Auto-transplantation of adipose tissue is commonly used for the treatment of tissue defects in plastic surgery. The survival of the transplanted adipose tissue is not always constant, and one of reasons is the accelerated apoptosis of the implanted preadipocytes. We have recently established highly homogeneous preadipocytes, named ccdPAs. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the regulation of the potency of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) on the apoptosis of ccdPAs in vitro. PRP stimulated the proliferation of the preadipocytes in a dose-dependent manner, and the stimulatory activity of 2% PRP was significantly higher than that of 2% FBS or 2% platelet-poor plasma (PPP). The presence of 2% PRP significantly inhibited serum starvation- or TNF-α/cycloheximide-induced apoptosis in comparison to 2% FBS or 2% PPP. DAPK1 and Bcl-2-interacting mediator of cell death (BIM) mRNAs were reduced in the preadipocytes cultured with 2% PRP in comparison to those cultured in 2% FBS. The gene expression levels were significantly higher in cells cultured without serum in comparison to cells cultured with 2% FBS, and the levels in the cells with 2% PRP were reduced to 5-10% of those in the cells without serum. These results indicated that ccdPAs exhibit anti-apoptotic activities, in addition to increased proliferation, when cultured in 2% PRP in comparison to the same concentration of FBS, and that this was accompanied with reduced levels of DAPK1 and BIM mRNA expression in in vitro culture. PRP may improve the outcome of transplantation of adipose tissue by enhancing the anti-apoptotic activities of the implanted preadipocytes.
Atopic myelitis, a type of myelitis which appears in patients with elevated serum levels of immunoglobulin E (IgE), occurs more commonly in the cervical spinal cord, but this mechanism has not yet been elucidated. Herein, we experienced a case of atopic myelitis developed during the growth of cervical cavernous angioma caused by bleeding. A 37-year-old woman suffered from hand swelling caused by a house cat licking. At the same time when cavernous angioma had grown, she experienced a numbness in her four extremities, and multifocal peritumoral hyperintense spinal cord signals were seen. The diagnosis of atopic myelitis was made because we observed significantly elevated levels of specific IgE antibody to cat dander. Symptoms disappeared immediately after steroid pulse therapy. We subsequently resected a cavernous angioma, and eosinophil invasion was found inside it. This is the first case report of atopic myelitis which developed in association with spinal cord vascular lesions. A local blood-brain barrier breakdown due to hemorrhagic lesions of the spinal cord may have contributed to the onset of atopic myelitis.
Asymptomatic, female, 56-year-old identical Japanese twins were found to have a severe abnormality in the surface-mediated intrinsic coagulation, fibrinolysis and esterolytic activity. These defects were thought to be due to the lack of Fitzgerald factor, because of the prolongations of kaolin-activated partial thromboplastin time and kaolin-activated euglobulin lysis time that were not corrected by the addition of Fitzgerald trait-plasma but were corrected to normal levels by the addition of isolated bovine high-molecular-weight kininogen, Fletcher trait-plasma or Hageman trait-plasma.
Because of its availability and recent advances in cell biology, adipose tissue is now considered an ideal target site for the preparation of recipient cells and for the transplantation of gene-transduced cells for supplementation of therapeutic proteins. Inherited or acquired serum protein deficiencies are the ideal targets for gene therapy. However, to develop an effective ex vivo gene therapy-based protein replacement treatment, the requirements for the recipient cells are different from those for standard gene therapy that is intended to correct the function of the recipient cells themselves. To meet the requirements for such a therapeutic strategy, recent in vitro and animal model studies have developed new methods for the preparation, culture, expansion and manipulation of adipose cells using advanced gene transduction methods and transplantation scaffolds. In this short review, we introduce the progress made in novel adipose tissue-based therapeutic strategies for the treatment of protein deficiencies by our group and other investigators, and describe their future applications for diabetes and other metabolic diseases. (J Diabetes Invest, doi: 10.1111/j.2040-1124.2011.00133.x, 2011).
High output power AlGaN/GaN metal-insulator-semicon-ductor (MIS) hetero-junction field effect transistor (HFET) on Si substrate for millimeter-wave application has developed. High temperature chemical vapor deposition (HT-CVD) grown SiN as a gate insulator improves the breakdown characteristics which enables the operation at high drain voltage of 55V. The device exhibits high drain current of 1.1A/mm free from the current collapse and high RF gain of 10.4dB. The amplifier module developed AlGaN/GaN MIS-HFET with the gate width of 5.4mm exhibits an output power of 10.7W and a linear gain of 4dB at 26.5GHz. The resultant high output power is very promising for long-distance communication at millimeter-wave in the future which would enable high speed and high density data transmission.
We studied the rotational motion of cholesteric liquid crystal droplets under a temperature gradient (the Lehmann effect). We found that different surface treatments, planar and homeotropic anchoring, provided three types of droplets with different textures and geometries. The rotational velocity of these droplets depends differently on their size. Determining the three-dimensional structures of these droplets by the fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy, we propose a phenomenological equation to explain the rotational behavior of these droplets. This result shows that the description by the Ericksen-Leslie theory should be valid in the bulk of the droplet, but we need to take into account the surface torque induced by temperature gradient to fully understand the Lehmann effect.
