DanioCTC: Analysis of Circulating Tumor Cells from Metastatic Breast Cancer Patients in Zebrafish Xenografts.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) serve as crucial metastatic precursor cells, but their study in animal models has been hindered by their low numbers. To address this challenge, we present DanioCTC, an innovative xenograft workflow that overcomes the scarcity of patient-derived CTCs in animal models. By combining diagnostic leukapheresis (DLA), the Parsortix microfluidic system, flow cytometry, and the CellCelector setup, DanioCTC effectively enriches and isolates CTCs from metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients for injection into zebrafish embryos.

Stage-dependent cardiac regeneration in is regulated by thyroid hormone availability.

Despite therapeutic advances, heart failure is the major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, but why cardiac regenerative capacity is lost in adult humans remains an enigma. Cardiac regenerative capacity widely varies across vertebrates. Zebrafish and newt hearts regenerate throughout life.

Is adult cardiac regeneration absent in yet present in ?

We recently used an endoscopy-based resection method to explore the consequences of cardiac injury in adult , obtaining the result that the adult heart is unable to regenerate. At 11 months post-amputation, cellular and biological marks of scarring persisted. We thus concluded that, contrary to urodeles and teleosts, adult anurans share a cardiac injury outcome similar to adult mammals.

Synthesis, antimicrobial activity and acid dissociation constants of methyl 5,5-diphenyl-1-(thiazol-2-yl)pyrrolidine-2-carboxylate derivatives.

In this study, a series of polysubstituted methyl 5,5-diphenyl-1-(thiazol-2-yl)pyrrolidine-2-carboxylate derivatives were designed and synthesized by the cyclization reaction of methyl 1-(benzoylcarbamothioyl)-5,5-diphenylpyrrolidine-2-carboxylates and 2-bromo-1-(4-substituted phenyl)ethanones in 70-96% yield. The starting pyrrolidine derivatives were synthesized via a 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction in 83-88% yield. The stereochemistry of one of these methyl 5,5-diphenyl-1-(thiazol-2-yl)pyrrolidine-2-carboxylate derivatives was characterized by a single crystal X-ray diffraction study and the acid dissociation constants of these compounds were determined.

In Vivo Transfection of Naked DNA into Tadpole Tail Muscle.

In vivo gene transfer systems are important to study foreign gene expression and promoter regulation in an organism, with the benefit of exploring this in an integrated environment. Direct injection of plasmids encoding exogenous promoters and genes into muscle has numerous advantages: the protocol is easy, efficient, and shows time-persistent plasmid expression in transfected muscular cells. After injecting naked-DNA plasmids into tadpole tail muscle, transgene expression is strong, reproducible, and correlates with the amount of DNA injected.