Crohn's disease imaging: a review.

Crohn's disease is a chronic granulomatous inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract, which can involve almost any segment from the mouth to the anus. Typically, Crohn's lesions attain segmental and asynchronous distribution with varying levels of seriousness, although the sites most frequently involved are the terminal ileum and the proximal colon. A single gold standard for the diagnosis of CD is not available and the diagnosis of CD is confirmed by clinical evaluation and a combination of endoscopic, histological, radiological, and/or biochemical investigations.

Treatment with bindarit, an inhibitor of MCP-1 synthesis, protects mice against trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid-induced colitis.

Objective: Chemokines play a fundamental role in trafficking and activation of leukocytes in colonic inflammation. We investigated the ability of bindarit, an inhibitor of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1/CCL2) synthesis, to inhibit chemokine production by human intestinal epithelial cells (HT-29) and its effect in trinitro-benzene sulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced colitis in mice.

Materials And Methods: HT-29 cells were incubated with bindarit in the presence of TNF-alpha/IFN-gamma and 24 h later supernatants were collected for MCP-1, IL-8 and RANTES measurement.

Efficient long-term and high-yielded production of a recombinant proteoglycan in eukaryotic HEK293 cells using a membrane-based bioreactor.

Standard culture systems of eukaryotic cells generally failed to deliver sufficient amounts of recombinant proteins without increasing the costs of production. We here showed that membrane-based bioreactors, initially developed for the production of monoclonal antibodies, can be very useful for the production using engineered HEK293 cells, of a recombinant proteoglycan called endocan, with achievement of high level expression and efficient long-term production. When compared to standard procedures, the growth in suspension and at high density of these cells in one bioreactor promoted a 60-fold increase of the concentration of the soluble recombinant endocan.

Physico-chemical characterization of disoxaril-dimethyl-beta-cyclodextrin inclusion complex and in vitro permeation studies.

In this work we evaluated the ability of 2,6-di-O-methyl-beta-cyclodextrin (DM-beta-Cyd) to include the anti-rhinovirus drug Disoxaril (WIN 51711), increasing its water solubility and stability. The complex, prepared by kneading method, was characterized in the solid state by differential scanning calorimetry and in aqueous solution using circular dichroism and NMR spectroscopy. The formation of 1:1 and 1:2 drug-Cyd complexes was hypothesized.

Endocan or endothelial cell specific molecule-1 (ESM-1): a potential novel endothelial cell marker and a new target for cancer therapy.

Endocan, previously called endothelial cell specific molecule-1, is a soluble proteoglycan of 50 kDa, constituted of a mature polypeptide of 165 amino acids and a single dermatan sulphate chain covalently linked to the serine residue at position 137. This dermatan sulphate proteoglycan, which is expressed by the vascular endothelium, has been found freely circulating in the bloodstream of healthy subjects. Experimental evidence is accumulating that implicates endocan as a key player in the regulation of major processes such as cell adhesion, in inflammatory disorders and tumor progression.