Dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP) 9, DPP8, DPP4 and fibroblast activation protein (FAP) are the four enzymatically active members of S9b protease family. Associations DPP9 with human liver cancer, exonic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in loss function (LoF) variants have not been explored. Human genomic databases, including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), were interrogated to identify LoF asso...

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a severe fibrotic lung disease associated with fibroblast activation that includes excessive proliferation, tissue invasiveness, myofibroblast transformation, and extracellular matrix (ECM) production. To identify inhibitors that can attenuate fibroblast activation, we queried IPF gene signatures against a library of small-molecule-induced gene-expression ...

BACKGROUND Growing evidence supports a key role for inflammation in the onset and progression of tendinopathy. However, the effect of the inflammatory infiltrate on tendon cells is poorly understood. METHODS We investigated stromal fibroblast activation signatures in tissues and cells from patients with tendinopathy. Diseased tendons were collected from well-phenotyped patient cohorts with su...

Background Median survival of advanced malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is less than 2 years, and novel treatments are urgently needed. Immunotherapy with adoptive T cell transfer is an attractive approach that could be added to current therapeutic concepts. Fibroblast activation protein (FAP) is expressed by all subtypes of MPM [1] and can serve as target of re-directed T cells harboring a...

Thyroidal levels of fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2) and fibroblast growth factor receptor 1 (FGFR1) are elevated in human thyroid hyperplasia. To understand the significance of this, effects of FGFR1 activation on normal human thyrocyte growth and function in vitro and the regulation of FGF-2 and FGFR1 expression have been examined. FGF-2 stimulated cell growth, as measured by cell counting,...

BACKGROUND Inflammatory cells play a major role in the pathology of heart failure by stimulating cardiac fibroblasts to regulate the extracellular matrix in an adverse way. In view of the fact that inflammatory cells have estrogen receptors, we hypothesized that estrogen provides cardioprotection by decreasing the ability of cardiac inflammatory cells to influence fibroblast function. METHODS...

Objective(s) Staphylococcus aureus is a foremost source of numerous nosocomial and community acquired infections. Antibiotic therapy for vancomycin resistant S. aureus (VRSA) can not promise the eradication of infections. Since adhesion is the major route of infections, adhesin based vaccine could suppress S. aureus infections. Fibronectin binding protein A (FnBPA) and clumping factor A (ClfA)...

Berberine iodide (IK-1) and acetoneberberine (IK-2) showed higher cytotoxicity against five human oral squamous cell carcinoma (HSC-2, HSC-3, HSC-4, NA, CA9-22) and one human promyelocytic leukemia (HL-60) cell lines, than against normal human oral tissue-derived cells (gingival fibroblast HGF, pulp cell HPC, periodontal ligament fibroblast HPLF), producing a tumor specificity index of 4.0 and ...

The Notch/CSL pathway plays an important role in skin homeostasis and carcinogenesis. CSL, the key effector of canonical Notch signaling endowed with an intrinsic transcription repressive function, suppresses stromal fibroblast senescence and Cancer Associated Fibroblast (CAF) activation through direct down-modulation of key effector genes. Interacting proteins that participate with CSL in this...