Gerasimovskaya, Evgenia V., Doug A. Tucker, and Kurt R. Stenmark. Activation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase, Akt, and mammalian target of rapamycin is necessary for hypoxia-induced pulmonary artery adventitial fibroblast proliferation. J Appl Physiol 98: 722–731, 2005. First published October 22, 2004; doi:10.1152/ japplphysiol.00715.2004.—In contrast to cell types in which exposure to hypoxi...

The fibroblastic element of the tumor microenvironment has been of great interest to cancer biologists but less so to cancer immunologists. Yet, the sharing of a common mesenchymal cell type in the stroma of tumors and at sites of chronic inflammatory lesions, some of which have an autoimmune basis, has been a strong hint that this cellular component of the tumor microenvironment may have an im...

Evidence is reviewed (8 studies involving 215 clinical patients with ischemic skin ulcers and 7 animal tissue or tissue culture studies) that electrical stimulation of fibroblast cells accelerates the intracellular biosynthesis necessary to form new granulation tissue in a healing wound, and that both a direct local tissue effect and a circulatory improvement occur. A model is presented in whic...

Bradykinin (BK) induces fibroblast contraction but the structural changes and intracellular mechanisms involved have not been completely explored. We stimulated HFL-1 fibroblasts with BK to assess: 1) fibroblast contractility; 2) the role of α-smooth muscle actin (SMA) in contraction by small interfering RNA (siRNA); 3) α-SMA protein expression; 4) α-SMA and F-actin structure; 5) intracellular ...