Pharmacological elevation of cyclic AMP (cAMP) of cultured cumulus-oocyte complexes (COC) before or coincident with initiation of maturation has been reported to improve outcomes for various systems for in vitro production of embryos. Here it was hypothesized that artificial elevation of cAMP in the oocyte for a 2-h period of prematuration would improve developmental competence of matured oocytes and result in increased blastocyst yield and altered expression of genes important for embryonic differentiation. Treated COC were cultured for 2 h with dibutyryl cAMP (dbcAMP), a membrane-permeable form of cAMP, and 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine (IBMX), which inhibits phosphodiesterases that convert cAMP to ATP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVet Parasitol Reg Stud Reports
January 2025
The larval chigger mite Apolonia tigipioensis Torres and Braga is an obligatory hypodermic parasite found in South America. Its parasitism can significantly affect the host's health, leading to nodular lesions that consequently result in the host's death. This species has been identified in Venezuela and northeastern Brazil (Pernambuco State), primarily infesting birds, but it can affect mammals, including humans.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe manner in which neural activity unfolds over time is thought to be central to sensory, motor and cognitive functions in the brain. Network models have long posited that the brain's computations involve time courses of activity that are shaped by the underlying network. A prediction from this view is that the activity time courses should be difficult to violate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOvarian cancer represents a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide. Chemotherapeutic agents are usually employed to treat the patients, and Ruthenium(II)-based compounds have been investigated as possible substitutes for platinum drugs. In this work, we studied three different Ru(II)-phosphine-mercapto complexes (1-3) as potential cytotoxic agents against A2780 and A2780-cisR ovarian cancer cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this work, we studied six Ruthenium(II)-diphosphine compounds containing different mercapto ligands (N-S), with general formula [Ru(N-S)(dppm)]Cl (dppm=1,1-bis(diphenylphosphino)methane). These compounds were characterized by several techniques (NMR [H, P(H), and C], HRMS, IR, UV-Vis and XRD) and their purity confirmed by elemental analysis. DLS experiments revealed low diameters and polydispersity indexes, and positive log P values in n-octanol/PBS indicated their preference for the organic phase.
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