The Lipliner Sign: Potential Cause of a False Positive Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma (FAST) Examination.

Background: The focused assessment with sonography in trauma (FAST) examination plays an essential role in diagnosing hemoperitoneum in trauma patients to guide prompt operative management. The FAST examination is highly specific for hemoperitoneum in trauma patients, and has been adopted in nontrauma patients to identify intraperitoneal fluid as a cause of abdominal pain or distension. However, causes of false positive FAST examinations have been described and require prompt recognition to avoid diagnostic uncertainty and inappropriate procedures.

Serial Transthoracic Ultrasonography Studies in Hematopoietic Cell Transplant Patients: A Tool for Early Lung Pathology Detection.

Early detection of pulmonary complications can improve outcomes for patients with hematological malignancy (HM). For detecting lung injuries, lung ultrasound (LUS) images have been found to be of greater sensitivity than radiographic images. Our group performed a pilot study of LUS imaging to enhance early detection of pulmonary complications in HM patients.

Multipotent Adult Progenitor Cells, but Not Tissue Inhibitor of Matrix Metalloproteinase-3, Increase Tissue Sparing and Reduce Urological Complications following Spinal Cord Injury.

Following spinal cord injury (SCI), inflammation amplifies damage beyond the initial insult, providing an opportunity for targeted treatments. An ideal protective therapy would reduce both edema within the lesion area and the activation/infiltration of detrimental immune cells. Previous investigations demonstrated the efficacy of intravenous injection of multipotent adult progenitor cells (MAPC) to modulate immune response following SCI, leading to significant improvements in tissue sparing, locomotor and urological functions.

Rapid assay of stem cell functionality and potency using electric cell-substrate impedance sensing.

Regenerative medicine studies using autologous bone marrow mononuclear cells (BM-MNCs) have shown improved clinical outcomes that correlate to in vitro BM-MNC invasive capacity. The current Boyden-chamber assay for testing invasive capacity is labor-intensive, provides only a single time point, and takes 36 hours to collect data and results, which is not practical from a clinical cell delivery perspective. To develop a rapid, sensitive and reproducible invasion assay, we employed Electric Cell-substrate Impedance Sensing (ECIS) technology.

Absence of the memory response to encephalitogen following intergender adoptively transferred experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

Animals that have recovered from adoptively transferred EAE develop clinical disease signs 2-3days earlier than controls when challenged with encephalitogen. This may be due to the reactivation of donor-derived memory cells or stimulation of recipient-derived memory cells primed during the adoptive disease episode. In order to determine the origin of the memory cell subset, we used a donor-recipient model where donor cells are rejected in recipients following a course of adoptively transferred disease.

Targeting T cells responsive to the priming epitope prevent the relapsing phase of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

Upon recovery from the initial episode of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), virtually all SJL mice develop relapsing/remitting episodes of disease. These relapses may occur due to the reactivation of memory T cells initially stimulated as part of the disease-inducing protocol or naïve T-cell populations stimulated by distinct encephalitogens derived from the inflammatory disease process (epitope spread). We have used encephalitogen-specific non-linear peptide octamers to modify the course of relapsing EAE (rEAE) in SJL mice immunized with an oliogodendrocyte-specific protein peptide (OSP 55-71).

Development of a functional schwann cell phenotype from autologous porcine bone marrow mononuclear cells for nerve repair.

Adult bone marrow mononuclear cells (BM-MNCs) are a potential resource for making Schwann cells to repair damaged peripheral nerves. However, many methods of producing Schwann-like cells can be laborious with the cells lacking a functional phenotype. The objective of this study was to develop a simple and rapid method using autologous BM-MNCs to produce a phenotypic and functional Schwann-like cell.