The aim . To determine the level of cathepsin S and to identify its possible relationships with clinical, functional laboratory indicators in patients severe bronchial asthma. Methods 114 asthma were examined. 96 women (84.2%) 18 (15.8%) men divided into 2 groups: allergic non-allergic external respiration function was assessed whole-body plethysmography (“Erich Jaeger”, Germany). plasma concen...

Motivated by the recent implication of cysteine protease cathepsin L as a potential target for anti-cancer drug development, we used a conditional MycERTAM;Bcl-xL model of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumorigenesis (PNET) to assess the role of cathepsin L in Myc-induced tumor progression. By employing a cysteine cathepsin activity probe in vivo and in vitro, we first established that cathepsin act...

The cysteine cathepsins are a group of 11 proteases whose function was originally believed to be the degradation of endocytosed material with a high degree of redundancy. However, it has become clear that these enzymes are also important regulators of both health and disease. Thus, selective tools that can discriminate between members of this highly related class of enzymes will be critical to ...

Paecilopeptin, a novel cathepsin S inhibitor, was produced and isolated from the culture supernatant of the fungal strain, Paecilomyces carneus. A spectroscopic analysis revealed the planar structure of paecilopeptin to be acetyl-Leu-Val-CHO. The stereochemistry of the constituent amino acids was analysed by chiral HPLC after oxidation and 6N HCl hydrolysis of paecilopeptin. The total synthesis...

This transaction reports on the on-going attempt to isolate anti-peptide scFv antibodies from an scFv phage-display library capable of detecting the native protein from which the peptide sequence was derived. The display of antibody fragments on the surface of filamentous bacteriophage by fusion to the minor coat protein (plll) and selection of phage with antigen, has provided a powerful method...

The present study aimed to investigate, as a follow-up of microarray profiling, the expression of the lysosomal cysteine protease cathepsin S and that of its endogenous inhibitor cystatin C in the most common primary intraocular tumor in adults, uveal melanoma. The expression pattern unveiled was characterized by a relative increase in the active form of the elastolytic and collagenolytic cathe...

  Proteases play a key role in protein digestion in ticks and other haematophagous insects. Our understanding of blood meal digestion in digestive system of ticks can be very useful for better understanding of basic rules for control of ticks. Cells of the midgut endocytose blood components. Blood proteins uptake by midgut cells, suggesting the presence of proteases in the midgut cells. In this...

Cathepsin B is a lysosomal cysteine protease exhibiting mainly dipeptidyl carboxypeptidase activity, which decreases dramatically above pH 5.5, when the enzyme starts acting as an endopeptidase. Since the common cathepsin B assays are performed at pH 6 and do not distinguish between these activities, we synthesized a series of peptide substrates specifically designed for the carboxydipeptidase ...

The proinflammatory cytokine IL-36γ is highly expressed in epithelial cells and is a pivotal mediator of epithelial inflammation. In particular, IL-36γ is strongly associated with the inflammatory skin disease psoriasis. As with other IL-1 cytokines, IL-36γ is expressed as an inactive precursor and must be processed by specific proteases to become bioactive. Our aim therefore was to identify pr...