The histopathological changes in 51 renal allograft biopsies from patients immunosuppressed with FK506 were compared with those seen in 30 needle biopsies obtained from patients on cyclosporine. The frequency and severity of rejection episodes were similar in both groups. Tubular vacuolation and myocyte vacuolation were found to be useful morphological markers to monitor short-term drug toxicit...

FK506 (Tacrolimus) recently has been shown to be an effective immunosuppressant after renal transplantation. It is associated with less hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and steroid use compared with cyclosporine. We report 10 patients on FK506 who showed fibrin thrombi within the glomerular capillaries and/or arterioles at renal allograft biopsy. These biopsies were generally performed to ass...

Alpha-synuclein (-synuclein) is considered a key player in Parkinson's disease (PD), but the exact relationship between-synuclein aggregation and dopaminergic (DA) neurodegeneration remains unresolved. There is increasing evidence that neuroinflammatory processes are closely linked to DA cell death, but whether the inflammatory process is causally involved in PD or rather reflects secondary con...

Xenopus laevis tadpoles possess high regenerative ability of amputated tails, except during the ‘refractory period’ when regenerative ability is transiently lost. We recently reported that treatment with an immunosuppressant (FK506) restores the regenerative ability, suggesting that immune responses act to impair regenerative ability during the refractory period. An expression analysis of immun...

Donor mesenchymal stem cells could prolong vascularized composite allotransplant (VCA) survival in our previous study.However, recipient adipose tissue is easier to harvest than donor tissue for pre-conditioning modulation. Hence, this study investigated the efficacy of recipient autologous adipose-derived stem cells (rASCs) for VCA survival. The heterotopic hind-limb transplantation from femal...

Prion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative disorders and no effective treatment has been established to date. In this study, we evaluated the effect of FK506 (tacrolimus), a macrolide that is known to be a mild immunosuppressant, on prion infection, using cell culture and animal models. We found that FK506 markedly reduced the abnormal form of prion protein (PRNP(Sc)) in the cell cultures (N2a5...

AIMS FK506-binding protein (FKBP) 12 is an inhibitor of transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta type I receptors. Several lines of evidence support the view that TGF-beta stimulates vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) proliferation and matrix accumulation. We investigated the effect of FK506, also known as tacrolimus, on cellular proliferation and on matrix protein production in human VSMCs. MET...

The authors previously reported that FK506 effectively suppressed the induction of experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis (EAU) in rats with much lower doses than cyclosporine A. This study was aimed at analyzing the immune status of the FK506-treated and EAU-suppressed rats and examining the hypothesis whether the agent could induce antigen-specific suppressor T (Ts) cells. It was found that sp...

The discovery of new immunosuppressive drugs such as rapamycin, cyclosporin A (CsA) and tacrolimus (FK506) has been very useful for preventing graft rejection and autoimmune disease. However, these drugs are not specific, and are associated with side-effects and toxicities. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms of these drugs is important for designing specific immunosuppressants. H...

We have recently reported that v-Raf forms a native heterocomplex with rat heat shock protein (hsp) 90 and a 50-kDa phosphoprotein (p50) in stably transfected 3Y1 fibroblasts (Stancato, L. F., Chow, Y-H., Hutchison, K. A., Perdew, G. H., Jove, R., and Pratt, W. B. (1993) J. Biol. Chem. 268, 21711-21716). Several members of the nuclear receptor family exist in heterocomplexes containing hsp90 an...