The human polymorphonuclear leukocyte reaction in response to chemotactic or chemokinetic stimulation is often assayed using the Boyden chamber technique. We present a quick and reliable method for evaluating Boyden chamber experiments, which avoids time-consuming cell counting and does not require expensive equipment. This method is based on assaying human neutrophil elastase, a serine proteas...

Granule proteins play a major role in bacterial killing by neutrophils. Serglycin proteoglycan, the major intracellular proteoglycan of hematopoietic cells, has been proposed to play a role in sorting and packing of granule proteins. We examined the content of major neutrophil granule proteins in serglycin knockout mice and found neutrophil elastase absent from mature neutrophils as shown by ac...

We have purified to homogeneity two forms of a new serine protease inhibitor specific for elastase/chymotrypsin from the ovary gland of the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria. This protein, greglin, has 83 amino acid residues and bears putative phosphorylation sites. Amino acid sequence alignments revealed no homology with pacifastin insect inhibitors and only a distant relationship with Kazal...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate potential mechanisms promoting abdominal aortic aneurysm development with tobacco smoke (TS) exposure. METHODS AND RESULTS Experiments used the elastase perfusion model of abdominal aortic aneurysms with smoke-free controls. The effect of TS exposure was evaluated in C57/Bl6 mice, after broad-spectrum matrix metalloproteinase inhibition with...

There is little understanding of the impact of tumor-associated neutrophils (TAN) on adaptive immunity to tumors. In this study, we report the results of an investigation of the pathobiologic basis for the prognostic significance of neutrophil elastase, a serine protease found in neutrophil granules, in a model of cyclin E (CCNE)-overexpressing breast cancer. We established that neutrophil elas...

The light chain of inter-α inhibitor, also known as bikunin or urinary trypsin inhibitor, is composed of two tandemly arranged Kunitz-type protease inhibitor domains. The second domain of bikunin has factor Xa inhibitory activity which previously was enhanced by mutating two amino acids, glutamine 19 and tyrosine 46 to lysine and aspartate, respectively. In this study, we tried to potentiate it...

Neutrophils play an important part in the development of acute inflammatory injury. Human neutrophils contain high levels of the serine protease elastase, which is stored in azurophilic granules and is secreted in response to inflammatory stimuli. Elastase is capable of degrading many components of extracellular matrix [1-4] and has cytotoxic effects on endothelial cells [5-7] and airway epithe...

The aim of this study was to investigate a possible activation of human endothelial cells in monolayer culture by a purified neutrophil-derived proteinase, i.e. elastase. Cells were isolated from human umbilical cord veins, and incubated either in primary culture or after two passages, in the presence of various concentrations of this proteinase. Although a lack of prostacyclin formation was no...

BACKGROUND Neutrophil is a major focus in efforts to ameliorate the systemic inflammatory response associated with cardiopulmonary bypass. Neutrophil elastase is a powerful proteolytic enzyme, and plays a pivotal role in the development of the inflammatory response. This study assesses the inhibitory effects of sivelestat, a highly specific neutrophil elastase inhibitor, on elastase levels, cyt...

We modified the elastase-induced aneurysm model by use of a simple surgical technique in rabbits. A temporary arcuated aneurysm clip was placed at the origin of the right common carotid artery (RCCA), ascertaining the inner edge of the clip blade on the juncture of the RCCA and right subclavian artery (RSCA), and the elastase-induced aneurysm procedure was undertaken. We found elastase and loca...