Advances in Understanding and Managing Chronic Urticaria.

There have been recent advances in the classification and management of chronic urticaria. The new term chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) has replaced chronic idiopathic urticaria and chronic autoimmune urticaria. In addition, chronic inducible urticaria (CINDU) has replaced physical urticaria and includes other forms of inducible urticaria, such as cholinergic and aquagenic urticaria.

Carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1C promotes cell survival and tumor growth under conditions of metabolic stress.

Tumor cells gain a survival/growth advantage by adapting their metabolism to respond to environmental stress, a process known as metabolic transformation. The best-known aspect of metabolic transformation is the Warburg effect, whereby cancer cells up-regulate glycolysis under aerobic conditions. However, other mechanisms mediating metabolic transformation remain undefined.

Cross-talk between Chk1 and Chk2 in double-mutant thymocytes.

Chk1 is a checkpoint kinase and an important regulator of mammalian cell division. Because null mutation of Chk1 in mice is embryonic lethal, we used the Cre-loxP system and the Lck promoter to generate conditional mutant mice in which Chk1 was deleted only in the T lineage. In the absence of Chk1, the transition of CD4(-)CD8(-) double-negative (DN) thymocytes to CD4(+)CD8(+) double-positive (DP) cells was blocked due to an increase in apoptosis at the DN2 and DN3 stages.