A group of novel Bcl-xL/Bak antagonists, based on a terephthalamide scaffold, were designed to mimic the alpha-helical region of the Bak peptide. Good in vitro inhibition potencies in disrupting the Bak/Bcl-xL complex have been observed (terephthalamide 4, K(i)=0.78+/-0.07 microM).

ataxia telangiectasia (at) is an autosomal recessive multi-system disorder, characterized by variable immunodeficiency, progressive neurodegeneration, occulocutaneous telangiectasia, and increased susceptibility to malignancies. this study was designed to study the role of pro-apoptotic bak, bax, nbk/bik genes in a group of patients with at to elucidate the possible role of these genes in progr...

We present in this paper our project to building an ontology centered infrastructure for Arabic resources and applications. The core of this infrastructure is a linguistic ontology that is founded on Arabic Traditional Grammar. The methodology we have chosen consists in reusing an existing ontology, namely the Gold linguistic ontology. We discuss the development of the ontology and present our ...

It is the object of this paper to study the existence and the form of minimal projections in some spaces of tensor products of Banach spaces. We answer a question of Franchetti and Cheney for finitely codimensional subspaces in C(K ) [1].

Granzyme B (GrB), a serine protease with substrate specificity similar to the caspase family, is a major component of granule-mediated cytotoxicity of T lymphocytes. Although GrB can directly activate caspases, it induces apoptosis predominantly via Bid cleavage, mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization, and cytochrome c release. To study the molecular regulators for GrB-mediated mitochond...

The aim of our study was an evaluation of Bcl-xl and Bak protein expressions in optic nerve axons in eyeballs after severe injury and absolute glaucoma. We examined a series of 41 eyeballs, which were enucleated, following extensive injury and a series of 19 eyeballs from patients with absolute glaucoma. The immunohistochemical reaction was performed, using antibodies against human Bcl-xl and B...

Apoptosis mediated by Bax or Bak is usually thought to be triggered by BH3-only members of the Bcl-2 protein family. BH3-only proteins can directly bind to and activate Bax or Bak, or indirectly activate them by binding to anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family members, thereby relieving their inhibition of Bax and Bak. Here we describe a third way of activation of Bax/Bak dependent apoptosis that does no...

The irritative effects of preservatives found in ophthalmologic solution, or of antiseptics used for skin disinfection is a consistent problem for the patients. The reduction of the toxic effects of these compounds is desired. Brilliant Blue G (BBG) has shown to meet the expected effect in presence of benzalkonium chloride (BAK), a well known preservative in ophthalmic solutions, and octenidine...

The role of Bax and Bak, 2 proapoptotic proteins of the Bcl-2 family, was analyzed in primary B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) cells following in vitro treatment with fludarabine, dexamethasone, or the combination of fludarabine with cyclophosphamide and mitoxantrone (FCM). A strong correlation was found between the number of apoptotic cells and the percentage of cells stained with ant...

During apoptosis, Bak and Bax undergo major conformational change and form symmetric dimers that coalesce to perforate the mitochondrial outer membrane via an unknown mechanism. We have employed cysteine labelling and linkage analysis to the full length of Bak in mitochondria. This comprehensive survey showed that in each Bak dimer the N-termini are fully solvent-exposed and mobile, the core is...