Search results for "Complement"

(2'-5')Oligoadenylate and intracellular immunity against retrovirus infection.

1992

1. 1. The double-stranded RNA-dependent 2′,5′-oligoadenylate (2–5A) synthetase/ribonuclease L (RNase L) system plays an essential role in the establishment of the antiviral state of a cell exposed to virus infection. 2. 2. Until recently, the application of 2–5A derivatives to reinforce this system seemed to be limited mainly due to the low specificity of RNase L for viral RNA. 3. 3. Two new strategies have been developed which yield a selective antiviral effect of 2–5As at least against human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) infection: (i) an “intracellular immunization” appproach using 2-5A synthetase cDNA linked to HIV trans -acting response element (TAR) and (ii) inhibition of retrovira…

Insight into genetic susceptibility to male breast cancer by multigene panel testing: results from a multicenter study in Italy

2019

Breast cancer (BC) in men is rare and genetic predisposition is likely to play a relevant role in its etiology. Inherited mutations in BRCA1/2 account for about 13% of all cases and additional genes that may contribute to the missing heritability need to be investigated. In our study, a well-characterized series of 523 male BC (MBC) patients from the Italian multicenter study on MBC, enriched for non-BRCA1/2 MBC cases, was screened by a multigene custom panel of 50 cancer-associated genes. The main clinical-pathologic characteristics of MBC in pathogenic variant carriers and non-carriers were also compared. BRCA1/2 pathogenic variants were detected in twenty patients, thus, a total of 503 n…

Vitamin D in cancer chemoprevention

2015

Context: There is increasing evidence that Vitamin D (Vit D) and its metabolites, besides their well-known calcium-related functions, may also exert antiproliferative, pro-differentiating, and immune modulatory effects on tumor cells in vitro and may also delay tumor growth in vivo. Objective: The aim of this review is to provide fresh insight into the most recent advances on the role of Vit D and its analogues as chemopreventive drugs in cancer therapy. Methods: A systematic review of experimental and clinical studies on Vit D and cancer was undertaken by using the major electronic health database including ISI Web of Science, Medline, PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar. Results and conclus…

Personalized cancer medicine: from molecular diagnostics to targeted therapy with natural products.

2010

Personalized cancer medicine aims to develop individualized treatment options adapted to factors relevant for the prognosis of each patient. Molecular biomarkers are required to predict the likelihood of an individual tumor's responsiveness or of toxicity in normal organs and to advise optimized treatments with improved efficacy at reduced side effects for each cancer patient. In the present review, we present a concept, which takes advantage of methods of molecular diagnostics to identify predictive markers at the DNA, mRNA, and protein levels. Markers with prognostic value concerning treatment response and patient survival can then be used as targets to develop optimized drugs. We focus o…

Molecular, Biological and Structural Features of V

2018

Microtubules are important drug targets in tumor cells, owing to their role in supporting and determining the cell shape, organelle movement and cell division. The complementarity-determining regions (CDRs) of immunoglobulins have been reported to be a source of anti-tumor peptide sequences, independently of the original antibody specificity for a given antigen. We found that, the anti-Lewis B mAb light-chain CDR1 synthetic peptide Rb44, interacted with microtubules and induced depolymerization, with subsequent degradation of actin filaments, leading to depolarization of mitochondrial membrane-potential, increase of ROS, cell cycle arrest at G2/M, cleavage of caspase-9, caspase-3 and PARP, …

Tactical Web Use in Bumpy Times—A Comparison of Conservative Parties’ Digital Presence

2021

Modern-day party politics happen on two grounds: the offline sphere and the online sphere. It is the primary understanding of this chapter that both spheres complement each other. We therefore focus our contribution on governing parties and help to close this gap between online and offline communication and organisation by asking: How do conservative, governing parties deploy social media over a number of successful election campaigns? We explore whether there are tactical patterns or tendencies of media presence between different party channels during campaign and normal times with a longitudinal approach. Second, we introduce a multi-modal comparative research design and deliver theoretic…

“TEACHING REAL NUMBERS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL: AN ONTO-SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO THE INVESTIGATION AND EVALUATION OF THE TEACHERS' DECLARED CHOICES”

The thesis addresses the topics of investigating teachers' declared choices of practices concerning real numbers and the continuum in the high school in Italy, evaluating their didactical suitability and the impact of a deep reflexion about some historical and didactical issues on the teachers' decision-making process. Our research hypothesis was that teachers' choices of teaching sequences concerning real numbers, with particular attention to the representations of real numbers, could be very relevant in order to interpret some of the well-known students' difficulties. After a pilot study in form of a teaching experiment and a literature review concerning students' and teachers' difficulti…

La pubblicazione delle opere di Ruffini nella corrispondenza Bortolotti-Guccia

2019

Tonoplast intrinsic proteins from cauliflower (Brassica oleracea L. var. botrytis): immunological analysis, cDNA cloning and evidence for expression …

1998

The vacuolar membrane (tonoplast) of plant cells contains aquaporins, protein channels that facilitate the selective transport of water. These tonoplast intrinsic proteins (TIPs) of 23-29 kDa belong to the ancient major intrinsic protein (MIP) family. A monospecific polyclonal antiserum directed against a 26 kDa intrinsic protein from the tonoplast of meristematic cells from cauliflower (Brassica oleracea L. var. botrytis) was used to screen a cDNA library. Two distinct cDNAs have been isolated. Both clones, c26-1 and c26-2, encode closely related TIPs. The c26-1 insert, consisting of 933 bp upstream of the poly(A) tail, is a full-length cDNA with an open reading frame encoding a protein of…

A Review of the Phytochemistry, Traditional Uses, and Biological Activities of the Genus Ballota and Otostegia

2019

AbstractThe 2 genera Ballota and Otostegia, belonging to the Lamiaceae family, are closely related taxonomically and found mainly in the Mediterranean area, Middle East, and North Africa. Since ancient times, they have been largely employed in traditional medicine for their biological properties such as antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, insecticidal, anti-malaria, etc. Phytochemical investigations of Ballota and Otostegia species have revealed that diterpenoids are the main constituents of the genera. A large number of flavonoids and other metabolites were also identified. This review, covering literature from 1911 up to 2018, includes traditional uses, chemical profiles (bot…