Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is widely used to treat patients with life-threatening hematologic and immune system disorders. Current nontargeted chemo-/radiotherapy conditioning regimens cause tissue injury and induce an array of immediate and delayed adverse effects, limiting the application of this life-saving treatment. The growing demand to replace canonical conditioning regimens has led to the development of alternative approaches, such as antibody-drug conjugates, naked antibodies, and CAR T cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: An estimated 2.2 million people from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) live in the United Kingdom. It has been documented that CEE migrants underutilise health services in the United Kingdom and, as an alternative, seek healthcare in their home country.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol
September 2024
Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive disease characterized by vasoconstriction and remodeling of small pulmonary arteries (PAs). Central to the remodeling process is a switch of pulmonary vascular cells to a proliferative, apoptosis-resistant phenotype. Plasminogen activator inhibitors-1 and -2 (PAI-1 and PAI-2) are the primary physiological inhibitors of urokinase-type and tissue-type plasminogen activators (uPA and tPA), but their roles in PAH are unsettled.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFibrinolytics delivered into the general circulation lack selectivity for nascent thrombi, reducing efficacy and increasing the risk of bleeding. Urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) transgenically expressed within murine platelets provided targeted thromboprophylaxis without causing bleeding but is not clinically feasible. Recent advances in generating megakaryocytes prompted us to develop a potentially clinically relevant means to produce "antithrombotic" platelets from CD34+ hematopoietic stem cell-derived in vitro-grown megakaryocytes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Our prior finding that uPA endogenously expressed and stored in the platelets of transgenic mice prevented thrombus formation without causing bleeding, prompted us to develop a potentially clinically relevant means of generating anti-thrombotic human platelets from CD34 hematopoietic cell-derived megakaryocytes. CD34 -megakaryocytes internalize and store in α-granules single-chain uPA (scuPA) and a uPA variant modified to be plasmin-resistant, but thrombin-activatable, (uPAT). Both uPAs co-localized with internalized factor V (FV), fibrinogen and plasminogen, low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1 (LRP1), and interferon-induced transmembrane protein 3 (IFITM3), but not with endogenous von Willebrand factor (VWF).
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