The highly metastatic and variable behavior of melanoma has accentuated the need for early detection and targeted therapy. Putative targets identified include those belonging to the extensive network of chemokines and their receptors. One such target is the chemokine receptor CXCR4, a G protein-coupled receptor with a 34 amino acid extracellular N-terminus, the primary ligand of which is CXCL12...

The chemokine stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1/CXCL12) and its receptors are expressed by neurons and glial cells in cardiovascular autonomic regions of the brain, including the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN), and contribute to neurohumoral excitation in rats with ischemia-induced heart failure. The present study examined factors regulating the expression of SDF-1 in the PVN and...

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), also known as type I interferon (IFN)-producingcells, are thought to play central roles in antiviral immunity and the pathogenesis of some autoimmune diseases. pDCs are produced from hematopoietic stem cells in bone marrow. However, the environmental regulation of the development of pDCs is not fully understood. Here, we show that the numbers of pDCs and the...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The chemokine stroma-derived factor 1a (SDF-1a or CXCL12) is essential for proliferation of B lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells in their physiological microenvironment, bone marrow stroma. CXCL12 synergizes with cytokines that stimulate myeloid cells, but its interaction with cytokines affecting lymphoid cells has not been examined. We investigated wheth...

BACKGROUND The chemokine CXCL12/SDF-1alpha interacts with its G-protein coupled receptor CXCR4 to induce migration of lymphoid and endothelial cells. T cell specific adapter protein (TSAd) has been found to promote migration of Jurkat T cells through interaction with the G protein beta subunit. However, the molecular mechanisms for how TSAd influences cellular migration have not been characteri...

Signals from the microenvironment have a profound influence on the maintenance and/or progression of hematopoietic and epithelial cancers. Mesenchymal or marrow-derived stromal cells, which constitute a large proportion of the non-neoplastic cells within the tumor microenvironment, constitutively secrete the chemokine stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1/CXCL12). CXCL12 secretion by stromal cel...

Stromal cell-derived factor-1α (SDF-1α), also known as CXCL12, has variable effects on a plurality of cells. CXCR4 has been identified as its corresponding receptor. The SDF-1-CXCR4 axis is postulated to be a crucial key pathway in the interaction between (cancer) stem cells and their surrounding supportive cells in the cancer stem cell niche. We evaluated the expression of CD44 as a cancer ste...