Fibrosis Mediators in the Colonic Mucosa of Acute and Healed Ulcerative Colitis.

Objectives: A healed intestinal mucosa is the aim of therapy in acute ulcerative colitis (UC). Disruption of mucosal wound healing may lead to severe complications including intestinal fibrosis. This study examined mucosal gene expression in the healing process of acute UC with a special focus on known mediators of fibrosis.

The Proteome of Ulcerative Colitis in Colon Biopsies from Adults - Optimized Sample Preparation and Comparison with Healthy Controls.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to optimize the sample preparation and to further use an improved sample preparation to identify proteome differences between inflamed ulcerative colitis tissue from untreated adults and healthy controls.

Experimental Design: To optimize the sample preparation, we studied the effect of adding different detergents to a urea containing lysis buffer for a Lys-C/trypsin tandem digestion. With the optimized method, we prepared clinical samples from six ulcerative colitis patients and six healthy controls and analysed them by LC-MS/MS.

Changes in the human transcriptome upon vitamin D supplementation.

Vitamin D is hydroxylated in the liver and kidneys to its active form, which can bind to the vitamin D receptor (VDR). The VDR is present in a wide variety of different cells types and tissues and acts as a transcription factor. Although activation of the VDR is estimated to regulate expression of up to 5% of the human genome, our study is the first analysing gene expression after supplementation in more than 10 subjects.