Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a rare, progressive disease, characterized by inflammation and fibrosis of the bile ducts, lacking reliable prognostic biomarkers for disease activity. Machine learning applied to broad proteomic profiling of sera allowed for the discovery of markers of disease presence, severity, and cirrhosis and the exploration of the involvement of CCL24, a chemokine with fibro-inflammatory activity. Sera from 30 healthy controls and 45 PSC patients were profiled with proximity extension assay, quantifying the expression of 2870 proteins, and used to train an elastic net model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrimary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is an inflammatory and fibrotic biliary disease lacking approved treatment. We studied CCL24, a chemokine shown to be overexpressed in damaged bile ducts, and its involvement in key disease-related mechanisms. Serum proteomics of PSC patients and healthy controls (HC) were analyzed using the Olink proximity extension assay and compared based on disease presence, fibrosis severity, and CCL24 levels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFˆCCL24 is a pro-fibrotic, pro-inflammatory chemokine expressed in several chronic fibrotic diseases. In the liver, CCL24 plays a role in fibrosis and inflammation, and blocking CCL24 led to reduced liver injury in experimental models. We studied the role of CCL24 in primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and evaluated the potential therapeutic effect of blocking CCL24 in this disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmunotherapy is now an essential tool for cancer treatment, and the unique features of an individual's T cell receptor repertoire are known to play a key role in its effectiveness. The repertoire, famously vast due to a cascade of cellular mechanisms, can be quantified using repertoire sequencing. In this study, we sampled the repertoire over several time points following treatment with anti-CTLA-4, in a syngeniec mouse model for colorectal cancer, generating a longitudinal dataset of T cell clones and their abundance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Blood transfusion rates during surgery and hospitalization for thoracic surgery vary from 16% to 55%. The religious beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) permit medical and surgical procedures but exclude the use of blood and blood products. Performing major pulmonary resection without the possibility of compensating for blood loss is a daunting challenge that few surgeons are willing to meet.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF