Assessment of In Vivo Kidney Cell Death: Glomerular Injury.

The glomerulus functions as the filtration unit of the kidney. The mesangial, endothelial, and podocyte cells of the glomerulus exhibit the three clinically most important cell types, which are involved in diverse pathologic processes. Cell death has hardly been investigated in these cells but may be of critical importance to the pathogenesis of nephrotic syndrome, nephritic syndrome, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), mesangial proliferation, and thrombonic microangiopathy (which involves dysfunction and death of glomerular endothelial cells).

Assessment of In Vivo Kidney Cell Death: Acute Kidney Injury.

The kidney has been studied as an organ to investigate cell death in vivo for a number of reasons. The unique vasculature that does not contain collateral vessels favors the kidney over other organs for the investigation of ischemia-reperfusion injury. Unilateral uretic obstruction has become the most prominently studied model for fibrosis with impact far beyond postrenal kidney injury.

Progenitor Renin Lineage Cells are not involved in the regeneration of glomerular endothelial cells during experimental renal thrombotic microangiopathy.

Endothelial cells (EC) frequently undergo primary or secondary injury during kidney disease such as thrombotic microangiopathy or glomerulonephritis. Renin Lineage Cells (RLCs) serve as a progenitor cell niche after glomerular damage in the adult kidney. However, it is not clear whether RLCs also contribute to endothelial replenishment in the glomerulus following endothelial injury.

Interference with Gs-Coupled Receptor Signaling in Renin-Producing Cells Leads to Renal Endothelial Damage.

Intracellular cAMP, the production of which is catalyzed by the -subunit of the stimulatory G protein (Gs), controls renin synthesis and release by juxtaglomerular (JG) cells of the kidney, but may also have relevance for the physiologic integrity of the kidney. To investigate this possibility, we generated mice with inducible knockout of Gs in JG cells and monitored them for 6 months after induction at 6 weeks of age. The knockout mapped exclusively to the JG cells of the Gs-deficient animals.

Persistent and inducible neogenesis repopulates progenitor renin lineage cells in the kidney.

Renin lineage cells (RLCs) serve as a progenitor cell reservoir during nephrogenesis and after renal injury. The maintenance mechanisms of the RLC pool are still poorly understood. Since RLCs were also identified as a progenitor cell population in bone marrow we first considered that these may be their source in the kidney.

Effect of antimicrobial peptides from Apis mellifera hemolymph and its optimized version Api88 on biological activities of human monocytes and mast cells.

Apidaecin peptides are produced by the honeybee Apis mellifera as a major part of its non-specific defense system against infections. Having verified that the peptides apidaecin 1b and Api88-a designer peptide based on the native apidaecin 1b sequence-are highly active against Gram-negative bacteria, we studied their ability to modulate biological activities of human monocytes and mast cells (MC), two important cell types of the human innate immune system. We could show that both peptides are nontoxic and fairly resistant to degradation in cell culture medium containing 10% FBS.