Pharmacological or genetic inhibition of LTCC promotes cardiomyocyte proliferation through inhibition of calcineurin activity.

Cardiomyocytes (CMs) lost during ischemic cardiac injury cannot be replaced due to their limited proliferative capacity. Calcium is an important signal transducer that regulates key cellular processes, but its role in regulating CM proliferation is incompletely understood. Here we show a robust pathway for new calcium signaling-based cardiac regenerative strategies.

Levatorplasty's role in rectal prolapse management for patients with wide pelvic hiatus: a cohort study.

Background And Aims: Rectal prolapse (RP) is a debilitating condition and can cause symptoms of fecal incontinence, obstructed defecation, incomplete evacuation of the rectum, and pain. In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that prolapse development is strongly associated with pelvic hiatus (GH) size (normal 4.5 +/- 0.

Impact of pre-operative mechanical bowel preparation in preventing post-operative anastomotic leak: A meta-analysis.

Colorectal operations are amongst the most frequently performed surgical procedures worldwide. Success of colorectal surgery is significantly influenced by occurrence of postoperative complications; Efforts are directed in detecting risk factors for these complications and trials to avoid risk factors to reduce complications rate. This study was conducted to assess the impact of mechanical bowel preparation in preventing post-operative anastomotic leakage in adult patients undergoing elective restorative colorectal surgery.

Sall4 and Gata4 induce cardiac fibroblast transition towards a partially multipotent state with cardiogenic potential.

Cardiac cellular fate transition holds remarkable promise for the treatment of ischemic heart disease. We report that overexpressing two transcription factors, Sall4 and Gata4, which play distinct and overlapping roles in both pluripotent stem cell reprogramming and embryonic heart development, induces a fraction of stem-like cells in rodent cardiac fibroblasts that exhibit unlimited ex vivo expandability with clonogenicity. Transcriptomic and phenotypic analyses reveal that around 32 ± 6.

A case study on optimizing industrial air conditioning with thermal solar energy in Egypt.

This study investigates the feasibility of implementing a solar-assisted adsorption chiller in an industrial building at the Oriental Weavers International factory located in 10th of Ramadan City, Cairo, Egypt. The objective is to replace an inefficient split air conditioning system currently used to cool the Jacquard units during carpet manufacturing. The research begins by analyzing the performance of the existing cooling system to establish a baseline.

Inherent Metabolic Adaptations in Adult Spiny Mouse ( ) Cardiomyocytes Facilitate Enhanced Cardiac Recovery Following Myocardial Infarction.

The adult mammalian heart has limited regenerative capacity following injury, leading to progressive heart failure and mortality. Recent studies have identified the spiny mouse ( ) as a unique model for mammalian cardiac isch3emic resilience, exhibiting enhanced recovery after myocardial infarction (MI) compared to commonly used laboratory mouse strains. However, the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms behind this unique response remain poorly understood.

Culturing Cardiac Tissue Slices Under Continuous Physiological Mechanical Stretches.

Testing drugs in vivo and in vitro have been essential elements for the discovery of new therapeutics. Due to the recent advances in in vitro cell culture models, such as human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes and 3D multicell type organoid culture methods, the detection of adverse cardiac events prior to human clinical trials has improved. However, there are still numerous therapeutics whose adverse cardiac effects are not detected until human trials due to the inability of these cell cultures to fully model the complex multicellular organization of an intact human myocardium.

Study of CD4+ T-lymphocytes in chronic kidney disease patients with COVID-19 infection.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a functional and/or structural kidney damage that lasts more than three months duration. This study aimed to analyze CD4+ T-lymphocytes levels in chronic CKD patients specifically, during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic to assess the adaptive cell-mediated immunity. The study measured absolute CD4+ T-lymphocytes counts by flowcytometry among participating individuals.

Total Mesorectal Excision with or without Lateral Pelvic Lymph Node Dissection in Rectal Cancer.

Results: Incidence of local recurrence was slightly higher in Group A (8.7%) than in Group B (4.3%) but was not statistically significant.

Pharmacological or genetic inhibition of LTCC promotes cardiomyocyte proliferation through inhibition of calcineurin activity.

Cardiomyocytes (CMs) lost during ischemic cardiac injury cannot be replaced due to their limited proliferative capacity, which leads to progressive heart failure. Calcium (Ca) is an important signal transducer that regulates key cellular processes, but its role in regulating CM proliferation is incompletely understood. A drug screen targeting proteins involved in CM calcium cycling in human embryonic stem cell-derived cardiac organoids (hCOs) revealed that only the inhibition of L-Type Calcium Channel (LTCC), but not other Ca regulatory proteins (SERCA or RYR), induced the CM cell cycle.

Development of new adeno-associated virus capsid variants for targeted gene delivery to human cardiomyocytes.

Recombinant adeno-associated viruses (rAAVs) have emerged as one of the most promising gene therapy vectors that have been successfully used in pre-clinical models of heart disease. However, this has not translated well to humans due to species differences in rAAV transduction efficiency. As a result, the search for human cardiotropic capsids is a major contemporary challenge.

Assessment of efficacy of different botulinum toxin A concentrations in the treatment of androgenetic alopecia assessed by dermoscopy.

Background: Androgenetic alopecia (AGA) is the most common type of progressive hair loss in men and women. AGA is characterized by the miniaturization of the hair follicle, leading to the transformation of terminal hair to vellus hair.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of injecting two different concentrations of botulinum toxin A (BTA) for the treatment of AGA in Egyptian patients.

Improved Cardiac Function in Postischemic Rats Using an Optimized Cardiac Reprogramming Cocktail Delivered in a Single Novel Adeno-Associated Virus.

Background: Cardiac reprogramming is a technique to directly convert nonmyocytes into myocardial cells using genes or small molecules. This intervention provides functional benefit to the rodent heart when delivered at the time of myocardial infarction or activated transgenically up to 4 weeks after myocardial infarction. Yet, several hurdles have prevented the advancement of cardiac reprogramming for clinical use.

A novel small molecule inhibitor of p38⍺ MAP kinase augments cardiomyocyte cell cycle entry in response to direct cell cycle stimulation.

Background And Purpose: Myocardial infarction (MI) is the leading cause of mortality globally due in part to the limited ability of cardiomyocytes (CMs) to regenerate. Recently, we demonstrated that overexpression of four-cell cycle factors, CDK1, CDK4, cyclin B1 and cyclin D1 (4F), induced cell division in ~20% of the post-mitotic CMs overexpressed 4F. The current study aims to identify a small molecule that augments 4F-induced CM cycle induction.

Restored autophagy is protective against PAK3-induced cardiac dysfunction.

Despite the development of clinical treatments, heart failure remains the leading cause of mortality. We observed that p21-activated kinase 3 (PAK3) was augmented in failing human and mouse hearts. Furthermore, mice with cardiac-specific PAK3 overexpression exhibited exacerbated pathological remodeling and deteriorated cardiac function.

FGF21/FGFR1-β-KL cascade in cardiomyocytes modulates angiogenesis and inflammation under metabolic stress.

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder with an increased risk of developing heart failure. Inflammation and damaged vasculature are the cardinal features of diabetes-induced cardiac damage. Moreover, systemic metabolic stress triggers discordant intercellular communication, thus culminating in cardiac dysfunction.

Literature Review: Pathophysiology of Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction.

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction is a growing public health concern, a disease with poor health outcomes, and is showing increased prevalence globally. This review paper explores the literature with a focus on the pathophysiology and microbiology of preserved ejection fraction heart failure while drawing connections between preserved and reduced ejection fraction states. The discussion teases out the cellular level changes that affect the overall dysfunction of the cardiac tissue, including the clinical manifestations, microbiological changes (endothelial cells, fibroblasts, cardiomyocytes, and excitation-contraction coupling), and the burden of structural diastolic dysfunction.

Controlled and Targeted Drug Delivery Using Smart Nanovectors.

The conventional drug delivery systems have several limitations, such as the high frequency of administration, several off-target effects, and the need for tissue specificity. Recently, smart drug shuttles have emerged, and the nano applications provided a new opportunity for advancing the drug delivery system to become tissue targeted and decrease the frequency of administration. The recent development of nanovectors as drug carriers has gone through several steps of evolution that ended with the development of logic-embedded nanovectors.

The impact of senescence on muscle wasting in chronic kidney disease.

Background: Muscle wasting is a common complication of chronic kidney disease (CKD) that is associated with higher mortality. Although the mechanisms of myofibre loss in CKD has been widely studied, the contribution of muscle precursor cell (MPC) senescence remains poorly understood. Senescent MPCs no longer proliferate and can produce proinflammatory factors or cytokines.

Transient gene therapy using cell cycle factors reverses renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system activation in heart failure rat model.

The loss of cardiomyocytes after myocardial infarction (MI) leads to heart failure. Recently, we demonstrated that transient overexpression of 4 cell cycle factors (4F), using a polycistronic non-integrating lentivirus (TNNT2-4F-NIL) resulted in significant improvement in cardiac function in a rat model of MI. Yet, it is crucial to demonstrate the reversal of the heart failure-related pathophysiological manifestations, such as renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system activation (RAAS).

Biomimetic cardiac tissue culture model (CTCM) to emulate cardiac physiology and pathophysiology ex vivo.

There is need for a reliable in vitro system that can accurately replicate the cardiac physiological environment for drug testing. The limited availability of human heart tissue culture systems has led to inaccurate interpretations of cardiac-related drug effects. Here, we developed a cardiac tissue culture model (CTCM) that can electro-mechanically stimulate heart slices with physiological stretches in systole and diastole during the cardiac cycle.