The present article focuses on the pathophysiology of myocardial extracellular matrix (ECM) remodelling in chronic heart failure (CHF). The trigger mechanisms for ECM remodelling include acute loss of contractile elements as a consequence of myocardial ischaemia, mechanical tension, oxidative stress and neurohumoral activation. The ECM phenotype changes as a result of the expression of fetal re...

Those of us interested in the extracellular matrix (ECM) are faced with significant challenges of definition. ECM proteins are large, complex and assembled into crosslinked insoluble matrices. This has meant that defining the biochemical composition of ECMs has been difficult. Nonetheless, protein chemistry and molecular biology have defined many familiar ECM proteins — collagens, proteoglycans...

We show that coating of decellularized extracellular matrix (DC-ECM) on substrate surfaces is an efficient way to generate a platform mimicking the native ECM environment. Moreover, the DC-ECM can be modified with a peptide (QK) mimicking vascular endothelial growth factor without apparently compromising its integrity. The modification was achieved through metabolic incorporation of a "clickabl...

In this paper a novel statistical shape feature called the edge co-occurrence matrix (ECM) is proposed for image classification and retrieval. The ECM indicates the joint probability of edge directions of two pixels at a certain displacement in an image. The ECM can be applied to various tasks since it does not require any segmentation information unlike most shape features. Comparisons are con...

Interaction of cells with extracellular matrix (ECM) largely defines migration capacity of cells and ways of their dissemination in normal tissue processes and during tumor progression. We review current knowledge about structure of cell adhesions with ECM and their alterations during carcinogenesis. We analyze how changes in structure of cell–matrix adhesions and ECM itself lead to acquisition...

The extracellular matrix (ECM) surrounding cells contains a variety of proteins that provide structural support and regulate cellular functions. Previous studies have shown that decellularized ECM isolated from tissues or cultured cells can be used to improve cell differentiation in tissue engineering applications. In this study we evaluated the effect of decellularized chondrocyte-derived ECM ...

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a complex and dynamic entity that drives the formation and development of the cardiovascular system, determines critical aspects of cardiovascular performance, and plays key roles in the initiation and progression of abnormal cardiovascular function with aging and disease. Microscopic studies in the late 1700s identified fibrous structures surrounding cells, wh...

1 pro-fibrotic phenotype 2 3 4 Bram Piersma, Ruud A. Bank 5 6 1 University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Department of Pathology and 7 Medical Biology, Matrix Research Group. 8 9 *corresponding author: Ruud A. Bank, [email protected] 10 11 12 Fibrosis in vital organs causes significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although our 13 understanding of the cellular and molec...

The relative roles of ectomycorrhizal (ECM) and saprotrophic communities in controlling the decomposition of soil organic matter remain unclear. We tested the hypothesis that ECM community structure and activity influences the breakdown of nutrient-rich biopolymers in soils, while saprotrophic communities primarily regulate the breakdown of carbon-rich biopolymers. To test this hypothesis, we u...

This study aimed to investigate the cardioprotective effects of intramyocardial injection of heart derived extracellular matrix (ECM) and cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) in a rat model of myocardial infarction (MI). ECM and CDCs were collected from the rat heart, and the proliferation, apoptosis and morphology of CDCs maintained on ECM were characterized in vitro. MI model was established in ...