AIM To analyse patterns of gene expression for peptide regulatory factors in patients with Dupuytren's contracture. METHODS Tissue samples (palmer fascia) from 12 patients with Dupuytren's contracture and 12 controls were studied using the reverse transcription/polymerase chain reaction (RT/PCR) technique. RESULTS Tissue from patients with Dupuytren's contracture expressed a higher percenta...

Understanding how the regulation of growth factor pathways alters during prostate cancer (PC) progression may enable researchers to develop targeted therapeutic strategies for advanced disease. PC progression involves the shifting of cells from androgen-dependent growth to an androgen-independent state, sometimes with the loss or mutation of the androgen receptors in PC cells. Both autocrine an...

Juxtacrine signalling is emerging as an important means of cellular communication, in which signalling molecules anchored in the cell membrane bind to and activate receptors on the surface of immediately neighbouring cells. We develop a mathematical model to describe this process, consisting of a coupled system of ordinary differential equations, with one identical set of equations for each cel...

Previously, we have observed that epidermal growth factor (EGF), a potent mitogen for cultured hepatocytes, stimulates the production of IGF-I and IGF-binding proteins (IGFBPs) by cultured hepatocytes from adult rats. This study was undertaken to investigate the possibility that other growth factors of hepatic origin could specifically be involved in the regulation of IGF-I and IGFBP expression...

acute myeloblastic leukemia is the most frequent cancer in adults and the patients have a wide range of sub-classes. hla dr negative cases represent one of the major immune-phenotypic classes.  hla-dr is routinely used to distinguish acute promyelocytic leukemia (apl) from other aml subclasses based on the immunophenotype. the tgf-b signaling pathway, as a critical regulator, guides different v...

Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor antagonists attenuate fibrosis in the kidney, heart, and liver by suppressing transforming growth factor-beta1 mRNA and decreasing production of extracellular matrix proteins. We recently demonstrated that lisinopril, an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, alleviates pancreatic inflammation and fibrosis in male Wistar Bonn/K...

Young (4 month) and aged (15-18 months) mice were given intranasal saline or γ--herpesvirus-68 infection. After 21 days, aged, but not young mice, showed significant increases in collagen content and fibrosis. There were no differences in viral clearance or inflammatory cells (including fibrocytes) between infected aged and young mice. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays showed increased transfo...