Providing gastrointestinal nurse education during the pandemic.

, Head of Gastrointestinal Nurse Education, St Mark's Hospital, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust (jburch1@nhs.net), was runner-up in the Gastrointestinal/Inflammatory Bowel Disease Nurse of the Year category of the Awards 2021.

Compounding Pharmacists Provide Customized Care.

Compounding is the creation of a pharmaceutical preparation by a licensed pharmacist to meet the unique needs of an individual patient when commercially available drugs do not meet those needs. For hundreds of years, compounding was the traditional practice of pharmacy. Today's advanced practice of compounding provides health care practitioners customized options for unique patients or for hard to treat conditions.

CD137-mediated T cell co-stimulation terminates existing autoimmune disease in SLE-prone NZB/NZW F1 mice.

T cell receptor recognition of antigen and major histocompatibility complex (signal 1) and T cell co-stimulation (signal 2) are essential for full T cell activation, differentiation, and survival of naïve and activated T cells. The proto-typical T cell co-stimulatory receptor, CD28, is a constitutively expressed type I integral transmembrane protein and member of the Ig superfamily. Since its discovery, additional T cell co-stimulatory receptors have been identified, a number of which belong to the tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily.

Inhibitor specificity of recombinant and endogenous caspase-9.

Apoptosis triggered through the intrinsic pathway by radiation and anti-neoplastic drugs is initiated by the activation of caspase-9. To elucidate control mechanisms in this pathway we used a range of synthetic and natural reagents. The inhibitory potency of acetyl-Asp-Glu-Val-Asp-aldehyde ('Ac-DEVD-CHO'), benzyloxycarbonyl-Val-Ala-Asp-fluoromethylketone ('Z-VAD-FMK') and the endogenous caspase inhibitor X-chromosome-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein ('XIAP') against recombinant caspase-9 were predictive of the efficacy of these compounds in a cell-free system.