Perfused rat liver releases growth-promoting activity for viral, spontaneous, and chemically transformed cells. After 5 days of incubation with perfusate, cell lines 3T12-NY (a spontaneous fibroblast transformant), NQ-T1 (a chemically transformed fibroblast line), W-8 (a chemically transformed epithelial rat liver cell line increase in cell growth above controls. Their respective normal counter...

Using the oyster ciliary test, sera and fibroblast culture fluid from certain homozygotes and heterozygotes for cystic fibrosis can be shown to contain an inhibitory factor. The tissue culture fluid derived from the metachromatic fibroblast cultures (cystic fibrosis classes I and II) show ciliary inhibition. The fluid derived from the ametachromatic fibroblast cultures (cystic fibrosis class II...

Fibroblast cultures derived from human basal cell carcino mas demonstrated an increased capacity to synthesize and secrete collagenase. Although the levels of collagenase were up to 8-fold greater than those of normal control cell lines, this phenotypic trait was not permanent and was expressed only for a few passages following primary explantation. The basal cell carcinoma fibroblast collagena...

A chromatographic fraction has been identified in media from fibroblast cultures derived from 15 of 18 cystic fibrosis patients and 8 of 10 heterozygotes that inhibits ciliary activity, as judged by the oyster gill assay. The analogous fraction of media from cultures of fibroblasts derived from 11 normal individuals did not inhibit ciliary activity under the experimental conditions used. The ch...

Snail, a zinc finger transcription factor, induces an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in various cancer and epithelial cells. We investigated the function of Snail (SNAI1) by downregulating its expression with short interfering RNA (siRNA). Suppression of Snail expression induced cellular senescence in several cancer cells and in normal fibroblast IMR90 cells. Cancer progression is faci...

As noted, the unrestrained accumulation of myofibroblasts is a key feature that differentiates fibrotic from physiologic repair. The accrual of these cells represents the combined effects of cell trafficking, proliferation and death. Of these, proliferation has received considerable attention; indeed, fibroblastic foci were initially defined as “small aggregates of actively proliferating fibrob...

Salmosin is a snake venom-derived novel disintegrin that antagonizes platelet aggregation. In this study, we investigated its functional specificity in tumor angiogenesis. Salmosin significantly inhibited bovine capillary endothelial cell proliferation induced by basic fibroblast growth factor but had no effect on normal growth of the cell. The basic fibroblast growth factor-induced in vivo ang...

To identify cell type(s) that might contribute to nerve sheath tumors (neurofibromas) in patients with neurofibromatosis type 1, we generated cell cultures containing neurons. Schwann cells and fibroblasts from transgenic mouse embryos in which the type 1 neurofibromatosis gene was disrupted by homologous recombination (Brannan et al. (1994) Genes Development, 8,1019-1029). Normal fascicle form...

Lymphoblastoid lines from nine Usher's syndrome (recessively inherited retinitis pigmentosa and congenital sensorineural deafness) patients (representing eight kindreds) and from ten Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients (representing seven kindreds) showed a small but statistically significant hypersensitivity to the lethal effects of X-rays, as measured by the cellular ability to exclude the v...

Extracts of conditioned medium (CM) from Hs0294 human malignant melanoma cells stimulate [3H]thymidine incorporation and an increase in cell number in serum-depleted Hs0294 cells. This activity is acid and heat stable, nonproteolytic, protease sensitive, contains disulfide bonds and elutes broadly from a Bio-Gel P-30 column with an approximate molecular weight range of 6,000 to 25,000. Hs0294 C...