Mice with W mutations characterized by hypopigmentation, sterility, anemia, and mast cell deficiency have abnormalities in c-kit, a receptor with tyrosine kinase activity. Recently, the ligand for c-kit was cloned by investigators in several laboratories. Zsebo et al identified and cloned a gene for a cytokine termed stem cell factor (SCF) in the medium conditioned by buffalo rat liver cells, a...

Arylnaphthalene lignan lactones have attracted considerable interest because of their anti-tumor and anti-hyperlipidimic activities. However, to our knowledge, few studies have explored the effects of these compounds on human leukemia cell lines. In this study, five arylnaphthalene lignans including 6'-hydroxy justicidin A (HJA), 6'-hydroxy justicidin B (HJB), justicidin B (JB), chinensinaphtho...

Smokers (N = 3,030) were randomized to receive 1 of 3 interventions: (a) a self-help quit kit, (b) a quit kit plus 1 telephone counseling session, or (c) a quit kit plus up to 6 telephone counseling sessions, scheduled according to relapse probability. Both counseling groups achieved significantly higher abstinence rates than the self-help group. The rates for having quit for at least 12 months...

A novel hard templating strategy for the synthesis of high quality multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) with a uniform diameter was developed. MWCNTs were successfully synthesized through chemical vapour deposition (CVD) using acetylene by employing 3D bicontinuous mesoporous silica (KIT-6) as a hard template and used as the counter electrode in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Here, we re...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Intermittent cholera outbreaks are major problem in many of the states of India. It is essential to identify cholera at the earliest for timely mobilization of public health responses and to abort the outbreaks. The present study was a part of a diarrhoeal outbreak investigation in Secunderabad, India, during May 2009 where the usefulness of Crystal VC rapid dipstick kit...

Background The loss of interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC) is observed in diabetic gastroparesis. Electroacupuncture (EA) maintains ICC networks, but the effects and mechanisms of EA on ICC of bone marrow derivation in the stomach have not been investigated. Methods C57BL/6 mice were randomized into six groups: control, diabetic (DM), bone marrow transplantation (BMT) + DM, BMT + DM + sham EA (...

Schoppmann and colleagues (1) have recently investigated 174 gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) by DNA array, FISH, exome sequencing, and immunohistochemistry (IHC) and found that the majority of recurrent chromosomal imbalances were located in 12 regions of interest and that the loss of 1p and immunohistochemical expressionof RAD54L2, SYNE2, KIT, andDIAPH1were associated with survival. In o...

Objective To determine the capacity, effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability of select tissue dissociation methods to isolate mononuclear cells from the CNS of mice with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). Methods As part of an assay qualification, we tested the isolation method Percoll PLUS vs a commercially available enzymatic Neural Tissue Dissociation Kit (Kit), and the en...

Background The widespread acceptance and application of 68Ga-PET depends on our ability to develop radiopharmaceuticals that can be prepared in a convenient and suitable manner. A kit-type labelling protocol provides such characteristics and requires chelators that can be radiolabelled under exceptionally mild conditions. Recently the DATA chelators have been introduced that fulfil these requir...

Purpose: Histone deacetylase inhibitors have emerged as potent anticancer compounds. Using a nude-mouse xenograft model, for the first time we evaluated the response of human gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) carrying different oncogenic KIT mutations to panobinostat (LBH589), administered single or in combination with imatinib. Experimental Design: We grafted the human GIST882 cell line w...