Role of stromal activin A in human pancreatic cancer and metastasis in mice.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has extensive stromal involvement and remains one of the cancers with the highest mortality rates. Activin A has been implicated in colon cancer and its stroma but its role in the stroma of PDAC has not been elucidated. Activin A expression in cancer and stroma was assessed in human PDAC tissue microarrays (TMA).

Inhibition of PKC phosphorylation of cTnI improves cardiac performance in vivo.

Protein kinase C (PKC) modulates cardiomyocyte function by phosphorylation of intracellular targets including myofilament proteins. Data generated from studies on in vitro heart preparations indicate that PKC phosphorylation of troponin I (TnI), primarily via PKC-epsilon, may slow the rates of cardiac contraction and relaxation (+dP/dt and -dP/dt). To explore this issue in vivo, we employed transgenic mice [mutant TnI (mTnI) mice] in which the major PKC phosphorylation sites on cardiac TnI were mutated by alanine substitutions for Ser(43) and Ser(45) and studied in situ hemodynamics at baseline and increased inotropy.