Epithelial Ovarian cancer (EOC) is the leading cause of gynecological cancer death in the USA. Recurrence rates are high after front-line platinum chemotherapy and most patients eventually die from platinum-resistant disease. P53 plays an important...
The immune system is of profound importance for host survival due to its ability to clear many acquired diseases. In case of infections and cancer, disease arises due to under-performance of immune system. Whereas in autoimmunity and...
Periodontitis--Age factors; Natural immunity; Age factors in disease
Age-related alterations in innate immunity are poorly understood. The identification of those mechanisms, which are dysfunctional in old age, will shed light on potential therapeutic strategies for chronic inflammatory diseases prevalent in the...
Human exposure to mercury has been shown to cause a number of adverse health outcomes, predominantly neurological effects. The developing fetus is most susceptible, and even low levels of exposure have been shown to produce nervous system deficits....
This thesis is divided into two parts below. Part I Adriamycin (ADR) can produce nephrotoxicity in rodents. The underlying mechanism may relate to ADR induced oxidative stress. In this study, we used transgenic mice (NMT3), which over-expressed the...
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common cancer worldwide and the third most fatal, with a rising incidence in the US as a result of the increase in alcoholic liver disease and obesity. Current therapeutic strategies are...
Pancreatic beta cells are extremely vulnerable to destruction by Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). In type 1 diabetes and islet transplantation ROS are thought to be involved in the loss of beta cells. To test the role of antioxidant in islet...
Oxidative stress-induced immunosuppression could be due to a decrease in CD4 + T lymphocyte activation or proliferation. 4-Hydroxynonenal (HNE), an end product of lipid peroxidation, and its protein adducts act as markers of oxidative stress. In...
Long-term exposure to harmful carcinogens like benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) are linked to lung cancer. Benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxide (BPDE), the ultimate carcinogen produced by BaP bioactivation, is believed to play an important role in lung carcinogenesis....
Arrhythmia; Heart--Diseases; Heart beat; Heart conduction system
Introduction: Hyperhomocysteinemia (HHcy) is a pathological condition characterized by excessive levels of plasma homocysteine (Hcy). Patients with HHcy are reported to be at risk for arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation and sudden cardiac death...
Vascular injury and chronic arterial diseases such as atherosclerosis and restenosis result in exposure of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) to increased concentrations of growth factors triggering a change from a contractile to a synthetic...
Monophosphoryl Lipid A (MPLA), a derivative of LPS endotoxin, is a TLR4 agonist that displays as little as 0.1-1% as much toxicity as its parent molecule while retaining immunostimulatory properties. We discovered that MPLA activates a TRIF-biased...
Hypoxia is characterized by an inadequate oxygen supply to the tissues in
proportion to their metabolic needs, and is a primary factor in traumatic CNS
injury, strokes, cardiopulmonary diseases, and obstructive sleep apnea. The
cAMP-dependent...
The goals of this dissertation is to further the understanding of the roles of two genes identified by differential display polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) of cat visual cortex as candidate genes to play a role in visual cortical plasticity....
Cortical and tectal inputs to the caudal LPN in the rat were examined using anatomical and physiological techniques. Pyramidal cells in layer 6 of the visual cortex and wide-field vertical cells in the stratum opticum of the superior colliculus...
Premenopausal women have fewer and less severe strokes when compared to postmenopausal females and aged matched males. The most obvious factor that could account for the observed difference is the physiological activity of Estrogen. Numerous...
Quorum sensing (Microbiology); Cellular signal transduction; Bacterial genetics
Quorum sensing in the oral pathogen Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans is dependent upon the soluble signaling molecule AI-2, but it is not known how the initial detection of AI-2 is coupled to the downstream regulation of gene expression that...
Ribosomal biogenesis failure may contribute to neurodegenerative diseases, while its excessive activation has been shown to drive tumor growth. As ribosomal production is initiated and regulated by the Pol1-mediated transcription of rRNA genes in...
Hepatitis C virus--Research; Interferon--Therapeutic use; Adenosylmethionine
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause of chronic liver disease in the United States and is a huge burden on the US healthcare system. The FDA-approved traditional standard of care for HCV is pegylated interferon-alpha (lFNα) combined...
This dissertation is a hypothesis-driven research oriented study to determine the role of the pituitary-tumor transforming gene (PTTG) in ovarian cancer, specifically if it is involved in neoplastic transformation leading to tumorigenesis through...
