0000000000147761
AUTHOR
Hans-ulrich Demuth
Enzymatic Activity of CD26 (Dipeptidylpeptidase IV) is not Required for Its Signalling Function in T Cells
Abstract CD26 is a proteolytic enzyme (dipeptidylpeptidase IV) expressed on the T cell surface that defines an alternative activation signal for human T lymphocytes. Crosslinking of CD26 via monoclonal antibodies triggers proliferation and cytotoxicity in preactivated T cells. In this study, we used highly specific competitive and irreversible inhibitors of dipeptidylpeptidase IV to study the role of the enzymatic activity in activation of CD26- transfected T cells as well as of CD26-expressing normal human T cell clones. These inhibitors at concentrations that blocked up to 95% of the enzymatic activity, did not specifically inhibit T cell activation neither via TCR/CD3 nor via CD26 itself…
Neuropeptide Y (NPY) in cerebrospinal fluid from patients with Huntington's Disease: increased NPY levels and differential degradation of the NPY1-30 fragment.
Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited and fatal polyglutamine neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expansion of the CAG triplet repeat coding region within the HD gene. Progressive dysfunction and loss of striatal GABAergic medium spiny neurons (MSNs) may account for some of the characteristic symptoms in HD patients. Interestingly, in HD, MSNs expressing neuropeptide Y (NPY) are spared and their numbers is even up-regulated in HD patients. Consistent with this, we report here on increased immuno-linked NPY (IL-NPY) levels in human cerebrospinal fluid (hCSF) from HD patients (Control n = 10; early HD n = 9; mid HD n = 11). As this antibody-based detection of NPY may provide false pos…