The stress-inducible molecular chaperone, HSP72, is an important therapeutic target in oncology, but inhibiting this protein with small molecules has proven particularly challenging. Validating HSP72 inhibitors in cells is difficult owing to competition with the high affinity and abundance of its endogenous nucleotide substrates. We hypothesized this could be overcome using a cysteine-targeted ...

BACKGROUND Expression of the growth factor osteoactivin (OA) increases during tissue degeneration and regeneration, fracture repair and after denervation-induced disuse atrophy, concomitant with increased matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). However, OA's expression with repetitive overuse injuries is unknown. The aim of this study was to evaluate: 1) OA expression in an operant rat model of repet...

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) help maintain cellular function in stressful situations, but the processes controlling their interactions with target proteins are not well defined. This study examined the binding of HSP72, HSP25, and αB-crystallin in skeletal muscle fibers following various stresses. Rat soleus (SOL) and extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles were subjected in vitro to heat stress ...

The transcription factor p73, a member of the p53 family of proteins, is involved in the regulation of cell cycle progression and apoptosis. Due to alternative promoters and carboxy-terminal splicing, the P73 gene gives rise to a range of different isoforms. Interestingly, a particular increase in expression of the TAp73α isoform has been reported in various tumours. In addition, TAp73α has bee...

Disruption of cell contact sites during ischemia contributes to the loss of organ function in acute renal failure. Because prior heat stress protects cell contact sites in ATP-depleted renal epithelial cells in vitro, we hypothesized that heat shock protein 72 (HSP72), the major inducible cytoprotectant in mammalian cells, interacts with protein kinases that regulate cell-cell and cell-matrix i...

Acute administration of glucocortiocoids reduces inflammation. Increasing knowledge of the mechanisms of action indicate that pretreatment with glucocorticoids could have organ-protective effects. We investigated whether pretreatment with methylprednisolone (MP) protected the heart against ischemia-reperfusion dysfunction, and we hypothetized that this protection might be due to induction of th...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study is to create an ex vivo model to examine the expression of major heat-shock protein (HSP) families; HSP60, HSP72, and HSP90, and heat-shock cognate 70 (HCS70) at the mRNA and protein level in differentiating corneal cells from limbal stem cells (LSC) following air exposure. METHODS Limbal biopsies taken from cadaveric normal human limbus were cultivated as exp...

The present study investigated the effects of exercise and anabolic-androgenic steroids on cardiac HSP72 expression. Male Wistar rats were divided into experimental groups: nandrolone exercise (NE, N = 6), control exercise (CE, N = 6), nandrolone sedentary (NS, N = 6), and control sedentary (CS, N = 6). Animals in the NE and NS groups received a weekly intramuscular injection (6.5 mg/kg of body...

We determined the temperature-induced synthesis of the 72-kD heat-shock protein (hsp72) in hearts of normotensive and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) subjected to whole-body hyperthermia (42.0 +/- 0.5 degrees C for 15 minutes). The animals were studied at three different ages: young (2 months), adult (6 months), and old (18 months). The hsp72 was determined by Western blot analysis using ...