background: hypertension is one the most common causes of chronic kidney disease (ckd). one of the major concerns in hypertensive patients is early detection of renal disorders. in the past, serum creatinine (scr) concentration was used as a marker of kidney function, but it proffers a late reflection of reduced glomerular filtration rate. cystatin c and neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocal...

objective(s) the aim of the present study was to compare the therapeutic indices of several agents used in treatment of inflammatory conditions which included: vitamin e, hydro-alcoholic extracts of glycyrrhiza glabra, matricaria aurea, dexamethasone, piroxicam and diclofenac using wehi-164 fibrosarcoma cells. materials and methods cytotoxicity evaluation was based on vital dye exclusion assay....

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are associated with neuroinflammatory diseases, and blood-brain barrier damage is a pathophysiological consequence of central nervous system inflammation. We examined whether an increase in MMP production is coupled with the breakdown of blood-brain barrier integrity in the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-injured brain. Rat brain stimulated with LPS showed a significan...

The present study was designed to determine the influences of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) on cell proliferation and the release of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs) from human dermal microvascular endothelial cells. Treatment of cultures with 10 ng/ml or more of VEGF significantly increased cell proliferation. The effect of VEGF t...

objective(s) lipocalin 2 (lcn2) is a 25-kda glycoprotein that has initially been extracted from neutrophil granules. expression of lcn2 is induced under various pathophysiological conditions. it is also known as an early marker of kidney and heart injury. high-level expression of recombinant lcn2 neutrophil gelatinase-associated(ngal) in insect cells was the aim of this study. materials and met...

Gelatinase B, a matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) of high specific activity, is highly expressed and activated by mouse blastocysts in culture, and inhibition of this enzyme activity inhibits lysis of extracellular matrix (Behrendtsen, O., Alexander, C. M. and Werb, Z. (1992) Development 114, 447-456). Because gelatinase B expression is linked to invasive potential, we studied the expression of ge...

We have studied the expression of gelatinase A, gelatinase B, interstitial collagenase, tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (TIMP)-1 and TIMP-2 in reactive lymphoid cells, as well as in a series of cell lines derived from neoplasms of B- and T-cell lineage. Using both Northern blot analysis and zymography, gelatinase B activity was detected by zymography in two Burkitt cell lines and in a ton...

During hibernation, small mammals alternate between periods of metabolic suppression and low body temperature ('torpor') and periods of full metabolic recovery with euthermic temperatures ('arousal'). Previously, we demonstrated marked structural remodeling of the lung during torpor, which is rapidly reversed during arousal. We also found that cooling of hamster cells increased endogenous produ...

Mammary epithelial cells undergo changes in growth, invasion, and differentiation throughout much of adulthood, and most strikingly during pregnancy, lactation, and involution. Although the pathways of milk protein expression are being elucidated, little is known, at a molecular level, about control of mammary epithelial cell phenotypes during normal tissue morphogenesis and evolution of aggres...

We examined the anti-invasive activity of ursolic acid (UA) on the highly metastatic HT1080 human fibrosarcoma cell line. UA reduced tumor cell invasion through a reconstituted basement membrane in a transwell chamber. A significant down-regulation of matrix metalloproteinase-9 [MMP-9; Mr 92,000 gelatinase/type IV collagenase (gelatinase B)] by UA was detected by Northern blot analysis. However...