%) and proteins ( 10%) that reduces the surface tension in the alveoli of the lung ( 1, 2 ). Pulmonary surfactant is crucial for normal breathing and its defi ciency leads to fatal respiratory distress syndromes ( 3 ). The major phospholipids in pulmonary surfactant are phosphatidylcho...

The effects of phospholipid vesicles and their fatty acid compositions on the acceleration of Protein C activation by thrombin-thrombomodulin was studied in vitro. Four main phospholipid fractions were prepared from cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells, and purified thrombomodulin from human placenta was reconstituted into vesicles consisting of phosphatidylcholine (PtdCho) alone, Pt...