The demolition of large buildings can be accomplished by a single explosive agent destroying a single class of structural components, namely weightbearing beams. Although the breakdown of tissues in disease has often been conceived to occur in an analogous manner, with a single proteinase degrading a single structural ECM protein, it has become clear that effective tissue destruction requires s...

Curcumin has been found to possess anti-inflammatory activities and neutrophils, key players in inflammation, were previously found to be important targets to curcumin in a few studies. For example, curcumin was found to induce apoptosis in neutrophils by a p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)-dependent mechanism. However, the role of curcumin on the biology of neutrophils is still poorl...

The enzyme collagenase participates in remodeling the extracellular matrix of corneal stroma during normal wound healing and mediates the degradation of extracellular matrix that occurs in many corneal pathologic states. Because this enzyme is synthesized and secreted by corneal cells, therapy of degradative disorders might be geared toward control of enzyme expression. The effects of two cytok...

Metalloproteinases have been implicated in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis. We report longitudinal serum levels of gelatinase B and of the tissue inhibitors of matrix metalloproteinases (TIMP), TIMP-1 and TIMP-2, in 21 patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis. Patients had monthly clinical and gadolinium-enhanced MRI follow-up for 10 months. Longitudinal samples in nine healthy control...

Collagenase production by rodent osteoblasts in response to calciotropic hormones has led to the hypothesis that bone cells play a major role in bone resorption by degrading the surface osteoid layer, thereby exposing the underlying mineralized matrix to osteoclastic action. Many studies suggest, however, that this model might not apply to bone resorption in the human. Human osteoblasts have be...

BACKGROUND Urinary calprotectin has been identified as a promising biomarker for acute kidney injury. To date, however, the time-dependent changes of this parameter during acute kidney injury remain elusive. The aim of the present work was to define the time-course of urinary calprotectin secretion after ischaemia/reperfusion-induced kidney injury in comparison to neutrophil gelatinase-associat...

The objective of this research was to determine the presence virulence genes (asa1, gelE, cylA, ace, esp, hyl and efaA), vancomycin resistance (vanA, vanB, vanC2/C3) some antibiotics Enterococcus spp. isolates previously identified from different stages ripened white cheese production. In addition, gelatinase, β-hemolytic DNase activity, biofilm formations were examined phenotypically. study, e...

Objective(s):N-myc downstream regulated gene 2 (NDRG2) is a candidate gene for tumor suppression. The expression of NDRG2 is down-regulated in several tumors including lung cancer. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of NDRG2 overexpression on invasion, migration, and enzymatic activity of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and -9 (MMP-9) in human lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells.  Ma...

In this study, we investigated the expression of activated gelatinase A and membrane-type metalloproteinase (MT-MMP) induced by concanavalin A (ConA) in four highly invasive glioma cell lines (UWR2, UWR3, U251MG, and SNB-19). We also examined gelatinase A and MT-MMP expression in human brain tumor tissues in vivo. Gelatin zymography showed that all four cell lines expressed latent progelatinase...