Publications by authors named "Lockhart A"

The intestinal immune system must concomitantly tolerate food and commensals and protect against pathogens. Antigen-presenting cells (APCs) orchestrate these immune responses by presenting luminal antigens to CD4 T cells and inducing their differentiation into regulatory (pTreg) or inflammatory (Th) subsets. We used a proximity labeling method (LIPSTIC) to identify APCs that presented dietary antigens under tolerizing and inflammatory conditions and understand cellular mechanisms by which tolerance to food is induced and can be disrupted by infection.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

PD-1 checkpoint inhibition has revolutionized the care of cancer. A small portion of patients with stage IV cancer achieve durable control. But, early progression is common and dramatic control is achieved for only a minority.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) is incurable and fatal, making prostate cancer the second leading cancer-related cause of death for American men. CRPC results from therapeutic resistance to standard-of-care androgen deprivation (AD) treatments, through incompletely understood molecular mechanisms, and lacks durable therapeutic options. In this study, we identified enhanced soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC) signaling as a mechanism that restrains CRPC initiation and growth.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although histological and molecular classifications have been extensively studied for gastric cancer (GC), targeted therapies for GC remain limited. CDH1 mutations (MT) are characteristic of genomically stable GC and are associated with poor prognosis, but lack effective or targeted therapies. Here, we showed the overall mutation frequency of CDH1 was 9.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Catnip (Nepeta cataria, L.) has well-documented applications in arthropod repellency because of its bioactive iridoids. Long-term stability of nepetalactones and other iridoids in N.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Gastric cancer remains a formidable challenge in oncology with high mortality rates and few advancements in treatment. Claudin-18.2 (CLDN18.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Catnip ( L.) plants produce a wide array of specialized metabolites with multiple applications for human health. The productivity of such metabolites, including nepetalactones, and natural insect repellents is influenced by the conditions under which the plants are cultivated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is unsurpassed for its clinical and pathological hetherogeneity, but the biological determinants of this variability are unknown. HLA-DRB1*15, the main genetic risk factor for MS, influences the severity and distribution of MS pathology. This study set out to unravel the molecular determinants of the heterogeneity of MS pathology in relation to HLA-DRB1*15 status.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The intestinal epithelium, which segregates the highly stimulatory lumen from the underlying tissue, harbors one of the largest lymphocyte populations in the body, intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs). IELs must balance tolerance, resistance, and tissue protection to maintain epithelial homeostasis and barrier integrity. This review discusses the ontogeny, environmental imprinting, T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire, and function of intestinal IELs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We report ATP1A3-associated rapid-onset dystonia-parkinsonism with an atypical presentation including myoclonus and exaggerated startle in four patients. Their prominence over parkinsonism prompted consideration of a syndromic diagnosis of myoclonus dystonia. ATP1α3 dysfunction in GABAergic neurons could explain these examination findings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The maintenance of adequate blood supply and vascular integrity is fundamental to ensure cerebral function. A wide range of studies report vascular dysfunction in white matter dementias, a group of cerebral disorders characterized by substantial white matter damage in the brain leading to cognitive impairment. Despite recent advances in imaging, the contribution of vascular-specific regional alterations in white matter dementia has been not extensively reviewed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: Castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) is fatal and therapeutically under-served. We describe a novel CRPC-restraining role for the vasodilatory soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC) pathway. We discovered that sGC subunits are dysregulated during CRPC progression and its catalytic product, cyclic GMP (cGMP), is lowered in CRPC patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The intestinal immune system must tolerate food antigens to avoid allergy, a process requiring CD4+ T cells. Combining antigenically defined diets with gnotobiotic models, we show that food and microbiota distinctly influence the profile and T cell receptor repertoire of intestinal CD4+ T cells. Independent of the microbiota, dietary proteins contributed to accumulation and clonal selection of antigen-experienced CD4+ T cells at the intestinal epithelium, imprinting a tissue-specialized transcriptional program including cytotoxic genes on both conventional and regulatory CD4+ T cells (Tregs).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The intestinal immune system must tolerate food antigens to avoid allergy, a process requiring CD4 T cells. Combining antigenically defined diets with gnotobiotic models, we show that food and microbiota distinctly influence the profile and T cell receptor repertoire of intestinal CD4 T cells. Independent of the microbiota, dietary proteins contributed to accumulation and clonal selection of antigen-experienced CD4 T cells at the intestinal epithelium, imprinting a tissue specialized transcriptional program including cytotoxic genes on both conventional and regulatory CD4 T cells (Tregs).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There are no international guidelines for brain biopsy in neurological disease of unknown etiology, yet most practicing neurologists will encounter difficult cases in which biopsy is considered. This patient cohort is heterogenous, and it is unclear in which circumstances biopsy is most useful. We performed an audit of brain biopsies reviewed in our neuropathology department from 2010 to 2021.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Single ribonucleoside monophosphates (rNMPs) are transiently present in eukaryotic genomes. The RNase H2-dependent ribonucleotide excision repair (RER) pathway ensures error-free rNMP removal. In some pathological conditions, rNMP removal is impaired.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: The external validity of survival outcomes derived from clinical practice data from US patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is not known and is of potential importance because it may be used to support regulatory decision-making and health technology assessment outside of the US.

Objective: To evaluate whether overall survival (OS) estimates for a selected group of patients with advanced NSCLC from a large US clinical practice database are transportable to Canadian patients receiving the same systemic therapies.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This retrospective multicenter cohort study used transportability analysis to assess whether adjustment for pretreatment characteristics of eligible patient cohorts could reliably approximate OS estimated from US-based samples to Canadian populations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Targeting focal adhesion kinase (FAK) with the drug defactinib, combined with gemcitabine and pembrolizumab, shows promise in treating pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) in a multi-center phase I study.* -
  • The study involved two phases: one to determine the optimal dosage and another to treat patients with either refractory or stable PDAC, where an 80% disease control rate was observed among those with refractory disease.* -
  • Preliminary results indicate the treatment combination is well-tolerated and shows potential efficacy, suggesting future studies may benefit from using stronger chemotherapy agents alongside it.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tick bites are a major public health concern due to the vector role that many tick species have in transmitting human pathogens. Synthetic repellents such as N‑diethyl-meta-toluamide (DEET) remain the standard for repellency. Still, there is a need for natural commercial alternatives with similar or better properties than DEET.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Aberrant expression of DNA repair pathways such as homologous recombination (HR) can lead to DNA repair imbalance, genomic instability, and altered chemotherapy response. DNA repair imbalance may predict prognosis, but variation in DNA repair in diverse cohorts of breast cancer patients is understudied.

Methods: To identify RNA-based patterns of DNA repair expression, we performed unsupervised clustering on 51 DNA repair-related genes in the Cancer Genome Atlas Breast Cancer [TCGA BRCA (n = 1,094)] and Carolina Breast Cancer Study [CBCS (n = 1,461)].

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

γδ T cells represent a substantial fraction of intestinal lymphocytes at homeostasis, but they also constitute a major lymphocyte population infiltrating colorectal cancers (CRCs); however, their temporal contribution to CRC development or progression remains unclear. Using human CRC samples and murine CRC models, we found that most γδ T cells in premalignant or nontumor colons exhibit cytotoxic markers, whereas tumor-infiltrating γδ T cells express a protumorigenic profile. These contrasting T cell profiles were associated with distinct T cell receptor (TCR)-Vγδ gene usage in both humans and mice.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Investigate the relationship between response to pembrolizumab and expression of the 18-gene T cell-inflamed gene expression profile (TcellGEP) or PD-L1 combined positive score (CPS) in esophageal cancer. This analysis included heavily pretreated patients with advanced/metastatic esophageal/gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma who received pembrolizumab in the single-arm, phase II study KEYNOTE-180. PD-L1 CPS was evaluated with PD-L1 IHC 22C3 pharmDx.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF