bites promote allergic skin inflammation and intestinal tuft and mast cell expansion in mice.

Background: Tick bites often promote local allergic reactions in the skin and predispose to red meat allergy. The mechanisms involved in these processes are not fully understood. Here we investigated the local changes to the skin and intestine induced by tick bites.

Basophils are important for development of allergic skin inflammation.

Background: Atopic dermatitis skin lesions exhibit increased infiltration by basophils. Basophils produce IL-4, which plays an important role in the pathogenesis of atopic dermatitis.

Objective: We sought to determine the role of basophils in a mouse model of antigen-driven allergic skin inflammation.

Basophils Play a Protective Role in the Recovery of Skin Barrier Function from Mechanical Injury in Mice.

Physical trauma disrupts skin barrier function. How the skin barrier recovers is not fully understood. We evaluated in mice the mechanism of skin barrier recovery after mechanical injury inflicted by tape stripping.

S. aureus drives itch and scratch-induced skin damage through a V8 protease-PAR1 axis.

Itch is an unpleasant sensation that evokes a desire to scratch. The skin barrier is constantly exposed to microbes and their products. However, the role of microbes in itch generation is unknown.

IL-4 receptor alpha blockade dampens allergic inflammation and upregulates IL-17A expression to promote Saureus clearance in antigen sensitized mouse skin.

Background: Skin colonization with Staphylococcus aureus aggravates atopic dermatitis and exaggerates allergic skin inflammation in mice. IL-4 receptor α (IL-4Rα) blockade is beneficial in atopic dermatitis and reduces Saureus skin colonization through unknown mechanisms. The cytokine IL-17A restrains Saureus growth.

CD43 (sialophorin) is involved in the induction of extracellular matrix remodeling and angiogenesis by lung cancer cells.

Aberrant expression of CD43 in malignant tumors of nonhematopoietic origin such as those from lung, cervix, colon, and breast has been shown to correlate with poor prognosis, providing tumor cells with enhanced motility, anchorage-independent growth, and in vivo tumor size, while protecting the cells of NK lysis and apoptosis. To further characterize the role of CD43 in cell transformation, we tested whether interfering its expression modified the capacity of the A549 non-small cell lung cancer cells to secrete molecules contributing to malignancy. The proteomic analysis of the secretome of serum-starved A549 cells revealed that cells expressing normal levels of CD43 released significantly high levels of molecules involved in extracellular matrix organization, angiogenesis, platelet degranulation, collagen degradation, and inflammation, as compared to CD43 RNAi cells.