BACKGROUND Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been advocated as one treatment for cartilage tissue regeneration. To date, several different platelet-rich formulations have been available, but a deep knowledge of their composition and mechanism of action in a specific clinical use is needed. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of various PRP formulations on human chondrocytes in vitr...

The physiological role of prion protein (PrP) remains unknown. Mice devoid of PrP develop normally but are resistant to scrapie; introduction of a PrP transgene restores susceptibility to the disease. To identify the regions of PrP necessary for this activity, we prepared PrP knockout mice expressing PrPs with amino-proximal deletions. Surprisingly, PrP lacking residues 32-121 or 32-134, but no...

BACKGROUND The Prion protein (PRNP/Prp) plays a crucial role in transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), scrapie and mad cow disease. Notwithstanding the importance in human and animal disease, fundamental aspects of PRNP/Prp function and transmission remains unaccounted for. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS The zebrafish (Danio rerio) genome contai...

The human prion protein fragment, PrP (106-126), may contain a majority of the pathological features associated with the infectious scrapie isoform of PrP, known as PrP(Sc). Based on our previous findings that hypoxia protects neuronal cells from PrP (106-126)-induced apoptosis and increases cellular prion protein (PrP(C)) expression, we hypothesized that hypoxia-related genes, including hypoxi...

A single gene is known to have a predominant influence on scrapie incubation period in mice. In crosses between strains that give a short incubation period, such as NZW mice, and those which give a long incubation period, such as I/LnJ mice, long incubation period was dominant using a Chandler scrapie agent isolate. Recently a close linkage was found between the incubation period gene and the p...

The PrP gene encodes the putative causative agent of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), a heterogeneous group of fatal, neurodegenerative disorders including human Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, ovine scrapie and chronic wasting disease (CWD) of North American deer and elk. Polymorphisms in the PrP gene are associated with variations in relative ...

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) containing hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) and other growth factors are widely used in orthopaedic/sports medicine to repair injured tendons. While PRP treatment is reported to decrease pain in patients with tendon injury, the mechanism of this effect is not clear. Tendon pain is often associated with tendon inflammation, and HGF is known to protect tissues from inflam...

Pityriasis rubra pilaris (PRP) represents a group of rare inflammatory skin disorders. Diagnosis is often challenging, its treatment mainly empirical and suffers from the lack controlled trials. PRP shares overlapping clinical histological features with psoriasis, suggesting common underlying pathophysiology. Based on this resemblance, role IL23–TH17-axis in was proposed, several cases successf...

The association of the prion protein (PrP) gene with susceptibility to scrapie has formed the basis of selection programs aimed at eradicating the disease from sheep populations. Animals are genotyped for the PrP gene and those with the less susceptible genotypes are selected. The objectives of this study were to determine the effectiveness of predicting PrP genotypes by using information from ...

We reported previously that the cellular prion protein (PrP(c)) is a component of desmosomes and contributes to the intestinal barrier function. We demonstrated also the presence of PrP(c) in the nucleus of proliferating intestinal epithelial cells. Here we sought to decipher the function of this nuclear pool. In human intestinal cancer cells Caco-2/TC7 and SW480 and normal crypt-like HIEC-6 ce...