Human keratinocytes grown at a gas-permeable interface in vitro stratify correctly to generate engineered human epidermis.

Background: One of the key functions of human skin is to provide a barrier, protecting the body from the surrounding environment and maintaining homeostasis of the internal environment. A mature, stratified epidermis is critical to achieve skin barrier function and is particularly important when producing skin grafts in vitro for wound treatment. For decades epidermal stratification has been achieved in vitro by culturing keratinocytes at an air-liquid interface, triggering proliferating basal keratinocytes to differentiate and form all epidermal layers.

Novel high-stopping power scintillators for medical applications.

Development of new scintillator materials is a continuous effort, which recently has been focused on materials with higher stopping power. Higher stopping power can be achieved if the compositions include elements such as Tl (Z=81) or Lu (Z=71), as the compounds gain higher densities and effective atomic numbers. In context of medical imaging this translates into high detection efficiency (count rates), therefore, better image quality (statistics, thinner films) or lower irradiation doses to patients in addition to lowering of cost.

Highly efficient CRISPR/Cas9-mediated exon skipping for recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa.

Gene therapy based on the CRISPR/Cas9 system has emerged as a promising strategy for treating the monogenic fragile skin disorder recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB). With this approach problematic wounds could be grafted with gene edited, patient-specific skin equivalents. Precise gene editing using homology-directed repair (HDR) is the ultimate goal, however low efficiencies have hindered progress.

Plasminogen and plasmin can bind to human T cells and generate truncated CCL21 that increases dendritic cell chemotactic responses.

Plasmin is a broad-spectrum protease and therefore needs to be tightly regulated. Active plasmin is formed from plasminogen, which is found in high concentrations in the blood and is converted by the plasminogen activators. In the circulation, high levels of α2-antiplasmin rapidly and efficiently inhibit plasmin activity.

Live-Cell Microscopy Reveals That Human T Cells Primarily Respond Chemokinetically Within a CCL19 Gradient That Induces Chemotaxis in Dendritic Cells.

The ability to study migratory behavior of immune cells is crucial to understanding the dynamic control of the immune system. Migration induced by chemokines is often assumed to be directional (chemotaxis), yet commonly used end-point migration assays are confounded by detecting increased cell migration that lacks directionality (chemokinesis). To distinguish between chemotaxis and chemokinesis we used the classic "under-agarose assay" in combination with video-microscopy to monitor migration of CCR7+ human monocyte-derived dendritic cells and T cells in response to a concentration gradient of CCL19.