A major obstacle to successful oral vaccination is the lack of antigen delivery systems that are both safe and highly efficient. Conventional replication-incompetent adenoviral vectors, derived from human adenoviruses of subgroup C, are poorly efficient in delivering genetic material to differentiated intestinal epithelia. To date, 51 human adenovirus serotypes have been identified and shown to...

Physiological studies of intact crypt epithelium have been limited by problems of accessibility in vivo and dedifferentiation in standard primary culture. Investigations of murine intestinal stem cells have recently yielded a primary intestinal culture in three-dimensional gel suspension that recapitulates crypt structure and epithelial differentiation (Sato T, Vries RG, Snippert HJ, van de Wet...

Inhibition of growth of the intestinal epithelium, a rapidly self-renewing tissue, is commonly found in various critical disorders. The RNA-binding protein HuR is highly expressed in the gut mucosa and modulates the stability and translation of target mRNAs, but its exact biological function in the intestinal epithelium remains unclear. Here, we investigated the role of HuR in intestinal homeos...

Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) is a foodborne pathogen that crosses the intestinal barrier upon interaction between its surface protein InlA and its species-specific host receptor E-cadherin (Ecad). Ecad, the key constituent of adherens junctions, is typically situated below tight junctions and therefore considered inaccessible from the intestinal lumen. In this study, we investigated how Lm speci...

The natural food contaminants, mycotoxins, are regarded as an important risk factor for human and animal health, as up to 25% of the world's crop production may be contaminated. The Fusarium genus produces large quantities of fusariotoxins, among which the trichothecenes are considered as a ubiquitous problem worldwide. The gastrointestinal tract is the first physiological barrier against food ...

Salmonella infections are a principal source of gastroenteritis and enteric fever in a variety of animals, including humans. An essential step in the development of Salmonella pathogenesis is the entry of bacteria into non-phagocytic cells, including those that line the intestinal epithelium. As a consequence of specific cues from the host intestinal micro-environment, Salmonella entry into the...

For decades, the rapid proliferation and well-defined cellular lineages of the small intestinal epithelium have driven an interest in the biology of the intestinal stem cells (ISCs) and progenitors that produce the functional cells of the epithelium. Recent and significant advances in ISC biomarker discovery have established the small intestinal epithelium as a powerful model system for studyin...

The present study clarify intraepithelial events occurring during the formation of intestinal crypts in the descending colon. In early stage, the mucosa is lined with a simple columnar epithelium consisting of undifferentiated cells which are mutually joined by the junctional complex surrounding the intestinal lumen. The epithelium becomes thickened and stratified, and secondary junctional comp...

The intestinal epithelium plays a crucial role in providing a barrier between the external environment and the internal milieu of the body. A compromised mucosal barrier is characteristic of mucosal inflammation and is a key determinant of the development of intestinal diseases such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The intestinal epithelium is regularly exposed to serine proteinases a...

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are Gram positive nonpathogenic commensal organisms present in human gastrointestinal tract. In vivo, LAB are separated from antigen-presenting cells such as dendritic cells (DC) by the intestinal epithelial barrier. In this study, the impact of one LAB strain (Lactobacillus casei ATCC393) on human monocyte-derived DC from allergic and healthy donors was assessed by u...