Publications by authors named "Bottcher J"

Article Synopsis
  • * The study introduces enhanced modeling techniques for neutrino flux and detector response, and it distinguishes between starting (inside) and throughgoing (outside) neutrino interaction events to improve energy resolution.
  • * The findings indicate a best-fit point for the 3+1 model with sin²(2θ_{24})=0.16 and Δm_{41}²=3.5 eV², supporting previous studies while showing consistency with no evidence of sterile neutrinos, as reflected
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The tumour microenvironment is programmed by cancer cells and substantially influences anti-tumour immune responses. Within the tumour microenvironment, CD8 T cells undergo full effector differentiation and acquire cytotoxic anti-tumour functions in specialized niches. Although interactions with type 1 conventional dendritic cells have been implicated in this process, the underlying cellular players and molecular mechanisms remain incompletely understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Natural killer (NK) cells are vital for fighting metastasis, but disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) in the lungs release prostaglandin E2 (PGE), which leads to NK cell dysfunction.
  • This dysfunction is triggered by PGE binding to specific receptors (EP2 and EP4), altering NK cell gene expression and reducing the production of important anti-metastatic signals.
  • Targeting the PGE-EP2/EP4 pathway may provide a new therapeutic strategy to enhance NK cell activity against metastatic tumors in distant organs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

High-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) is important for diagnosing interstitial lung disease (ILD) in inflammatory rheumatic disease (IRD) patients. However, visual ILD assessment via HRCT often has high inter-reader variability. Artificial intelligence (AI)-based techniques for quantitative image analysis promise more accurate diagnostic and prognostic information.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Chemical probes and chemogenomic compounds help connect genes to their effects (phenotypes), study human biology, and identify new targets for precision medicine.
  • The Target 2035 initiative aims to create chemical tools for every human protein by 2035, currently reaching only 3% of the human proteome but covering 53% of biological pathways.
  • Existing drug-targeted pathways may contain undiscovered targets, which could be key areas for future research in the Target 2035 project.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

People with single-sided deafness (SSD) or asymmetric hearing loss (AHL) have particular difficulty understanding speech in noisy listening situations and in sound localization. The objective of this multicenter study is to evaluate the effect of a cochlear implant (CI) in adults with single-sided deafness (SSD) or asymmetric hearing loss (AHL), particularly regarding sound localization and speech intelligibility with additional interest in electric-acoustic pitch matching. A prospective longitudinal study at 7 European tertiary referral centers was conducted including 19 SSD and 16 AHL subjects undergoing cochlear implantation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding physicians as actors who implemented the early modern ideal of collective empiricism into their practices within the local contexts of everyday life, the paper explores two cases from imperial cities in southern Germany in the 1720s and 1780s in which anatomical studies were contested. By analyzing the strategies and arguments that the two physicians used to justify and continue their anatomical dissections, it focuses on their references to different kinds of (local) community and relates these references to another type of collective: membership in a scientific academy. To examine references to community, it is proposed, offers an opportunity to better understand the spread and practice of the ideal of the study of nature as a collective project and how it was intertwined with concepts and structures of order and society in the Holy Roman Empire.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Inflammatory rheumatic diseases (IRD) are often associated with interstitial lung disease (ILD). The aim of the present study was to establish a correlation between the findings on HRCT and the immunological bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL).

Methods: The study included 74 patients with newly diagnosed IRD and evidence of ILD on HRCT with the following pattern: ground-glass opacities (GGO), non-specific interstitial pneumonia (NSIP) and usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The WWE domain is a relatively under-researched domain found in twelve human proteins and characterized by a conserved tryptophan-tryptophan-glutamate (WWE) sequence motif. Six of these WWE domain-containing proteins also contain domains with E3 ubiquitin ligase activity. The general recognition of poly-ADP-ribosylated substrates by WWE domains suggests a potential avenue for development of Proteolysis-Targeting Chimeras (PROTACs).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection affects 300 million people globally, leading to dysfunction in virus-specific CD8 T cells that struggle to eliminate HBV-infected liver cells due to mechanisms that aren't fully understood.
  • - Research indicates a liver immune rheostat inhibits the activation of these CD8 T cells, particularly the CXCR6 subtype, leading to loss of their functionality, as shown by increased activity of the transcription factor cAMP-responsive element modulator (CREM) in both experimental models and chronic HBV patients.
  • - Enhanced signaling pathways related to cAMP and protein kinase A (PKA) in these T cells contribute to their dysfunction, as they establish prolonged contacts with liver cells, impairing essential activation
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Ferroptosis is a key form of cell death linked to various diseases, characterized by excessive peroxidation of fatty acids in cell membranes, which causes the cell to rupture.
  • This process is influenced by iron and redox balance within cells but can also be targeted for pharmacological treatments, making ferroptosis-related proteins potential candidates for new therapies.
  • A research consortium in Germany, along with leading experts, aims to review the mechanisms, significance, and methodologies related to ferroptosis to promote further research and potential new treatments for diseases affected by this process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study presents a measurement of astrophysical tau neutrinos using 9.7 years of data from the IceCube observatory, identifying seven candidate events with energies between 20 TeV and 1 PeV.
  • - Convolutional neural networks were used to analyze simulated event images, helping to estimate the parent tau neutrino energy to be around 200 TeV while facing a background of about 0.5 events primarily from non-tau astrophysical neutrinos.
  • - The results confirmed the presence of astrophysical tau neutrinos at a 5σ significance level, aligning with existing IceCube measurements and theoretical predictions regarding neutrino flux and oscillations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Expansion of antigen-experienced CD8 T cells is critical for the success of tumour-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL)-adoptive cell therapy (ACT) in patients with cancer. Interleukin-2 (IL-2) acts as a key regulator of CD8 cytotoxic T lymphocyte functions by promoting expansion and cytotoxic capability. Therefore, it is essential to comprehend mechanistic barriers to IL-2 sensing in the tumour microenvironment to implement strategies to reinvigorate IL-2 responsiveness and T cell antitumour responses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cancer-specific TCF1 stem-like CD8 T cells can drive protective anticancer immunity through expansion and effector cell differentiation; however, this response is dysfunctional in tumours. Current cancer immunotherapies can promote anticancer responses through TCF1 stem-like CD8 T cells in some but not all patients. This variation points towards currently ill-defined mechanisms that limit TCF1CD8 T cell-mediated anticancer immunity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Clinical Issue: Due to advances in diagnostics and therapy, the survival rate of patients with congenital heart defects is continuously increasing. The aim of this review is to compare various imaging modalities that are used in the diagnosis of congenital heart defects.

Methods: Transthoracic echocardiography is the imaging method of choice in the presence of a congenital heart defect because of its wide availability and non-invasiveness.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

, a zoonotic bacterium, is prevalent in dairy farms. Some cows develop a persistent infection and shed into milk and occasionally by amniotic fluid at calving. Serological diagnosis of Q fever in humans is performed by phase (Ph)-specific antibody tests; PhII antibodies usually indicate an acute infection, while the development of a chronic infection is characterised by elevated PhI antibody titres.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Transcription factors are generally considered challenging, if not "undruggable", targets but they promise new therapeutic options due to their fundamental involvement in many diseases. In this study, we aim to assess the ligandability of the C-terminal Rel-homology domain of nuclear factor of activated T cells 1 (NFAT1), a TF implicated in T-cell regulation. Using a combination of experimental and computational approaches, we demonstrate that small molecule fragments can indeed bind to this protein domain.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Q fever in humans is caused by Coxiella (C.) burnetii. In 2008 and 2012, cases of Q fever in humans were linked to an infected flock of approximately 650 ewes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neuromyelitis optica is a paradigmatic autoimmune disease of the central nervous system, in which the water-channel protein AQP4 is the target antigen. The immunopathology in neuromyelitis optica is largely driven by autoantibodies to AQP4. However, the T cell response that is required for the generation of these anti-AQP4 antibodies is not well understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

For the purpose of validation and identification of mechanical systems, measurements are indispensable. However, they require knowledge of the inherent uncertainty to provide valid information. This paper describes a method on how to evaluate uncertainties in strain measurement using electric strain gages for practical engineering applications.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The availability of high-resolution 3D structural information is crucial for investigating guest-host systems across a wide range of fields. In the context of drug discovery, the information is routinely used to establish and validate structure-activity relationships, grow initial hits from screening campaigns, and to guide molecular docking. For the generation of protein-ligand complex structural information, X-ray crystallography is the experimental method of choice, however, with limited information on protein flexibility.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A 69-year-old male patient with seropositive erosive rheumatoid arthritis (RA) presented to our clinic due to progressive dyspnea. High-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) and immunological bronchioalveolar lavage revealed ground-glass opacities and a lymphocytic alveolitis caused by interstitial lung disease (ILD) in RA. Considering previous forms of treatment, disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) treatment was switched to tofacitinib.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Type 1 conventional dendritic cells (cDC1) can support T cell responses within tumors but whether this determines protective versus ineffective anti-cancer immunity is poorly understood. Here, we use imaging-based deep learning to identify intratumoral cDC1-CD8 T cell clustering as a unique feature of protective anti-cancer immunity. These clusters form selectively in stromal tumor regions and constitute niches in which cDC1 activate TCF1 stem-like CD8 T cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The origin of high-energy cosmic rays, atomic nuclei that continuously impact Earth's atmosphere, is unknown. Because of deflection by interstellar magnetic fields, cosmic rays produced within the Milky Way arrive at Earth from random directions. However, cosmic rays interact with matter near their sources and during propagation, which produces high-energy neutrinos.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Target 2035, an international federation of biomedical scientists from the public and private sectors, is leveraging 'open' principles to develop a pharmacological tool for every human protein. These tools are important reagents for scientists studying human health and disease and will facilitate the development of new medicines. It is therefore not surprising that pharmaceutical companies are joining Target 2035, contributing both knowledge and reagents to study novel proteins.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF