BACKGROUND Lung transplant (LT) aims to extend survival and improve patient-centred outcomes (PCOs) by reducing disability and improving health-related quality of life (HRQL). Few PCO instruments have been validated in LT populations. We aimed to develop and validate a shortened version of the valued life activities (VLA) disability scale specific to LT. METHODS We used data from 140 subjects...

Early angiosperm evolution, beginning approximately 140 million years ago, saw many innovations that enabled flowering plants to alter ecosystems globally. These included the development of novel, flower-based pollinator attraction mechanisms and the development of increased water transport capacity in stems and leaves. Vein length per area (VLA) of leaves increased nearly threefold in the firs...

The very late antigen complexes VLA-1 and VLA-2 which appear on long-term activated human T cells have been characterized with respect to 1) subunit arrangement, 2) location of monoclonal antibody (MAb) binding sites, 3) carbohydrate content, and 4) protein homology. Cross-linking experiments showed that the VLA-1 complex is a heterodimer composed of an Mr 210,000 subunit (alpha 1) in acid-labi...

BACKGROUND Resistance to therapy and subsequent relapse remain major challenges in the clinical management of relapsed childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. As the bone marrow environment plays an important role in survival and chemotherapy resistance of leukemia cells by activating different signaling pathways, such as the VLA-4 and PI3K/Akt pathways, we studied the prognostic and biological...

VLA-4 has been identified as a relatively new target for the development of “non-steroidal” alternatives for the treatment of asthma and related respiratory inflammatory diseases. In continuation of search to identify potent VLA-4 antagonists, a series of novel proline urea derivatives have been synthesized. The newly synthesized compounds are evaluated as potential VLA-4 antagonists in vitro a...

It has been clear since the pioneering experiments of P. Weiss and C. Grobstein in the 1940s and 1950s that the interaction between cells and the "ground substance" in their environment is critical to their proper function and differentiation. During the next three decades, experiments from many labs refined and extended this observation , demonstrating that interactions with the extracellular ...

VLA-2 (also called gpla/IIa on platelets) is a collagen receptor with a unique ot subunit and a subunit common to other adhesion receptors in the VLA/integrin family. Multiple cDNA clones for the human VLA-2 o~ 2 subunit have been selected from a hgtll library by specific antibody screening. The 5,374bp nucleotide sequence encoded for 1,181 amino acids, including a signal peptide of 29 amino ac...

The integrin VLA-2 was previously found to bind to either collagen alone, or collagen plus laminin, but the mechanism for this cell-specific functional difference was unknown. Here we transfected VLA-2 O/2 subunit cDNA into K562 cells and obtained VLA-2 (called Form-O) which bound to neither collagen nor laminin. We then used a Matrigel selection procedure to enrich for a minor subpopulation of...