Successful Treatment with Short-Term Steroid Against Severe Hepatitis Confirmed by Liver Biopsy in a Patient with Advanced Squamous-Cell Lung Cancer Receiving a Combination of Pembrolizumab, Carboplatin, and Nab-Paclitaxel: A Case Report.

Pembrolizumab is an immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) that targets programmed death-1. Although ICIs have shown efficacy in the treatment of lung cancer, they have also been reported to cause a variety of immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Hepatotoxicity is a known irAEs, but currently, there is not enough information on its pathological characteristics and treatment.

Fluctuations in the concentration of extracellular ATP synchronized with intracellular Ca(2+) oscillatory rhythm in cultured cardiac myocytes.

Isolated and cultured neonatal cardiac myocytes contract spontaneously and cyclically. The intracellular concentration of free Ca(2+) also changes rhythmically in association with the rhythmic contraction of myocytes (Ca(2+) oscillation). Both the contraction and Ca(2+) oscillatory rhythms are synchronized among myocytes, and intercellular communication via gap junctions has been considered primarily responsible for the synchronization.

Possible involvement of ATP-purinoceptor signalling in the intercellular synchronization of intracellular Ca2+ oscillation in cultured cardiac myocytes.

Isolated and cultured neonatal cardiac myocytes contract spontaneously and cyclically. The contraction rhythms of two isolated cardiac myocytes, each of which beats at different frequencies at first, become synchronized after the establishment of mutual contacts, suggesting that mutual entrainment occurs due to electrical and/or mechanical interactions between two myocytes. The intracellular concentration of free Ca(2+) also changes rhythmically in association with the rhythmic contraction of myocytes (Ca(2+) oscillation), and such a Ca(2+) oscillation was also synchronized among cultured cardiac myocytes.

Ischemia/reperfusion-induced death of cardiac myocytes: possible involvement of nitric oxide in the coordination of ATP supply and demand during ischemia.

Nitric oxide (NO) has been known to play various functional and pathological roles as an intracellular or intercellular messenger in the heart. In this study, we investigated whether NO produced during ischemia was involved in the coordination of ATP supply and demand, and also in protection from cell death using cultured cardiac myocytes. Unexpectedly, the survival rate of myocytes for 3 h simulated ischemia (SI) was increased as compared with that for 2 h SI at 24 h after reperfusion.