The tumor suppressor gene p53 is frequently mutated in cigarette smoke (CS)-related lung cancer. The p53 binding pattern of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found in CS coincides with the p53 mutational pattern found in lung cancer, and PAHs have thus been considered to be major culprits for lung cancer. However, compared with other carcinogenic compounds, such as aldehydes,...

Acrolein (Acr) is a potent cytotoxic and DNA damaging agent which is ubiquitous in the environment and abundant in tobacco smoke. Acr is also an active cytotoxic metabolite of the anti-cancer drugs cyclophosphamide and ifosfamide. The mechanisms via which Acr exerts its anti-cancer activity and cytotoxicity are not clear. In this study, we found that Acr induces cytotoxicity and cell death in h...

Cyclic AMP acting on protein kinase A controls sporulation and encystation in social and solitary amoebas. In Dictyostelium discoideum, adenylate cyclase R (ACR), is essential for spore encapsulation. In addition to its cyclase (AC) domain, ACR harbors seven transmembrane helices, a histidine kinase domain, and two receiver domains. We investigated the role of these domains in the regulation of...

Acute cellular rejection (ACR) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) recurrence (HCVrec) are common complications after liver transplantation (LT) in HCV patients, who share common clinical and histological features, making a differential diagnosis difficult. Fifty-three liver allograft samples from unique HCV LT recipients were studied using microarrays, including a training set (n = 32) and a validatio...

An objective quality estimator for either still images or video should accurately estimate the perceived quality scores of a collection of stimuli. New applications and processing techniques will introduce novel distortions that will need to be quantified in terms of perceived quality in order to confidently evaluate an objective quality estimator. The subjective testing method used to obtain t...

Acyclic retinoid (ACR), a novel synthetic retinoid, has been demonstrated by us to inhibit the in vitro growth of human hepatoma cells, and this effect was associated with modification of cell cycle control molecules, suggesting that this agent may be useful in the chemoprevention and therapy of various types of malignancies. However, whether or not ACR exerts anticancer activities on human col...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the safety and efficacy of immune ablation with subsequent autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) in severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Four patients with refractory RA and poor prognostic indicators were treated. Stem cells were collected and lymphocytes were depleted by 2.3-4.0 logs. The conditioning regimen included cyclophosphamide (200 m...

We have hypothesized that acrylamide (ACR) intoxication causes cumulative nerve terminal damage by forming adducts with nucleophilic cysteine sulfhydryl groups on critical presynaptic proteins. To determine the cumulative effects of ACR on the cysteine-containing proteome of nerve terminal, we employed cleavable isotope-coded affinity tagging (ICAT) and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectro...

The evolution of abnormal albumin excretion and its association with suggested risk factors were studied in 233 children with insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) attending a single paediatric diabetic clinic over an eight year period. Yearly albumin:creatinine ratios (ACR; measured in mg/mmol) in early morning urine samples, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), and blood pressure were recorded....