Background: MDR transporters are important biomarkers of drug resistance in cancer and in autoimmune conditions. We determined the MDR1, MRP1 and BCRP activity in CD3+ lymphocytes using a flow cytometry based method from 120 healthy volunteers in order to describe normal reference values of the activity of these transporters. The effects of gender and age were also determined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrediction of responsiveness in biological therapies is an important and challenging issue in different diseases. Analyzing glycosylation pattern changes of key serum glycoproteins is one of the possible avenues to follow disease remission. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes of serum IgG glycoforms in Crohn's disease (CD) and rheumatoid arthritis patients in response to antitumor necrosis factor alpha (anti-TNF-α) treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Biological therapies have been introduced for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases including rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and Crohn's disease (CD). The efficacy of biologics differs from patient to patient. Moreover these therapies are rather expensive, therefore treatment of primary non-responders should be avoided.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn polarized cells, the multidrug resistance protein MRP2 is localized in the apical plasma membrane, whereas MRP1, another multidrug resistance protein (MRP) family member, is localized in the basolateral membrane. MRP1 and MRP2 are thought to contain an N-terminal region of five transmembrane segments (TMD(0)) coupled to 2 times six transmembrane segments via an intracellular loop (L(0)). We previously demonstrated for MRP1 that a mutant lacking TMD(0) but still containing L(0), called L(0)DeltaMRP1, was functional and routed to the lateral plasma membrane.
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