Changes in IL-10 and specific antibodies associated to successful Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus immunotherapy in children during the first year of treatment.

Background: Allergen-specific immunotherapy (SIT) is a long-term treatment of respiratory allergy.

Objective: To look for early predictors of the effectiveness of Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus SIT.

Methods: A prospective multi-centre study was carried out in Spain.

Nanometric self-assembling peptide layers maintain adult hepatocyte phenotype in sandwich cultures.

Background: Isolated hepatocytes removed from their microenvironment soon lose their hepatospecific functions when cultured. Normally hepatocytes are commonly maintained under limited culture medium supply as well as scaffold thickness. Thus, the cells are forced into metabolic stress that degenerate liver specific functions.

Early tissue patterning recreated by mouse embryonic fibroblasts in a three-dimensional environment.

Cellular self-organization studies have been mainly focused on models such as Volvox, the slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum, and animal (metazoan) embryos. Moreover, animal tissues undergoing regeneration also exhibit properties of embryonic systems such as the self-organization process that rebuilds tissue complexity and function. We speculated that the recreation in vitro of the biological, biophysical, and biomechanical conditions similar to those of a regenerative milieu could elicit the intrinsic capacity of differentiated cells to proceed to the development of a tissue-like structure.