Donor-specific HLA antibodies are responsible for most early renal allograft rejections and allograft losses. Therefore, detection of HLA antibodies prior to transplantation is an important step in the evaluation of renal allograft recipients. In this mini-review we will describe recent advances in the techniques used to detect donor-specific HLA antibodies with emphasis on their potential appl...

This paper discusses how simulation environments can be adapted to become HLA (High Level Architecture) compliant. As a case study, the paper shows how an HLA compliant version of the SIMOO simulation environment is being developed. SIMOO is an object-oriented framework for discrete simulation, which enables the user to build simulation models that may contain any combination of various modelin...

Background: During pregnancy, the maternal immune system is in close contact with cells and tissue from the semiallogenic fetus .The Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) class Ib molecules, HLA-E, -F and -G, are expressed at the materno-fetal interface. Because of the apparent immunoregulatory functions of these proteins, they may be involved in successful acceptance of the semi-allogenic fetus during...

BACKGROUND PD-L1 and PD-L2 are ligands for the inhibitory receptor programmed death-1 (PD-1), which is an important regulator of immune responses. PD-L1 is induced on cardiac endothelial cells under inflammatory conditions, but little is known about its role in regulating immune injury in the heart. METHODS AND RESULTS Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-mediated myocarditis was induced in mice, and the i...

Signaling through the programmed death 1 (PD-1) inhibitory receptor upon binding its ligand, PD-L1, suppresses immune responses against autoantigens and tumors and plays an important role in the maintenance of peripheral immune tolerance. Release from PD-1 inhibitory signaling revives "exhausted" virus-specific T cells in chronic viral infections. Here we present the crystal structure of murine...

L1 antigen promotes neurite outgrowth from dopaminergic neurons in tissue culture. In the present study, we examined the effects of dopaminergic deafferentation of the striatum on L1 expression. In the medial-periventricular part of the striatum, both complete and partial substantia nigra (SN) lesions decreased L1 expression. Complete lesions increased L1 expression in the dorso-medial and vent...

While evidence for lung cancer screening implementation in Europe is awaited, Rapid Diagnostic Units have been established in many hospitals to accelerate the early diagnosis of lung cancer. We seek to develop an algorithm to detect lung cancer in a symptomatic population attending such unit, based on a sensitive serum marker panel. Serum concentrations of Epidermal Growth Factor, sCD26, Calpro...