objective: today, special attention is paid to the use of zirconium dioxide nanoparticle (nano-zro2), a neutral bioceramic metal, particularly for drug and gene delivery in medicine. however, there are some reports implying that use of nano-zro2 is associated with cytotoxic effects like inhibiting the cell proliferation, dna damage and apoptosis. in the present study, we examined whether nano-z...

CD48 is a cell surface, glycosylphosphatidylinositol-linked glycoprotein, and a potential target for treatment of leukemia and lymphoma. Two anti-CD48 mAbs, murine HuLy-m3 and human IgG1-N2A, were compared in cellular assays using a human lymphoma cell line (Raji) for their ability to inhibit cell growth and induce apoptosis. In vitro studies revealed both HuLy-m3 and IgG1-N2A mAbs were able to...

The neuroblastoma-like cell line N2A and the pheochromocytoma-like cell line PC12 excrete about 20-25% of the intracellular fluorescent Ca2+ indicator fura-2 during 10 min of incubation at 37 degrees C. The drug probenecid, known to inhibit membrane systems for the transport of organic anions [Cunningham, Israili & Dayton (1981) Clin. Pharmacol. 6, 135-151], inhibited fura-2 excretion in both c...

Rabies is a fatal acute viral zoonosis, causing 62,000 human deaths every year. The oral rabies vaccination (ORV) programs of foxes, the main reservoir of rabies in Europe, are the most effective tools to control and finally to eradicate the disease. In order to characterize by in vivo and in vitro assays a vaccine rabies strain isolated from a rabid cattle following the ORV program, it has bee...

BACKGROUND Dioxins and related compounds are suspected of causing neurological disruption in human and experimental animal offspring following perinatal exposure during development and growth. The molecular mechanism(s) of the actions in the brain, however, have not been fully investigated. A major participant in the process of the dioxin-toxicity is the dioxin receptor, namely the aryl hydroca...

We have investigated processing of monkey pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) following transfection into heterologous neuronal Neuro 2A (N2A) cells. In several separately transfected stable cell lines (termed N2A/POMC2-like; n = 4), POMC was processed to beta E only, by direct cleavage from the precursor. Thus, these cell lines did not produce beta E in the orderly manner observed in the pituitary, th...

We previously identified and cloned T-cell translocation gene 1 (Ttg-1), a putative zinc finger protein, as a result of its deregulated expression in a T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line (RPMI 8402) with a t(11;14)(p15;q11). We have now characterized its genomic organization and identified the major transcriptional start site to lie within an initiator-like motif. Ttg-1 is normally e...

BACKGROUND Abnormal neuronal differentiation plays an important role in central nervous system (CNS) development abnormalities such as Down syndrome (DS), a disorder that results directly from overexpression of genes in trisomic cells. Receptor-interacting protein 140 (RIP140) is significantly upregulated in DS brains, suggesting its involvement in DS CNS development abnormalities. However, the...

Accumulation of β-sheet-rich peptide (Aβ) is strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, characterized by reduction in synapse density, structural alterations of dendritic spines, modification of synaptic protein expression, loss of long-term potentiation and neuronal cell death. Aβ species are potent neurotoxins, however the molecular mechanism responsible for Aβ toxicity is still unknown. N...