Right ventricular function assessed by cardiac magnetic resonance predicts the response to resynchronization therapy.

Background And Aim: Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) reduces mortality and morbidity in chronic heart failure symptomatic patients with broad QRS who are already undergoing optimal medical treatment. However, approximately one-third of implanted patients do not show any benefit from this treatment. Right ventricle (RV) dysfunction leads to a worse outcome in patients with heart failure, but its role in predicting the response to CRT has shown conflicting results.

Schwann cell precursors: a favourable cell for myelin repair in the Central Nervous System.

Cell transplant therapies are currently under active consideration for a number of degenerative diseases. In the immune-mediated demyelinating-neurodegenerative disease multiple sclerosis (MS), only the myelin sheaths of the CNS are lost, while Schwann cell myelin of the PNS remains normal. This, and the finding that Schwann cells can myelinate CNS axons, has focussed interest on Schwann cell transplants to repair myelin in MS.

Inflammation stimulates myelination by transplanted oligodendrocyte precursor cells.

Inflammation associated with CNS demyelination provides an important stimulus for the activation of endogenous oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) and subsequent remyelination. This view is largely based on "loss-of-function" studies, whereby remyelination is impaired following depletion of inflammatory cells or mediators. However, "gain-of-function" approaches, asking whether inflammation directly enhances remyelination, have received less attention.

Minocycline-mediated inhibition of microglia activation impairs oligodendrocyte progenitor cell responses and remyelination in a non-immune model of demyelination.

Minocycline, a tetracycline derivative, disrupts inflammatory processes within the CNS and reduces demyelination in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. Several recent studies indicate that components of the inflammatory response to demyelination may be beneficial for the regenerative process of remyelination. In this study we examined the effects of minocycline on remyelination independent of its effects in limiting immune-mediated white matter damage using a toxin model of demyelination.

CNS axons retain their competence for myelination throughout life.

An important question relevant to developing remyelination therapies is whether axons that remain without myelin sheaths after an episode of demyelination retain myelination competence. To resolve this, we have developed a model of transplantation into the nerve fibre layer of the adult rat retina, where the axons are unmyelinated. In the adult, these axons can be myelinated by transplantation of both the oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) and an OPC line (CG4).