Vitamin D and its analogs have antiproteinuric activity and podocytes express the vitamin D receptor, but whether vitamin D signaling in podocytes accounts for this renoprotection is unknown. To investigate this question, we used the 2.5 kb podocin promoter to target Flag-tagged human vitamin D receptor (hVDR) to podocytes in DBA/2J mice. After the induction of diabetes with streptozotocin, tra...

Vitamin D and vitamin D receptor (VDR) deficiency results in severe symptoms of experimental inflammatory bowel disease in several different models. The intraepithelial lymphocytes of the small intestine contain large numbers of CD8αα(+) T cells that have been shown to suppress the immune response to Ags found there. In this study, we determined the role of the VDR in the development of CD8αα(+...

Vitamin D receptor (VDR) is present in multiple blood cells, and the hormonal form of vitamin D, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25D) is essential for the proper functioning of the immune system. The role of retinoic acid receptor α (RARα) in hematopoiesis is very important, as the fusion of RARα gene with PML gene initiates acute promyelocytic leukemia where differentiation of the myeloid lineage i...

Nuclear receptors mediate allosteric communications where ligand binding initiates a cascade of signal transduction. The interaction of vitamin D with vitamin D receptor (VDR) was investigated by (19)F NMR spectroscopy of the complexes of three fluorinated vitamin D derivatives with the full-length rat VDR-LBD. In the (19)F NMR spectra of the VDR-ligand complexes, the A-ring of 4,4-difluoro-1,2...

Previously, we showed that N-methyl-N-nitrosourea-transformed MCF12F breast epithelial cells exhibited differential expression of several genes, including up-regulation of prohibitin and elevated sensitivity to a relatively noncalcemic vitamin D analogue, 1alpha-hydroxyvitamin D5 [1alpha(OH)D5]. In this report, we evaluated the functional significance of prohibitin in relation to the cellular r...

BACKGROUND Polymorphisms in the vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene have been studied in immune-related disorders either as independent contributors or in combination with vitamin D concentration. Vitamin D and VDR have been independently linked to asthma susceptibility. We investigated whether VDR variants were associated independently or in relation to vitamin D levels with asthma in Cypriot adoles...

The vitamin D receptor (VDR) mediates the pleiotropic biologic effects of 1α,25 dihydroxy-vitamin D3. Recent in vitro studies suggested that curcumin and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) also bind to VDR with low affinity. As potential ligands for the VDR, we hypothesized that curcumin and PUFAs would induce expression of known VDR target genes in cells. In this study, we tested whether thes...

Liver ischemia and reperfusion (IR) injury is the major complication of liver-related operations. Macrophage polarization has an essential effect on mechanism liver IR injury. Vitamin D receptor (VDR) been found to regulate macrophage alleviate Nevertheless, correlation between VDR in not clearly elucidated. knockout mice wild-type littermates underwent partial for 90 min 6 h. RAW264.7 cells we...

Epidemiological, molecular, and cellular studies have implicated vitamin D, a fat-soluble vitamin, and the vitamin D receptor (VDR) in the development and/or progression of cancer. The activation of vitamin D in the kidney is intricately linked to dietary calcium, another nutrient that has been associated with cancer risk in epidemiological studies. While calcium and vitamin D interact in the m...