Immunosenescence does not abrogate engraftment of murine allogeneic bone marrow.

Background: Allogeneic bone marrow transplantation is under investigation for a range of nonmalignant indications, including tolerance induction through mixed chimerism. This strategy has so far been tested experimentally only in young recipients. Due to immunosenescence, older patients have an increase in memory T cells (TMEM) as well as other alterations to their immune system, which may influence the potential to induce tolerance.

Graft-specific immune cells communicate inflammatory immune responses after brain death.

Background: Donor brain death (BD) triggers inflammatory graft activation that leads to impaired graft quality and outcome. We used a mouse BD model to investigate graft inflammation in cardiac transplants from immune-competent and immune-deficient donor animals. Effects of donor T-cell depletion were tested in an additional group of cardiac transplant recipients.

Inflammatory immune responses in a reproducible mouse brain death model.

Background: Brain death impairs donor organ quality and accelerates immune responses after transplantation. Detailed aspects of immune activation following brain death remain unclear. We have established a mouse model and investigated the immediate consequences of brain death and anesthesia on immune responses.

Myosin5a tail associates directly with Rab3A-containing compartments in neurons.

Myosin-Va (Myo5a) is a motor protein associated with synaptic vesicles (SVs) but the mechanism by which it interacts has not yet been identified. A potential class of binding partners are Rab GTPases and Rab3A is known to associate with SVs and is involved in SV trafficking. We performed experiments to determine whether Rab3A interacts with Myo5a and whether it is required for transport of neuronal vesicles.

Scaled cortical impact in immature swine: effect of age and gender on lesion volume.

The piglet scaled cortical impact model creates a focal contusion using a skull-mounted, spring-loaded blunt indentation device scaled to achieve identical tissue strains in subjects with different brain sizes. Preliminary data showed that contusion size increased proportional to subject age. This study details the results from a new, larger series of subjects of three ages, and compares the effect of age and additional host and physiologic variables on injury response.

Tensile and tribological properties of high-crystallinity radiation crosslinked UHMWPE.

Osteolysis due to particulate wear debris associated with ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) components of total joint replacement prostheses has been a major factor determining their in vivo lifetime. In recent years, radiation crosslinking has been employed to decrease wear rates in PE components, especially in acetabular cups of total hip replacement prostheses. A drawback of radiation crosslinking is that it leads to a crosslinked PE (or XPE) with lower mechanical properties compared with uncrosslinked PE.