Derivation of Injury-Responsive Dendritic Cells for Acute Brain Targeting and Therapeutic Protein Delivery in the Stroke-Injured Rat

Research with experimental stroke models has identified a wide range of therapeutic proteins that can prevent the brain damage caused by this form of acute neurological injury. Despite this, we do not yet have safe and effective ways to deliver therapeutic proteins to the injured brain, and this remains a major obstacle for clinical translation. Current targeted strategies typically involve invasive neurosurgery, whereas systemic approaches produce the undesirable outcome of non-specific protein delivery to the entire brain, rather than solely to the injury site. As a potential way to address this, we developed a protein delivery system modeled after the endogenous immune cell response to brain injury. Using ex-vivo-engineered dendritic cells (DCs), we find that these cells can transiently home to brain injury in a rat model of stroke with both temporal and spatial selectivity. We present a standardized method to derive injury-responsive DCs from bone marrow and show that injury targeting is dependent on culture conditions that maintain an immature DC phenotype. Further, we find evidence that when loaded with therapeutic cargo, cultured DCs can suppress initial neuron death caused by an ischemic injury. These results demonstrate a non-invasive method to target ischemic brain injury and may ultimately provide a way to selectively deliver therapeutic compounds to the injured brain.     

Effect of Moringa oleifera leaves on hematological profile of fluorosis affected rats

Fluorosis is a metabolic disease that is endemic in nearly 25 countries with India being one of the most affected. It primarily affects the bone and the teeth. Moringa oleifera (MO) leaves are known to reduce the effect of fluorosis on various tissues. Therefore, it is of interest to document the effect of Moringa oleifera leaves on the hematological profile of fluorosis affected rats. Twenty four Sprague Dawley rats were housed two per cage in a room with 12 hours light and 12 hours dark cycle. The rats were allowed to adjust to the laboratory environment for about one to two weeks before the beginning of the study. This study reveals that MO leaves is effective in reducing the plasma fluoride content. It also helps in improving the Hb % and RBC count in fluorosis affected rats. Data shows that Moringa olifera leaves powder is effective in reducing the plasma fluoride content. It also helps in improving the Hemoglobin percentage & Red Blood Cell count in fluorosis affected rats.     

多倍体诱导在蔬菜育种上的应用

对多倍体诱导技术在蔬菜育种上的研究及应用情况进行了论述。着重从蔬菜多倍体的类型、多倍体蔬菜的特征特性、获得途径及鉴定方法等方面出发,回顾了近几十年来蔬菜多倍体育种的发展概况,并对其发展前景作了展望。     

Enhancement in leghemoglobin content of root nodules by exclusion of solar UV-A and UV-B radiation in soybean

The impact of exclusion of solar UV-B (280–320 nm) and UV-A+B (280–400 nm) radiation on the root nodules was studied in soybean(Glycine max var. MACS 330). Soybean plants were grown in the tropical region of Indore (Latitude-22.4°N), India under field conditions in metal cages covered with polyester exclusion filters that specifically cut off UV-B (<320 nm) and UV-A+B (<400 nm) radiation; control plants were grown under ambient solar radiation. Leghemoglobin content was analyzed in the root nodules on the 50^th day after emergence of seedlings. Exclusion of UV radiations significantly enhanced the leghemoglobin content in the nodules on fresh weight basis; 25% and 45% higher amount of leghemoglobin were present in the nodules after the exclusion of UV-B and UV-A+B radiation respectively. Analysis by native and SDS-PAGE showed high intense bands of leghemoglobin after the exclusion of UV-A+B as compared to control. Exclusion of UV radiation also enhanced the growth of roots as well as aerial parts of the plants. UV Exclusion increased nodulation by increase in the number and size of nodules. The results are discussed in the light of advantage of exclusion for enhancing protein/nitrogen content in the plants.     

Quantification of Abdominal Fat Depots in Rats and Mice during Obesity and Weight Loss Interventions

Background & Aims

Obesity is a leading healthcare issue contributing to metabolic diseases. There is a great interest in non-invasive approaches for quantitating abdominal fat in obese animals and humans. In this work, we propose an automated method to distinguish and quantify subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissues (SAT and VAT) in rodents during obesity and weight loss interventions. We have also investigated the influence of different magnetic resonance sequences and sources of variability in quantification of fat depots.

Materials and Methods

High-fat diet fed rodents were utilized for investigating the changes during obesity, exercise, and calorie restriction interventions (N = 7/cohort). Imaging was performed on a 7T Bruker ClinScan scanner using fast spin echo (FSE) and Dixon imaging methods to estimate the fat depots. Finally, we quantified the SAT and VAT volumes between the L1–L5 lumbar vertebrae using the proposed automatic hybrid geodesic region-based curve evolution algorithm.

Results

Significant changes in SAT and VAT volumes (p<0.01) were observed between the pre- and post-intervention measurements. The SAT and VAT were 44.22±9%, 21.06±1.35% for control, −17.33±3.07%, −15.09±1.11% for exercise, and 18.56±2.05%, −3.9±0.96% for calorie restriction cohorts, respectively. The fat quantification correlation between FSE (with and without water suppression) sequences and Dixon for SAT and VAT were 0.9709, 0.9803 and 0.9955, 0.9840 respectively. The algorithm significantly reduced the computation time from 100 sec/slice to 25 sec/slice. The pre-processing, data-derived contour placement and avoidance of strong background–image boundary improved the convergence accuracy of the proposed algorithm.

Conclusions

We developed a fully automatic segmentation algorithm to quantitate SAT and VAT from abdominal images of rodents, which can support large cohort studies. We additionally identified the influence of non-algorithmic variables including cradle disturbance, animal positioning, and MR sequence on the fat quantification. There were no large variations between FSE and Dixon-based estimation of SAT and VAT.