BACKGROUND The homeobox transcription factor Engrailed2 (En2) has been studied extensively in neurodevelopment, particularly in the midbrain/hindbrain region and cerebellum, where it exhibits dynamic patterns of expression and regulates cell patterning and morphogenesis. Because of its roles in regulating cerebellar development and evidence of cerebellar pathology in autism spectrum disorder (A...

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare endocrine tumor entity with poor prognosis. Medical treatment is limited to common cytotoxic agents, which are associated with low treatment responses. Thus, lack of therapeutic efficacy demands innovative treatment options for patients with advanced ACC. Recently, we have developed and characterized anti-IGF1 receptor (IGF1-R) immunoliposomes (SSLD-1H7)...

Somatic gene therapy is a promising tool for the treatment of severe diseases. Because of its abuse potential for performance enhancement in sports, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) included the term 'gene doping' in the official list of banned substances and methods in 2004. Several nested PCR or qPCR-based strategies have been proposed that aim at detecting long-term presence of transgene ...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is characterized by its hypovascularity, with an extremely poor prognosis because of its highly invasive nature. PDAC proliferates with abundant stromal cells, suggesting that its invasive activity might be controlled by intercellular interactions between cancer cells and fibroblasts. Using four PDAC cell lines and two pancreas cancer-associated fibroblas...

Leishmania parasites are transmitted to vertebrate hosts by female phlebotomine sand flies as they bloodfeed by lacerating the upper capillaries of the dermis with their barbed mouthparts. In the sand fly midgut secreted proteophosphoglycans from Leishmania form a biological plug known as the promastigote secretory gel (PSG), which blocks the gut and facilitates the regurgitation of infective p...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to prospectively evaluate relationships between plasma concentrations of insulinlike growth factor 1 (IGF1) and insulinlike growth factor binding protein 3 (IGFBP3) and subsequent myocardial infarction (MI) in women. METHODS We used case-control sampling to select study participants from women who had already been selected for inclusion in the prospective ...

Aggressive epithelial ovarian cancers (EOCs) frequently progress and become fatal, even when cytoreduction surgery plus platinum-based chemotherapy are performed. Thus, the early detection of high-risk subgroups is important in order to provide opportunities for better treatment outcomes, using alternative therapeutic strategies. This study aimed to explore the expression of circulating IGF sys...

Uterine secretions are crucial for conceptus development in mammals. This is especially important for species that undergo extended preimplantation development, like cattle and other ungulates. The present study examined cooperative interactions for epidermal growth factor (EGF), fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2) and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF1) on the proliferation of the bovine trophob...